Voices of the Valley: First Press

Tooting one’s own horn means that an individual is bragging about an accomplishment without waiting to be honored by others. Toot! Toot! Toot! Three of my short stories were published in Voices of the Valley: First Press , the first anthology of California Writers Club Tri-Valley Branch.

“So what?” you ask with a shoulder shrug and add the familiar cliche “Piece of cake. You’re the president. The anthology committee wouldn’t dare touch your submissions.”

I’m pleased to say that being president didn’t give me a free pass or place a halo over my head. The selection process was nondiscriminatory—no mercy for me. That editing equality gives me the right to….

TOOT! Mosaic
TOOT! Search and Rescue
TOOT! Heritage Paradox

TOOT! TOOT! TOOT!

I’m editing Escape, one of my NaNoWriMo draft novels. The book begins with a tight-knit genealogy group called Ghost Chasers (GCs) meeting for Friday lunch, so Fridays are important in my manuscript. Current writing rules insist that I minimize repetitious words in a single paragraph (notice the interchange of “novel” and “manuscript”) or close proximity where the reader will register the duplication. To omit one of those Fridays I searched for a substitute for Friday. What? Friday is Friday. How else can I say it?

Weighing a decision of whether GCs will meet today on the thirteenth, I researched superstition and fears associated with that day to see if true-to-life Texans would dare leave home. Frigga is the prefix in friggatriskaidekaphobia, fear of Friday the 13th. Hooray! Frigga means Friday. Who knew?

Since there are three F-13s in 2012—January (today), April and July—I’ll be kind to my superstitious Texans by backpedaling the novel to 2011 where a reluctant GC disappears on the single Friday the 13th that year.

December 31, 2011. Where did the year go? For me, a writer, easy answers. Begin with the word “online” and add (in alpha order) blogs, critiques, emails, research, social media, and writing instructions. More? Wipe out the entire month of November with NaNoWriMo 50,000-word first draft novel contest (still editing 2008 entry). All took a sizeable bite out of my 2011 calendar. Thinking about it, the computer has engulfed my calendar for several years.

Step a few feet away from my electronic chain and watch me shred unpublished (as in “rejected”) contest entries. Ride with me when I race to an office supply store to buy more printer cartridges. See me skip lunch, gobble chocolate and sip coffee and tea to write and revise book outlines, proposals and query letters to hook a publisher. Add voice mail (do writers ever answer their phones?), volunteering and face-to-face (F2F) and live meetings with other writers. I squeeze in time for grocery shopping, personal grooming (skip if online all day); occasional cooking and house cleaning; paying bills/balancing checkbook; pumping gas on the way to a writer’s event; and rounding out my day making notes about must-do’s for tomorrow. Add falling into bed at midnight with visions of sassy novel characters behaving in uncharacteristic ways. My day is over…unless my sleep is interrupted by one of my secondary characters usurping the protagonist’s role.

Tomorrow, January 1, 2012 will be different. Not so. Circle the wagons! Dig a foxhole. Hide under the bed. I’ll try whatever works to protect me from publishing “experts” who demand I rise at the crack of dawn to spend more time on social media; revise my finished manuscripts at least seven times before handing off to a professional editor; polish my query letters, outlines and book proposals to grab the publisher’s attention. Why? To complete the circuit one more time before exiting mainstream websites and entering self-publishing.

To writers everywhere,

“Non-selected entrants” caught my eye on a contest website. Reading the full article I realized that non-selected equaled rejected. This contest promoter chose a nondiscriminatory term to lessen the pain. The contest administrator or judge assumes the unpublished entrant will be less offended by rejection masquerading as non-selection. Does that lighten the blow of the falling hammer on the road of hopeful thoughts? From “maybe the publisher received too many entries in my genre,” to maybe this or maybe that, the truth emerges from the candy-coated term. Even when rejection is dipped in rich dark chocolate, it is bitter.

After reading this middle-of-the-road stance by the contest host, I’m glad I didn’t submit. Not that I fear non-selection. I don’t want to be published by a promoter afraid of the big bad wolf of rejection.

I’m a humor writer. At least I include a light touch of hidden humor in my blog posts. Not today. Today I am a consumer safety advocate a/k/a troublemaker for Target.

The glossy Target ad in my residential mailbox this week features a young boy sticking his tongue to a frozen flagpole. His blue knit cap and red scarf are dusted with a snow-look. His dark eyes look toward the camera, not the pictured reward—steaming hot Swiss Miss Milk Chocolate with as much calcium an 8-oz glass of milk at the sale price of $1.19. In cold-weather areas, the hot chocolate may be delayed while he waits for emergency paramedics from the local fire department.

So, you say, how does this make me a consumer advocate? Easy, I say. I didn’t toss the ad. I called Con-Agra, the parent company of Swiss Miss, and questioned whether this conglomerate had authorized the Target advertisement. Not an anonymous complaint. A real let-me-know-the-answer inquiry complete with name and email address. So far, so good.

I called my local Target because a freeze is predicted for the San Francisco East Bay (can you believe that?). The manager refused (yes, refused) to accept my call. According to his anonymous spokesperson, this ad is on TV so there can’t be a problem!

Warning: Don’t try this at home (or anywhere else) was not on the ad. In the absence of that warning, and after you’ve seen A Christmas Story, send your emergency bills to Target with a copy to Con-Agra. Don’t forget to include your receipt for Swiss Miss hot chocolate.

I frequent the Livermore Civic Center Library. My modus operandi is an open book (pun intended). I search the library website and reserve a selection. An email notice confirms availability. I drive to the library, print-out in hand, and drag my heavy Friends of the Library reusable bag to the book return area. I deposit books in the manual book drop next to the out-of-order automatic gobbler. After multiple ka-thud sounds (personalized word) from books falling into a container behind the wall, I tuck the empty bag under my arm and walk to the holding room. Voila! My book awaits me on the shelf, in alpha order by my last name.

Why can’t I stroll to automatic checkout with that single book in my hand? Clue #1. I have to pass through displays featuring dozens of new books in the center aisle. If that temptation doesn’t capture my interest, I can’t resist sauntering to the mystery section, seeking out favorite authors. Clue #2: If an author writes different genres under the same name, all books are in the fiction alpha listing, not in mysteries section. I trot to C for Catherine Coulter or G for John Grisham.

Finished, I step to automatic checkout, scan my keychain library card and special barcodes on the face of the books, pocket the receipt, and shove the books into the bag. I’m done, right? Not yet. Clue #2. From checkout, I follow the hall around to the Friends of the Library used book store near the front. Floor to ceiling, something for everybody, or so they say. I begin with mystery authors, alpha order, then peer at books for interesting titles. I fork over a couple of bucks for two nearly-new novels.

On the drive home savoring a quet evening reading, Clue #3 surprises me: I have to review chapters from my novelist critique group submissions. I lug the heavy bag inside, separate mine from theirs, and head for my computer. I will read tomorrow. End of mystery.

November 22, 1963 headlines screamed that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, thirty-fifth president of the United States had been assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. He was fatally shot while riding in a motorcade accompanied by his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie.

I stood, riveted to the spot in the second floor of Central Bank, Monroe, Louisiana where a coworker brought this news. Today, November 22, 2011 forty-eight years later, as I sit at my computer in the San Francisco East Bay, I’m saddened by the lack of headlines of the anniversary of this tragic event that rocked the twentieth century. I’m even more astonished that United Press International (UPI) added an extra year to Kennedy’s life with 1917-1964.

As Occupy protesters sit-in garner today’s news headlines, forgotten are these final words from John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech, January 21, 1961:

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

Perhaps November 22, 2013, the fiftieth anniversary, will honor this orator for his appropriate words.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2011/11/22/UPI-Archives-JFKs-obituary/PC-9681321976840/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0448123/bio

I crossed the NaNo 50,000-word finish line on November 15—halfway day. Sore fingers and brain dead, that push took the wind out of my sails. A cliché, I know, but it’s the best way to describe the limbo (or could it be purgatory?) where I abandoned my characters.

Retired Judge Jeremiah Willoughby waits for me to form the words that let Taylor, his biological daughter, know that his home, the Rocking-W Ranch, has sold to an investor.

Tony Fernando, jewelry store owner in Old Town Scottsdale, Arizona waits for me to clear him as the Number One (Numero Uno) suspect.

Marc Jameson, Maricopa County Sheriff, stands by while Taylor Madrid, private investigator, former MCSO detective and good girl, waits for me to click keys pointing to the bad guy.

Tom Longshore, grandfather of Angela, his deceased daughter’s child, stands in the Sacramento, California courthouse. He waits for me to add the keystrokes that open sealed adoption records for him to find Angela who is destined to die.

While my characters wait, I sip tea and read a mystery novel.

November 11 is a well-recognized United States holiday to remember military veterans. In the United Kingdom, today is called Remembrance Day. This Veteran’s Day and Remembrance Day will be remembered, revered, perhaps feared until it rolls around again in the next century. What makes this day more significant than any triple-number day?

Today is a binary day 11/11/11. Twice on this Friday, morning and evening, a once-in-a-century event will occur at eleven minutes and eleven seconds after 11:00 a.m. (11.11.11 on 11.11.11). At that moment, the time and date will be a perfect same-numbered palindrome. That is, in written form it will read the same backward and forwards.

History records a cataclysmic weather event in the U.S. on November 11, 1911 with record high and lows on that date, temperatures dropping from the mid-seventies to below zero within hours.

This morning, couples will wed at 11.11.11. Others will climb a mountain or seal a business deal. Me? My fingers will be clicking computer keys, sealing an eleventh keystroke, eleventh word, eleventh sentence, eleventh paragraph, or eleventh page to A Time to Die, a mystery I’m writing for National November Writing Month. I’ll give it a double chance, morning and evening. Maybe inspiration will fall at that particular moment this evening not only to cross the 50,000 word finish line early, but to propel this first draft into an award-winning novel.

Oh well, can’t blame me for capitalizing on the moment.

On a more somber note, click HERE to see Armistice Day around the world on Armistice Day 11/11/11