Words, Words, Words

                                                                                                Words empty as the wind are best unsaid.                                                                             Homer You will never find me wailing Eliza Doolittle’s lament, “Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words.” I love words, maybe too much. I’m one of those writers who has to reel herself in during the word selection process. Like a florist surrounded with so many wonderful blossoms to choose from, I sometimes want to use all of the words that pop into my head. One of my biggest challenges has been killing my darlings.  By creating a clipboard where I save rather than discard them, I manage to move on.            But it’s not just while writing that I can be distracted by words. I discovered I’m faintly word-obsessed during a conversation with my husband during which we were trying to figure out why my kindle didn’t hold a charge as long as his, the suggestion being that I was doing something technologically incorrect. Wrong. It turned out I am simply fixated by the feature that allows you to look up the meaning and roots of words as you are reading, causing a power drain. So much easier than in the days when I had to carry a notebook with me so I could look up words later rather than lug a dictionary around.            I’m a huge fan of Elizabeth George, not simply because I admire her writing, adore being transplanted to England, and would run away with Thomas Lynley (let this be our secret), but because in every book she has ever written she has sent me on multiple side excursions to the dictionary. Good writers, like George, know how to use interesting words without distracting the reader from the story. Bad writers who are trying to impress with weighty words annoy and alienate their readers.            I find words that fascinate me everywhere. I struggled for years to describe myself as a person who loves rain. I now know I am a pluviophile, a lover of rain; someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days.  I noticed when I typed pluviophile it was underlined in red, so I just looked it up in the “Word” dictionary and found it isn’t listed. More investigation on Google revealed it is “pending investigation.” Do you see what I mean? One word and I’m off like a detective on a noble search.            I notice my writing friends are similarly afflicted. Blog mate, Susan Breen, last week posted on Facebook, “I used the word crenellated yesterday, and I think I used it properly. Though I’m not sure I should have.” Susan had me diving for the dictionary wondering if my guess about the meaning of the word was correct and feeling an odd combination of pride and relief when I was.  I wanted to know why she wondered if she should have used the word.            Just yesterday, Facebook friend and MWA New England colleague, Lee McIntyre posted, “My amygdala is exhausted.” A quick check told me Lee was referring to a part of the brain, which sounded vaguely familiar from my days as a student nurse. But of course I wanted to know which part of the brain and why Lee’s was exhausted. Amygdala is the integrative center for emotions, emotional behavior, and motivation.  Further scholarly research on Google showed Amygdala is associated mostly with fear.            Maybe you can see why I stay away from crossword puzzles. I fear I would be lost forever under a mountain of words, trying to tunnel out, but distracted by each word I tried to burrow through.             What do words mean in your reading or writing life? How do react to new words you encounter?                                     

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Please forward to: THREE PINES

 I am running away from home. Or maybe I’m running away to home. Don’t worry. I’ve left a forwarding address. For as long as Louise Penny’s books last me, I’ve moved to Three Pines, the fictional pastoral village in her Inspector Gamache series.            I promise I won’t go political on you, except to say it was politics that drove me to make the move. But any bout with darkness might drive an otherwise seemingly sane person in the same direction. When we are confronted with conflict, disappointment, sadness, betrayal, or any of the other black holes into which human beings occasionally plummet, we naturally seek order, peace, and calm. Calm for me was the operative word.            In recent months, I’ve had the urge to withdraw. I want to scream, “Make it all go away” or just plain, “Go away.” My new overused word has become, “Seriously?” I’ve had the reoccurring image of myself as a toy figurine my kids used to play with, known as a Weeble. Every time you tried to knock it over, it managed to set itself straight. I have become a Weeble, exhausted from trying to find my footing after repeatedly being felled to the ground by news that makes fiction seem real.            I needed a safe place to retreat. To be soothed. A place where I could restore my belief that people are inherently good and kind, even though they occasionally fall into darkness. Where I could find order triumphing after chaos.            I needed to go to Three Pines.            Three Pines for anyone who has not entered the bucolic village is a fictional town near the eastern townships of Quebec, not far from the northern Vermont border.  I first visited Three Pines a few years ago when I read the then current Inspector Gamache adventure and was enchanted. I was also a little scared. I am an addictive reader and knew Penny had written a bunch of these novels. I immediately understood I could not read another in the series unless I went back to book one. At the time, I was downsizing my home and my life and didn’t have room for a new addiction. Besides, I knew there would come a day when I would want and need Inspector Gamache and Three Pines in my life. That day has arrived.            Readers, writers, and reviewers have long wondered why people are drawn to reading mysteries. Why are intelligent, law-abiding citizens entertained by tales featuring murder? One theory, which I believe is true, is that people are drawn to stories where chaos and evil are resolved and order is restored. I know as I enter Three Pines that I can trust Armand Gamache to get answers to the puzzling questions about why seemingly good people can end up doing such awful things. Inspector Gamache shares my feelings about Three Pines. “Gamache had been to Three Pines on previous investigations and each time he’d had the feeling he belonged. It was a powerful feeling. After all, what else did people really want except to belong?” (The Cruelest Month)            But it’s not only the place I am fleeing to. I want to hang out with the people. The regular supporting cast consists of gentle misfits gathered around a green where the absurd feels normal. “This place. How do you explain a village like Three Pines where poets take ducks for a walk and art seems to fall from the skies?” (The Cruelest Month)  Where relationships are rich and repartee merciless and “here you old hag” and “you are queer” are statements of affection?            I don’t question the genius of Louise Penny, creating a haven. I’m just grateful to have found it and that there are seven more books set in Three Pines for me to hide in. I promise an occasional postcard.            And what about you? Where do you escape to as a reader? As a writer, do you intentionally try to create a place where your readers want to come and stay?            

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COMING HOME (Tales of a Tindominium #5)

Home: 1. Residence; 2. family group; 3. Birthplace; 4. Native habitat; 5. Place of origin; 6. Headquarters; 7. Safe place.            After almost six months in paradise, we left St. John, returning to Massachusetts. But this time we weren’t heading to Scituate, where we had lived for thirty-three years. This time, we were off to live “over the bridge,” on outer Cape Cod, where until now, we had only vacationed.            We arrived at our tindominium in Wellfleet on Friday, the 13th of May, our 39th anniversary. Steve and I had been married once before, a million years ago, each to high school sweethearts, which didn’t turn out so sweet. We intentionally chose to be married on a Friday the 13th, sticking our nose up at any suggestion of bad luck. Almost four decades later, we had come full circle.            The term tindominium came from a writer friend. When I was asked the previous fall at a writing committee dinner where I would be living when not in St. John, I had hesitated. How do you tell people that you are going to live in a trailer? By choice? Even my avant-garde writing colleagues would question my sanity, for sure. I began to describe where and what my new home was, searching for words, when Barbara Ross got it. “Oh, you mean you’re moving into a tindominium,” she said, with delight, sharing she had family who were doing the same. I relaxed, realizing I should always trust my writing tribe to understand writers don’t always do things the way normal people do.            Pulling into the driveway, seeing the tindominium for the first time in a long time, I had an  “Oh shit, what have we done?” moment. Nothing had changed since the first day I set my eyes on my new home, a 1995 Sportsman trailer with wheels that had been flat forever. The tindo hadn’t been on the road in decades. But it had been the vacation home for a family that had been kind and affectionate to it. It just had some wear and tear, and it was dated.            The blue couch and chair with huge gaudy flowers on it felt as if they were from a television set for All in the Family. The bedspread on the queen-size bed matched. The carpet was shag, the linoleum dirty beige, and the “woodwork” dark with gold trim.            The stove was so tiny, the double sinks so miniature, I was sure I was in a Barbie kitchen, grateful at least that it wasn’t pink. There was no dishwasher, no washer and dryer. And all of the work we hoped would be completed before we arrived had never happened. I wasn’t surprised.            But the toilet flushed and there was water running from the faucets. We had electricity and a refrigerator that worked. The stove lit.            Neighbors came by to say hello and offer a hand. Our builder promised us we’d have our improvements in no time.            I knew we had made a commitment to a radical change in lifestyle, but this day, more than any, made me wonder, were we nuts? If I closed my eyes, would I be back in a house with modern appliances and a view of the ocean? I couldn’t help but speculating what my Irish lace mother would think of her daughter living in a trailer park, even if it was next to an Audubon sanctuary. Should we have just stayed in St. John in our little cottage?            No. We knew what we had done and what we were going to do. Giving up living space physically meant we were opening our hearts to chance and choice. We were creating room for the adventures we wanted to share and this was just the beginning.            We celebrated our anniversary with a marvelous dinner at Petit Boulangerie Bistro and then sipped brandy before turning in at our new Home. 

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The Adventure Begins- Tales of a Tindomium #4

And we were off to the races, or at least to Logan Airport at 3:00 a.m. on that December morning after what felt more like a nap than the catch-up sleep we were both craving. But we had sold our house the evening before and were flying to St. John to spend an entire winter in a lovely home we had rented. Let the adventures begin.            Although my suitcase with my summer clothes was missing and I was still wearing the clothes I had been in since the day before, I felt grateful for all that we had enjoyed until now and for what I knew would be our future. We didn’t have our favorite aisle seats on the plane and weren’t even near one another, but I felt a unity with Steve as we soldiered toward a new life.            I plopped into my middle seat, expecting that I would fall asleep before takeoff. I was about to apologize to the two women who flanked me. One appeared to be about my age, the other a speck younger. They deserved to be warned I would soon be serenading them with my infamous snoring. I noticed the younger woman in the window seat was vigorously marking up what I recognized were not just legal pleadings, but family law pleadings. I immediately felt sorry for her, guessing we were both trying to escape from the same stressful profession.            “Oh, are you another family law attorney trying to go on vacation?” I said, without thinking.            “No, but if you are, I’d love to ask you a few questions.”    I stifled a groan, knowing I had walked right into a situation I might likely have avoided if I weren’t exhausted and without my filter functioning.            “Shoot,” I said, and started a conversation beginning with questions about a custody battle my British flight mate’s boyfriend was engaged in and moved on to multiple topics so naturally, it was as if we’d known each forever. By the end of the flight I knew I had made my first new friend. A great start to a new life.            I also received my first text message from an island realtor just as we landed. “Showing the house this afternoon at 3:00.” Although we had a year-long lease, our landlady had reserved the right to list her home after the first of the year, any sale subject to our lease. It was a week before Christmas. In my sweaty day-old outfit, I could feel the stress that had been the inspiration for making radical changes to our lives returning to my body.            When the landlady arrived for a stay in her unfinished unit below us in January, we already had the full flavor about what our existence would be like in a house on the market. Her offhand remarks that she wished she had never rented to us, that her realtor had told her it was a huge mistake, and she’d even considered giving us money to leave, confirmed what we already knew. The house, although lovely, was filled with negativity. After thirty years working in the field of conflict resolution as a lawyer and mediator, I knew the best way to deal with conflict is to avoid it.            I took to the Internet, reviving old contacts I had made while initially searching for St. John housing. December is the beginning of high season and I doubted I would find anything in January, but ever the optimist, I reached out. I received an email from a woman telling me she had a unit available, asking would we like to see it that afternoon. Would we ever.            We took the money Landlady One was willing to throw at us and gladly gave it to Landlady Two for a darling studio in Coral Bay on the other, “wilder” side of St. John overlooking Hurricane Hole. Steve’s slogan was, “Just part of the adventure.” Our living room, dubbed a “living porch” because it was room with no screens and hurricane shutters perched high where we shared it with the birds. We were intoxicated with fresh air and the sounds of the Tradewinds blowing through the lush green treetops.            There were a few accommodations we had to make in order to adjust to our tiny quarters. Just six weeks before, we’d left our ten-room home. Now, we had a queen size bed, a large flat screen television, a desk for me to write on, and a corner with the kitchen appliances, counter, cabinets, and sink, all in one room. In the morning when Steve would first wake up, he liked to ask me, “Is our kitchen in our bedroom or our bedroom in our kitchen?”          It didn’t matter because we made living small fun. On the evenings when we wanted to watch the primary returns, we would cook dinner, just as we had in our over-sized gourmet kitchen for thirty-three years, and serve it on trays, eating on our bed. We had been campers, we reminded ourselves, and this was living high.          When the tiny freestanding cottage below us in the same complex became available two months later, we jumped at the chance to grab it. With a twenty foot long covered porch facing a more expansive view of Hurricane Hole surrounded by greens which provided total privacy, we were living with the bananaquits, who frequent the coconut feeder Steve made and watch hawks and frigate birds soar above. Our efficient, tiny U-shaped kitchen is no longer in our bedroom, although our sofa and living area are at the foot of our rattan bed, which is covered with a mosquito net.         Our living space may be small, but our lives are large, filled with new friends, including my friend from the flight down and her charming boyfriend, a former restaurant owner and chef who cooked us an unforgettable meal at his home.        The mysteries I have set on St. John have been well received by its residents, who are constantly providing me with information and new material. Writing about paradise in paradise is sublime.        May came before we knew it and it was time to go meet the tindominium in Wellfleet where there was no shortage of adventures and writing material waiting to greet us.  

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The Excavation

 Tales of a Tindominium #3 Least you think I have been suggesting that the transition from daydreaming about whether to live on an island to realization was a purely cerebral adventure enjoyed over glasses of wine, let me tell you about The Excavation.                       I had no idea that living in one house for thirty-three years would result in a pile of debris the size of a small mountain. I can’t fathom how we managed to fit all of the “stuff” we had accumulated into the house. Now we had to deal with it in order to sell our home, which meant we had to prepare for the realtor-mandated “staging.” Staging means you strip your house to its naked flesh, scantily dress it with a few enticing items from whatever precious decorating trend is in, and create an antiseptic setting where potential buyers can imagine themselves and their stuff living in ecstasy. You can thank HGTV for this obsessive marketing practice, where the line between reality and fantasy blurs for buyers and makes fanatics out of sellers.                         The volume of the stuff was bad enough, but the weight of it was something I had not been prepared for. I thought I was going to do a little digging through, throwing out, and then clean. Instead, Steve and I began peeling through layers of our lives. We had lived next door to my parents, who lived next door to my grandmother and uncle, and had cleaned out their houses after they passed away. Steve’s father had lived with us for a while after we cleaned out his house of forty years. So you can see how we ended up having some of their stuff.                       Our children had lots of stuff when they lived at home and during occasional rounds of the rotating door. Each had passions and interests, all of which require more stuff. When you love dance, music, and art, you have to read about them and display all sorts of reminders of the plays you saw, the performance you were in, the guitar you first played, right?                       Steve and I were no less guilty. We shared a passion for gardening and cooking. Do you know how many tools and toys there are for gardeners? For cooks? Our kitchen had his and her sinks so we could cook together and not get in each other’s way. We each had our favorite pots and pans. I collected cookbooks, many of which I still have been unable to part with.                       The garage and cellar had been off-limits to me by my own choice because the array of tools and gadgets that my husband had acquired, including the ones from his father, was enough to make me want to call the fire marshal.                       Then there was the writing stuff. The writing books. The writing, because you have to print what you write to see it as others will. The tools for writing. Who can live with less than a hundred pens in various colors? Or the rainbow of post-it poised for ideas to be scribbled upon.                       Have I mentioned music? We still had LP’s, on top of a tower of CD’s that threatened to avalanche without warning.                       The word “minimalist” was not in our family vocabulary. I told myself that the stuff surrounding us reflected our interests and zest for life. All true, but now we needed to get rid of the stuff.                       I had read Marie Kondo’s books about joy sparking you through the art of decluttering and others before them, not entirely unaware that the day of The Excavation loomed. Still, what I was unprepared for was the emotional evisceration I experience when faced with objects undeniably part of my family history. My mother’s wedding dress, my father’s formal Navy cap, and epaulettes, lace from my great-grandmother’s slip, postcards my own grandmother had sent me, and photos. Oh so many photos, some mysterious in their own right because I found myself asking over and over, who are these people? None of this stuff sparked joy, but it did trigger other emotions, including pride, sadness, and nostalgia. It was exhausting.                       My first strike had been to see if anyone wanted any of these items, but another lesson I was learning about stuff was everyone has their own and nobody wants yours. Yet it felt disrespectful, almost irreverent to be discarding family memorabilia.                       I tried remembering that getting rid of stuff didn’t mean I was discarding the memories evoked by it. Easier said than done.                       In the end, it was the pressure to get the house on the market during peak season and the parade of moving professionals crawling through our home that ended the paralysis. Donations to organizations who would pick up stuff with their trucks. My car headed to Savers without any prompting by me for a daily drop-off of more stuff. The Metal Man. The Stop Junk Truck. There is an entire industry devoted to getting rid of stuff.                       By the time our home went on the market, we no longer recognized it. Urged by our realtor to be prepared for a showing with little notice, we stopped cooking fish and garlic and shampooed our poor old golden retriever without mercy. We ate take out, packed on pounds, and didn’t know where anything we owned was. Well, not entirely.                       There were the inevitable storage units. Note the plural. One near the home we were selling and one with essential stuff we advanced to the Cape where we would be living six months a year. The excavation had not quite scraped us to the bone.                       We closed on the sale of our home at our kitchen counter one evening in December and were on a plane set to spend the winter in St. John the next morning. A suitcase with my stuff for paradise got lost and I arrived in St. John with the clothes on my back, a husband who had just learned surgery had been successful, and a lightness I hadn’t felt since I was a child. 

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Oh, The Places We'll Go

Tales of a Tindominium #2 Before the dreadful winter of 2015, which I fully lamented yesterday ( https://www.missdemeanors.com/single-post/2016/12/19/Tales-of-a-Tindominium  ), there was a wonderful season of daydreaming about how and where Steve and I might live if we were to let go. Let go of the beautiful house by the sea with its lush gardens and rooms filled with memories. Let go of lawn mowing, weeding, home repairs and replacements (We were no longer striving for “improvements”). Let go of real estate taxes, a mortgage, and a life that we had outgrown.            Just pondering questions like, “Do you think the medical care can possibly be that good in Ecuador?” or “Would we be bored in Belize?” were more fun than we’d been having for a while. While we knew we’d love to spend winters in St. John where we’d vacationed for thirty years, wouldn’t it be wise to explore other destinations?            We’d never been Florida people. The few times we went, we found it too crowded and busy for us, but reading about The Forgotten Coast made us reconsider. This stretch along the west coast of Florida was not part of the development madness the rest of the state experienced. Plenty of state parks and endless beaches prompted us to spend an October weekend there exploring.            The beauty of the Forgotten Coast is unexaggerated, but it’s chillier than we wanted in the winter. Plus, we tried a test we invented to determine whether a location would work for us: Pretend it has been raining for four straight days and your eyeballs hurt from reading. What would you want to do? We quickly came up with three ideas. A movie, a bookstore, or a fabulous recipe to cook. Unfortunately, the first two were difficult to find and the ingredients for our make-believe jambalaya impossible to hunt down. No, we were not meant to be Floridians.            The other question we deliberated, and we learned we really know how to deliberate, was where would we live during the summer months? I’d read a fascinating account about a couple our age who left New Jersey to relocate, not retire to mid-coast Maine. Notice, I’m not inclined to use the word “retirement” because I felt we were reassigning ourselves to new adventures, not popping into rocking chairs waiting to die.            I had a ton of wonderful writing friends who lived in Maine, many between Portland and Belfast. Real estate was reasonable and cultural stimulation plentiful. Maybe St. John in the winter and Maine in the summer? We spent Steve’s birthday weekend in April exploring the area. Steve, who was an Eagle Scout, knows how to explore. Inch by inch. In three days, I’d seen every small town I’d read about, visited bookstores and galleries, and had the best croissants this side of Paris (Moonbat in Belfast). I saw a wide variety of homes ranging from cabins to Victorians to farmhouses, teasing my imagination about what it might be like to join the folk who live Downeast.            In the end we were lured back to beaches, but this time to Outer Cape Cod, which had been our escape all the while we lived in Scituate. On a cold and dreary January Sunday morning, Steve might turn to me and ask if I’d like to take a drive to the Cape, walk the Audubon Sanctuary in Wellfleet where we used to camp, and then go for a bite to eat. The Cape had always managed to buoy my sagging spirits. Steve thought it might be the solution.            We happened upon a tiny Sear Roebuck bungalow in Truro. By now, I had become a member of the tiny house fan club, so the size didn’t bother me and it was near a similar bungalow we spent a week in each summer. One with a screen porch where I would utter, “I could live here.”  The house we were considering needed work, but I loved Truro. I could live there.            It wasn’t meant to be. While we were clearing out the debris from our home in Scituate (a blog post in itself, if not a book), we waited for certain zoning conditions to be met and were constantly disappointed. Finally, with a closing date on Scituate on the horizon, I realized we had no place in Massachusetts to come home to after our first winter in St. John. More importantly, no place to come home to if we needed medical care, which seemed likely since Steve had been given a scary diagnosis.            I panicked as I scrolled through the Outer Cape real estate listings, always starting with the lowest price, of course. Each time I would see the listing for a trailer in Wellfleet for sale for $25,000. There was even an article about it in Cape Cod Curbed, referencing $4 million dollar trailers in Malibu. (https://capecod.curbed.com/2015/8/24/9927554/wellfleet-mobile-home-for-sale).  Steve would laugh and say, “We could do worse, dear.” It was located next to what we believe is the most beautiful Audubon sanctuary in the country. I would bristle and tell him to get more serious.            He did. One day, as the closing date loomed and I was wailing about being homeless, Steve grabbed the car keys and said, “Let’s go look at that mobile home.”            We did. I sat on the dated old sofa on a November afternoon and saw light beaming into the tiny unit. Outside skyscraper tall pine trees, just like the ones we camped under at the Audubon Sanctuary, swayed and danced. My imagination went wild with ideas about what I might do with the challenging blank canvass I was looking at.            “I could do this,” Steve said to me. I knew it was an invitation.            “I think I can too,” I said, accepting, knowing people might think us crazy, but exhilarated by changes we were ready to embrace.            

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Tales of a Tindominium

  How I downsized my dwelling and grew my life. We all talk about it. We are the Baby Boomers. Watergate. Vietnam. Birth Control. Marijuana, Zero Population Growth, Organic. Lots more.            Here we are, children of the sixties, entering our final chapters on the planet. Who knew the day would ever come? And for so many, it passed prematurely.            For those of us still here, forging ahead as some of us like to think toward new adventures, we got to thinking, why do we have all of that stuff? What were we thinking? Where did it come from and more importantly, how can I get rid of it.            The winter of 2015 was the winter from hell. Steve and I had lived in Scituate, Massachusetts, since 1983. I had summered there my whole life. My great grandmother, Catherine, had purchased land on Kenneth Road when her daughter, my grandmother, gave birth to a premature infant who did not have the benefit of an incubator and suffered brain damage.  Catherine built a summer cottage on it, thinking the salt air would be good for her grandbaby. Nanna died in that house at the age of 106 and her baby lived in it until he was 85.            Steve and I had decided Scituate was a good place to raise kids, and it was. We purchased a house two doors down from Nanna. My parents had retired to a cottage in the middle. Our home was less than 200 feet from an ocean that could be gentle or insanely aggressive. The weather was savagely unpredictable. The satellite trucks from local media outlets often parked at the foot of our street poised for the latest coastal shots. We were fortunate never to be directly hit by waves, but we had a clear view of waves splashing over the seawall like geysers. We had quite an adventure and loved almost all of it, but we knew the ride was over.            That snowy frigid winter of 2015 found us huddled in front of the fireplace on our couch in the living room, stirring soup or chili in our kitchen, or buried under feather comforters in our bed. When we opened the front door, often there was an imprint of its panels embedded on four feet of snow. Our 14 year-old outdoor cat had to use a litter box because the snow was too deep to let her do her business. I could go on, but I’ll spare you.            We had been going to St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands for nearly thirty years and you can be sure we didn’t skip 2015. Over the years, we had dreamed of retiring there. We had even put a deposit on a lot in 1987. Unfortunately it was a week before Black Monday.            But our conversations were a little more concrete this trip. No Virgin Island, my first mystery, was being published in August. Set in St. John, I had a contract to write a second. Our connection to St. John felt a little more permanent.            Using three rooms in a ten-room house began to feel ludicrous and wasteful. The gardens we had grown as a younger Steve and Michele now were becoming more of a burden than a joy, and anyone who has known the delight of a garden understands how disheartening that discovery might be. Property taxes were rising. Worse, FEMA threatened to make owning even modest coastal property financially inconceivable with new flood insurance rates.            The good news is that none of this made us feel old or finished. We just weren’t sure if we owned our house or our house owned us. And we wanted to sprout wings. To feel light and unencumbered. To try a new lifestyle. To simplify. To have new adventures. To explore.            We came home from St. John in May after a three-week visit to our favorite rental home where No Virgin Island had been conceived and set and committed to a radical change in our lives. We were giddy with excitement, not having a clue about what the future held.            We went from living in a ten-room Cape Cod by the sea to splitting out time between a cottage on St. John and a tindominium in Wellfleet. What’s a tindominium, you ask?            I’ll share more about that tomorrow.

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YOUR Day on St. John: Come Away With Me

Dear Readers, You have had a rough couple of weeks. The election, the loss of DST, the dreariness of November. Please allow me to transport you for a day to St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands where I set my books, No Virgin Island and Permanent Sunset. I wrote this originally for someone who was too ill to travel but was able to visualize a day in paradise. You awaken in a bed not your own but as comfortable. You stretch, feeling tropical breezes brushing your body. There are no aches, no pains, just anticipation of another day in paradise. The smell of coffee brewing lures you from your bedroom into the kitchen where you grab a mug and pick a croissant or scone and some strawberry jam and head out to the back deck.     The sun is rising over Ram Head spilling light onto the lush mountains and vast ocean. The colors grow so brilliant your eyes wonder can those verdant greens and cool azure blues be real.     You realize you have decisions to make. What will you have for dinner that evening? Lime tarragon swordfish on the grill? Chicken piccata with capers and lemon? Or maybe shrimp scampi? And you need to choose which beach you will go to today. Will you settle in at Francis Bay, where there is sun and shade to pick from and simple but sweet snorkeling? Perhaps a day at Trunk where the sand is so perfectly fine you don’t care how many tourists are sharing it with you. Or will you go to Gibney down that long driveway onto a beach under a glorious canopy of palm trees so quiet, you are sure it must be private?Next, you must decide what book you will bring? Should you crawl into a good Louise Perry or has Lee Child written a new one just for you?     You realize you cannot possibly make these decisions without first taking a dip in the pool. You slid out of your sarong and pause at the edge of the pool, feeling the warmth of the tropical sun slide down the back of your body, filling your spine with a growing glow that spreads throughout every cell. You look up at the cloudless cornflower blue sky and dunk into the warm water, moving slowly with ease.     Now you are ready to make those decisions and go. Soon you are at the beach of your choice, with your book open on your lap as you sit in the world’s most comfortable beach chair, occasionally running the sugar-fine white sand through your toes. You dip into the silky turquoise water at your will, floating in the warmth of water so clean you can see your toes and the little fish that want to swim with you.     By the end of the day, you’re ready to toast the setting sun on the back deck overlooking St. Thomas with its lights twinkling like a Christmas tree and Puerto Rico in the distance. Your raspberry Stoli lemonade slides down your throat while you munch on stuffed mushrooms and ciabetta dipped in aoli.     Dinner over candlelight is divine. Good company, the glow of a little sunburn with a touch of red wine makes the food even better.     You watch a little silly local television while you nibble at a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s Bourbon Browned Butter ice cream and yawn. You grab that book you are so into and return to your fluffy bed with pillows just like the ones at home. You crawl in, listening to the tree frogs lullaby you. You need to get some sleep.     You get to do this all over again tomorrow.   

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TOOLS OF THE TRADE

 I have a confession to make. I love school/office supplies. While other women flock to Sephora enraptured by the latest eyeliner from Bobbi Brown, I am pacing up and down the aisles of Staples checking out the latest notebooks and highlighters. I ponder whether my post-its should be lined or not in the same fashion other people decide what kind of car to buy.            What’s with that, you might ask. Indeed, I have asked that same question many times. I connect it to my love of writing. These are the tools of the trade. And for me, the ultimate tool is the fountain pen.            When I attended a Catholic grammar school, the nuns would not let us write with anything but a fountain pen. Ballpoint pens were considered suspect and vulgar.  Blue ink was a must, although secretly I would purchase a bottle of peacock blue ink, which was the color of the Caribbean. I would use it covertly to write notes to my classmates, hoping traces of it would not be visible when I switched to traditional blue.         We practiced the Palmer method daily until the muscles in our forearms pleaded for mercy. Often my clothes became stained with ink because it was more common then to fill your fountain pen from a bottle of ink. Modern day cartridges were regarded with disdain.        Over the years, I moved on to other kinds of pens. In law school, I became partial to the Papermate “Jotter” ballpoint pen. It wrote smoothly and fit nicely into my hand. I protected it zealously, carrying a cheap Bic pen in case anyone wanted to borrow a pen. No one was going to get his or her hands on my Jotter.       Sometimes I missed my fountain pen, but I thought using one would only complicate my busy life as a lawyer. When I discovered the Uniball Gel Impact  Roller with its bold 1mm line, I was in heaven. This baby writes as smooth as jelly sliding over peanut butter. Clients would admire the Uniball while signing documents. I gave a fair number away.       But I still missed the fountain pens from youth. There is something elegant about writing with a fountain pen. It says “I want my words to be worthy of this noble instrument.” A few years ago while attending a writing seminar in Boston, I strolled into a Levenger store (sadly no longer there) during the lunch break. There it was. A fountain pen with my name on it. I bought it, returning to the workshop, poised to write notes with my long lost friend.        The feel of this pen in my hand, the sensation of the ink flowing across the page, is soothing to me. It makes writing as much as a physical act as a cerebral one. While not practical for drafting lengthy manuscripts,  at least not for me, note taking and journaling with my trusty fountain pen bring me great pleasure, I’m almost embarrassed to admit. But for me, it’s about revering an object that connects what’s in my head to the page.Do you connect your passion for something to an object or supplies that make it happen? Is anyone else out there finding more bliss in Staples than Sephora?

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NANOWRIMO DEFEATS THE DEADLY DUO

Fear. I could probably write a thousand blogs about it. I have written a few. This is the newest installment. Call this one, ”The Terror of Trying Something New.”            Perfect.  The need to do something perfectly feeds and fuels fear. Fear and Perfection: The Deadly Duo for a writer.            I have written six entire novels, two of which have been published, I’m grateful to share. I think I have found my voice, but I’m not sure if that hasn’t made me think I am limited in some way in what I write.            First, I am a mystery writer, born from a lifetime of reading and loving mysteries. I enjoy many kinds of mysteries, including traditional, police procedural, domestic suspense, and cozies. I love it when a mystery takes me to a new location or returns me to a beloved one.  Transplant me back into time and I’m  there with the protagonist into challenges of the era.  But I wondered, could I possibly write in one of the unchartered venues or subgenres?  Would the Deadly Duo prevent me from even trying?            Enter NANOWRIMO, the annual November challenge to writers to write a 50,000- word novel during the month of November. I’d tried once before,  but given up when I realized 50,000 words in 30 days does not allow you to be perfect.  For reasons shared only with my therapist and well beyond the limitations of this blog, I need to be perfect.            But the gentle side of living past the age of 60 has shown me I can try anything if I give up on the notion I  must be perfect, so even though November was scheduled to be the month from hell for me, I said, why not?            Since I was already giving myself the option of being humanly imperfect,  the relief I felt was liberating. Hell, if it doesn’t have to be perfect, I could try anything.  I chose a protagonist who was far younger than I am comfortable writing. Her past suggested her story would fit the suspense, if not thriller, subgenre.  The location was urban, not island or small town.  It was exhilarating to dabble in previously unchartered choices that risked imperfection. The more daring I became, the more excited I got, and the less frightened of failure.  After all, it’s only NANOWRIMO, right?            When I realized early on that having cataract surgery on both eyes in the same month might impact my word count, I was tempted to say, I’ll never get the 50,00 word count and wished I could count the number of characters or letters I had written. I was ready to quit.  But my protagonist,  Olivia, screamed at me and said, “What? You’re going to leave us on the page in this mess?”            I started writing plot points and ideas on brightly colored post-its and stuck them on a board so I wouldn’t lose the thoughts that were coming to me so rapidly I was afraid they would be gone if I couldn’t write them on the page. I’d never done this before, although many of my talented writing colleagues use this technique.  Soon the board was nearly filled with fluorescent stickies where I had spilled my brain. I was on fire. And if a particular idea didn’t work, wasn’t perfect enough for my unrealistic self-established standard, I could take it down, crush it in my hand and toss it into the wastebasket.  A revolutionary act for a perfectionist. I had declared war on the Deadly Duo.            Will I finish in time to meet the 50,000-word count by the deadline.? I honestly don’t know. I’m trying, but hey, I’m not perfect. Will I finish this book.  Hell, yes.  I’m on fire and the Deadly Duo won’t  stand in my way, thanks to NANOWRIMO. And guess what. I’m having fun not being perfect.            Does the Deadly Duo affect your writing or reaching other goals?  What is NANOWRIMO teaching you?  

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