Stranger Than Fiction

The first clue that I was in for an interesting afternoon came in the form of a sci-fi enthusiast who stopped by my table to offer a blow-by-blow account of a dragon warfare scene from a favorite novel.

I hoped the encounter would prove to be an isolated event in an otherwise productive afternoon of book promotion at Barnes and Noble, but those hopes were dashed in the form of a spindly, newbie writer of epic poems in search of a personal, on-the-spot reading and appraisal of said work.

After what I hoped was a gentle letdown in the form of an explanation that my presence on the premises was actually a work-related venture involving my own written prose, I settled in for a chat with Rain Man’s long lost twin brother. The conversation circled around a loop of instructions he was giving himself concerning what he referred to as “appropriate behavior.”

The conversation underscored why Dustin Hoffman’s deserved his Oscar, and why my BA in Psychology didn’t take. I attempted light and witty banter, before I remembered that savants are literal folk, not prone to levity. I helplessly offered the man a bookmark, actually finding myself wishing the poet would return.

Throughout the course of the afternoon, it became apparent that I need to add "Where's the restroom?" to my FAQ list. I also need to take note of the Barnes and Noble shelving policies, so I can better direct patrons to the works of other authors, although I was able to loan my book-signing pen to a gentleman wishing to jot down the name of an author he wanted to research later, at home.

Judging from the high-pitched incomprehensible chant I witnessed a woman delivering to the inside of a recently purchased book (not one of mine), I'd have to say that bizarre behavior wasn't limited to my little display table. An ill-wrapped sarong and cowboy-boot combo sported by one shopper indicated layers of complexity that transcend verbal interaction.

Perhaps the most shocking event of the afternoon was that I somehow managed to sell some books. The new characters I met along the way were simply a bonus.

The difference between lemon juice and lemonade

As I was heading out the door to give a book talk at the Gloucester Public Library yesterday, I found myself anticipating the Interesting Question. The Q and A segment invariably consists of a standard stable of stock questions that keep the rhythm, kind of like the drum line in a concert situation. But at every event, there’s always some off-beat query that calls for a bit of improv.

These are the questions that keep things fresh and fun, because, let’s face it, as relevant as it may be to discuss the origins of my literary pursuits (an early surviving work, The Happy Tree, dates back to 1977) and where I get my ideas (um, doesn’t everybody find 6 or 8 things utterly hilarious, significant or depressing before they get out of bed in the morning?) it’s much more fun to tackle questions like the one from the aspiring writer who wanted to know how many times his submissions could be rejected, as though there’s some kind of cap on the number of people who can dislike your work. (Wouldn’t that be great, if there were some sort of Writer’s Guarantee Program? Muster up the resilience to send something off, say, 30 or 40 times and then—bam! You’re a writer!)

Then there was the guy who wanted a breakdown of the “rules” governing exactly how mean or benevolent you’re allowed to make your characters.

I love that stuff.

Yesterday the question that caught me off-guard wasn’t strange or quirky, but it made me think. A young woman asked what gave me the confidence to think I could write in the first place.

Even though I gave her an honest answer involving some combination of feeling pretty in touch with the teen culture and all the encouragement I received from my supportive husband, I realized later that the question goes a lot deeper, because it really asks me to evaluate what kind of person I am.

See, I always thought of myself as someone who was up for a challenge. But I recently found myself wondering if that image is just a snapshot of Ideal Me, who we’ve already established as radically different from Actual Me. Because it seems Actual Me has a tendency to curl up into the fetal position at the first sign of adversity, a fact was underscored by a visit to the herbalist a couple weeks ago. During the course of the visit, Herbalist J suggested that the transient stomach aches that have starred in this summer’s medical melodrama could be gluten intolerance.

I received the suggestion with the enthusiasm of a six-year-old who’s just been taken off lollipops.

See, I don’t eat red meat. In fact, I don’t eat white meat, either, with the exception of fresh chicken breast cooked just so. I don’t like fish or seafood. Vegetables are good, but nothing too exotic, like artichokes or avacados. I like beans, but they make my stomach hurt.

Minus bread and pasta, I’ve got nothing.

At the mere suggestion of a gluten-free lifestyle, I envisioned an existence of corn meal and fritters. I was haunted by memories of mass cornbread baking late-seventies, when my mother filled little corn-ear shaped pans with a thick batter that baked into hard little corn-ear bricks. My dad, known for his indiscriminate ability to eat anything, made a valiant attempt to stomach the little cakes before taking them to work with a view toward eliminating a rogue band of mice. They didn’t take the bait.

So I went home and rebelled, gorging on wheat matter of all kinds. And I got a stomach ache.

So I decided to take my mind off things by curling up with the newspaper. An article outlining the progress of a major dig underway in Jamestown caught my eye. Turns out, they’re digging up a lot of teeth there these days. So they interviewed one of the archeologists to find out why. Here’s what he had to say:

“When the English settlers switched from their traditional wheat-based diet to a diet based on Indian corn, all the sugar in the corn led to what some of us call ‘Virginia mouth.’ They really suffered a noticeable decline in their dental health.”

Who knew? I altered my mental picture to reflect this new information: now I’ve got myself working through a bag of Fritos with a single blackened tooth, onward to the frame where I’m left gumming my way through a pan of cornbread.

Then I made a foray on to the information superhighway, and found a fellow blogger who goes by Gluten-Free Girl. I access her page, expecting nothing more than photos of a skeletal frame surrounded by corn husks and false teeth.

Instead, I’m greeted by pictures of plates of food and bouncy little stories featuring food as the protagonist. I figure I’ve clicked on the wrong blog mistake, but I read on to discover that it’s all for real. Every post is a celebration over some new perfected recipe or a fabulous dish or new restaurant she’s discovered.

Turns out this girl is one of those elusive famous bloggers we’ve all heard so much about. She also has a nice book contract and a new marriage to a chef who cooks gluten-free. I read and read for days, to the neglect of my own blog, fascinated by the fact that this woman’s career, even her life was jumpstarted by the very events I from which I’m seeking cover.

Isn’t it amazing that victims and adventurers can emerge from the same events?

Drip Dry

“I forgot my pants,” I say to my sister this morning as we’re heading into town. She’d just announced to my niece and nephew in an unnaturally chipper tone that we were only “5 minutes behind schedule today,” so I didn’t give her offer to turn around much weight.

I was wearing a pair of khaki Bermudas with a chocolate brown shirt. Classic, yet casual. Very me. Appropriate for shuttling coffee to my sister’s office and reading from the computer textbook I’m supposed to be studying for the class I’m missing this week—but definitely not what to wear when returning to your alma mater to deliver an assembly, which is what I was asked to do this afternoon.

From the get-go, clothes--shirts in particular--have been an issue on this trip.

T-24 hours before my train departed, the red shirt I planned to wear to the Beaver Library event went missing. I don’t do well with missing. It’s an issue with deep roots—as a kid, I was always on the hunt for a missing Barbie shoe, or getting my head stuck between the banisters in pursuit of a stray marble.

We turned the house upside down into the wee hours before my departure, finding the red shirt in a remote outpost with mere seconds to spare.

After the unfortunate sweat-through before yesterday’s radio interview, the red shirt was deployed early on an emergency basis.

Alone at my parents’ house after the interview, I was forced to toss the shirt out the front door, aiming for a sunny patch of sidewalk in a frantic attempt to dry it.

By this morning, clean shirts were slim pickings. I stuffed the sweaty ones in my backpack, hoping to throw them in the washer at my parents’ house before I left to conduct assemblies at the middle school. The clock was ticking on the getting the must-have red top ready for a fresh soaking tonight.

But I forgot. Things here have taken on a bit of the feel of the American Idol scenes when the finalists visit their hometowns before the finale show. A reporter appeared at the school assembly. More radio cropped up—OK,OK—this time it WAS at my dad’s station—the illusion of a “major book tour” is beginning to take a toll on my wardrobe. Remember, I gave up a percentage of my luggage space for the five year old Africa memorabilia that my sister claims to have never seen.

“I know, let’s trade clothes at lunch,” my sister said.

There were so many reasons the red shirt should have just been waved aloft as a flag at this point.

Wednesday began with a controversy over a janitorial smock that my sister won’t let me tell you about. She’s reading the blog these days, and freely admits the clothing swap was a flagrant ploy to insert herself into the plot.

The problem is, my sister’s wardrobe is cut from different cloth than mine. She’s skirt-and-blouse, I’m jeans and leather. This isn’t a bad thing—it’s just the way it is. I know this. You probably get it, too. But even as I write this, my sister is waving a Mexican skirt around the kitchen in testimony to her “fun” wardrobe.

There wasn’t anything wrong with what she was wearing—a chocolate brown skirt with a rope tie and a khaki-colored striped shirt. Some would say it was the reciprocal of my outfit.

But for reasons no one can pin-point, I looked like a frumpy, oversized school marm in her clothes.

And my sister? The poor thing grabbed the blow dryer and started fanning her pits as soon as she donned my chocolate shirt.

After the assembly we did a hasty load of wash.

“Aunt Cindy, how many times have you changed today,” my nephew asks on the way to the Beaver Library.

I counted four, including the black top I had on then.

We almost lost my sister at the Q + A.

A hand from the audience.

“So, with writing, how much is inspiration and how much is perspiration?”

Duck Umbrella

So this morning when I got up, I was pretty calm about my radio interview--until breakfast where, my sister—familiar with the interviewing style of the broadcaster I’d be chatting with—began to throw out potential questions.

He might say such-and-such, she’d say, “what would you say to that?”

I took it as a bad sign when she frowned and shook her head frantically.

I became rattled and printed out my downloadable press kit to take along as my own personal 911 system. I figured, worse come to worse, I’d just start reading and hit on something.

I sweated through my original outfit, suddenly quite happy that this wasn’t TV.

My dad picked me up and we went for coffee. “So, Cindy”, he said, Broadcaster L might say such-and-such. “What would you say to that?”

I began to say things like blah-blah-mumble-blah. My 911 notes were in the car, and I began to question if I could read anymore, anyway.

Back in the car, my dad behind the wheel, I turned to the backseat and bean rifling through bags, searching for a pen to write down some good material my dad threw out in the coffee shop.
I frantically grabbed a pen from the bag under my mom’s duck head umbrella. As later events would reveal, this was an important point to note. My mom’s relationship with ducks is similar to the one the Press Enterprise reports I have with tigers—she’s frequently sighted with random duck memorabilia.

In the lobby of the radio station I realize I still have my iced coffee, which was now sweating worse than I was. I decided it might be poor form to bring the dripping beverage into the studio.
I went back to the car, deposited the drink, and went back to the lobby. A few minutes later, a staffer came through the door, carrying an object to the receptionist’s desk for examination. “It was in my car,” she said.

“Is it cold?” the receptionist asked, puzzled.

“Yes….must be some sort of joke…”

They murmured at the desk even as a realization swelled within.

“It was me!” I blurted, in the split second before she waved the half-empty, dripping beverage aloft. In my haste, I’d stashed my cup in the wrong taupe sedan.

My own perspiration keeping pace with the cup, I was ushered into the studio…and had a wonderful time.

Broadcaster L didn’t ask anything I wasn’t prepared to answer. I felt confident, happy…relaxed.

It wasn’t worth the sweat.

What I should have been worrying about was the fact that I evidently have no idea what my father’s car actually looks like.

I borrowed it later to get a salad from the grocery store. I returned to the parking lot only to realize that I had no idea which car I drove there.

Now, if this were one of my stories, I’d just go for it. My character would confidently toss her salad into a car and drive off, only to be pulled over for grand theft auto in rush hour--but in real life, I was stymied.

Until I remembered the duck umbrella.

With that great icon to guide me, I quickly identified my father’s vehicle and drove off, unpursued.

Which only goes to show that having a personal mascot isn’t a bad idea. I think I’m going to go with this tiger thing after all.

Africa True and False

So my sister doesn’t read my blog. I know this because after the incident with the screaming headline article, she took to complaining about my Africa trip.

“I didn’t know your clothes were shredded by lions, Sister!” she exclaimed “How is it that I have to read in the paper that your clothes were shredded by lions?”

Now, I am sure I told her all about Africa—about the bossy team leader who inspired my “Paige” character in my YA novel Drink the Rain, about the sleepless nights, the lack of food, and most certainly the lions. It’s all posted on the book’s myspace page, not to mention the publisher’s website. The journalist at the Press Enterprise had no problem finding out. But no. My sister says, “We just don’t know much about what happened in Africa. Nanee and I say it all the time. Just what we read in the book—and who knows what of that is real.”

So here I am, the night before this major book tour, and I’m reorganizing the Africa pictures into this tiny photo album because I’m going on the train and there’s a weight and size limit for the baggage. I’m not even packed, but I’m sitting there, dutifully filing photos into the album for over an hour. Then I have pull my lion-shredded sweatshirt out of storage and find room for that in my baggage—all this at the expense of my black journalism portfolio that I had to leave behind. It wouldn’t fit.

I write this to you from the train. I will post pictures from the road provided I make it. We just passed an unsettling pile of wrecked railway cars on the right hand side of the tracks. Hopefully, my sister will read about this here after my safe arrival, but if I don’t make it, I'm sure the Press Enterprise will dig up the info and print it alongside AUTHOR DERAILS, FAILS TO TALK AT THE THOMAS BEAVER LIBRARY.

At the Beaver Without My Tiger

So my sister called me yesterday and she says there’s this big write up about me in her hometown paper—screaming headlines, color photo, the works.

I had not idea there was an article being written, and, secretly, I’ll tell you that I liked the idea of journalists taking the time to write about me of their own volition. It’s a career first—kind of made me feel like a celebrity author—especially because of the fact that I’m off on a book tour.

Now before you start thinking “wow, selling a whole 6 books last weekend at that Girl Scout Fest must have gone to her head”, I guess it’s time I’m up front about the facts. The entirety of this book tour is playing out in the town I lived in when I graduated high school, where my parents have lived for 20-odd years and my Dad works at a radio station.

This is a pretty small place, and a local-girl-made-good story plays well—thus the screaming headlines, the fanfare at the local library and the radio talk show (although I might add that the talk show is NOT on my dad’s radio station, thank you. Just one of his friends.)

But, in the spirit of things, I’m still treating this with the utmost of professionalism. That’s why I suggested to my husband that we update the company website last week. Now, in his defense, the site is pretty current. All the major bases were covered. I read this great marketing book (Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul—great read, I highly recommend it.) and I actually followed the chapter on building your online press kit pretty faithfully.

Except for the part about getting some professional headshots.

No, I’m afraid the only picture on our website is of me, heading out my front door with a bag slung over my shoulder at a jaunty angle—with Tony the Tiger poking his head out the top.

Now at the time of the photo, I was working on a long-abandoned non-fiction project in which my childhood Tony—complete with Labrador attacked, surgically altered face-- was a key player.

This (being of course the only available photo) was the one the editors chose to run alongside the screaming headlines.

My sister was quick to point of the difficulties with this. There just no context, Sister, she said. You’re coming with books about summer camp, and Africa, and teen angst. Next to the headline AUTHOR TO SPEAK AT THOMAS BEAVER LIBRARY it just looks like you’re heading out the door to catch the train with your sleeping toy.

So I call my husband—“you know how you said that working on our website wasn’t a priority because there was only one hit all week?”

“Sure.”

“Well guess what?”