Author Interview: Melody Carlson, author of Let Them Eat Fruitcake!

Melody Carlson's Let Them Eat Fruitcake! is set during the weeks after Thanksgiving and leading up to Christmas. It's a realistic view of family and friends dealing with real life, love and disappointment in the midst of all the expectations that come up during the holiday season.

Here's a glimpse of Carlson's writing journey.




What got you started along The Writing Road?

Since I was a small child, I've always loved "story." Whether picture books, plays, daydreams, or a storyteller, I was captivated. As soon as I was able to write I began creating "stories" of my own. And all through school I continued to write and was often told by teachers that I was a "good writer." Of course, I thought they said that to everyone. And I didn't take my writing seriously. Sometimes when things come easily to us we take them for granted and don't perceive those abilities as real gifts. It took me a long time to realize I really was a writer. In my mid- thirties, I finally hit the place where I felt driven to write--like if I didn't start writing seriously I might explode or implode or something messy. I had no specific plan, but soon joined a critique group, read some books, attended a conference and it wasn't long before I sold my first short story.



Who has helped you along The Writing Road?

Early in my life, I had the same reading teacher (Mr. Lamb) three years in a row. He taught me to love good literature and to appreciate poetry. Later on, when I got serious about writing, my critique group was enormously helpful. I'm sure I learned more about writing from them than anyone. Then I worked in publishing for a few years and learned some more valuable lessons about what's involved in the making of books.

What's next for you along The Writing Road?

As always, I've got a pretty packed writing schedule--a new YA series to begin as well as a new adult series that I can't wait to start, some stand-alone YA books and Christmas novellas. I'm also getting more involved with a producer in Hollywood who's taken serious interest in getting some of my books to TV and film. Although it's a long shot, it's interesting and fun, not to mention educational.

**Blog Tour Contest**

Leave a comment on this post or any other post in the tour by 5pm CST on November 21, and you'll be entered into a drawing for a $25 gift certificate to the Collin Street Bakery. The Collin Street Bakery is world-famous for its - you guessed it - fruitcake and will deliver your baked goods almost anywhere in the world. You can enter multiple times by commenting on more than one post (but only one comment per post will be counted).

Finding Markets and Writer’s Guidelines

"To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author."—Charles Caleb Colton

By Scoti Springfield Domeij

Feeling frustrated because you cannot find the right market to publish your writing? Below you will find a list of online databases listing writing markets and links to writer's guidelines. Some also include job listings.

AboutFreelanceWriting.com: Includes links to freelance writing jobs.

Bella Online: The Voice of Women: Links to 111 other websites with links to writing markets.

Forwriters.com: Scroll down their list of markets.

FreelanceWriting.com: Includes 898 writer's guidelines for paying magazine markets in their database.

Funds For Writers: Includes a variety of newsletters listing paying markets.

JacketFlap: Includes more than 20,000 children's book publishers.

Magazines in the Yahoo Directory: Lists magazines by subject. It links to the magazine's website. You'll have to search the website to find their writing guidelines.

OrganizedWriter.com: Search this database by category or alphabetically.

Sunoasis Jobs: Provides a resource base for those looking for writers, editors, and copywriters.

Wooden Horse Publishing: Includes over 2,000 print magazines in their media directory. It's fee based. You can check it out for 24 hours for $1.99.

Worldwide Freelance: Publishes two newsletters that contain international writing markets on a weekly basis.

WritersCrossing.com: Offers a weekly selection of paying markets in a free newsletter.

Writer's Guidelines Database: Browse by category, alphabetically or key word search of their database. It provides links to writing guidelines.

Writer's Market: The Writer's Market book is published each year and has hundreds of updated listings for magazine markets. You can also subscribe to the online database for a fee.

Writing for Dollars: Includes a guidelines database listing 848 writing markets.

WritersWeekly.com: Publishes paying markets and jobs each week.

I Love to Write Day: November 15

Anybody out there ever particpated in I Love to Write Day, the world's largest party for writers?

November 15th is the 7th annual I Love to Write Day, which was founded in 2002 by author John Riddle. Riddle's goal for I Love to Write Day is for people of all ages to spend time writing--a poem, a love letter, a greeting card, an essay, a short story, starting or finishing a novel. Besides inviting individuals to be part of the celebration, Riddle hopes to have 20,000 schools involved.

You can help celebrate I Love to Write Day by signing up for the 2008 event. Register by sending an e-mail to ilovetowriteday@ilovetowriteday.org Include your name, hometown, occupation, and tell how you learned about I Love To Write Day.

Writing Your Thanks

One of my children has recently been diagnosed with a serious disease, and I’m still learning how it will affect his life. For one thing: Medical insurance is a necessity. During the next two months, he’ll take an unbelievably expensive medication. In fact, a one month supply costs more than the value of his car. Our insurance pays over $4,000, but the co-pay, or our portion, is $994.

Friday.
At Walgreen’s picking up the prescription, my mind reels with a kaleidoscope of questions: What are the side effects of the medicine, especially since my son is being given three times the normal dose? How can I understand a disease that causes him to need such powerful drugs? I’m researching, but I’m not sure that I’m asking all the right questions. And, gulp, the practical—how do I afford the co-pay?

Then, I remember my son has given the pharmacist a card from his physician that reduces our co-pay, but the pharmacy tech can’t find a record of it. I whip out my cell and call my son. He speaks with the tech and jars her memory. When she looks again, she produces the card. My jaw drops when she tells me my portion: $0.

Monday.
My son watches a video on how to self-administer the medicine. He’ll need to vary the injection sites and watch for signs of infection or symptoms of a long list of life-threatening diseases. He learns that the medicine is supposed to be refrigerated. He breaks into a cold sweat and feels as if he’s going to throw up. He prays, “Please, let the medicine only need to be refrigerated after it’s opened.”

Nope.

And my son still needs the medicine.

I’d been overwhelmed when the prescription was being filled and the tech hadn’t told me to refrigerate it. Since my son had to wait for instructions on how to dispense the drug, he hadn’t opened the bag where the fine print said it needed refrigeration.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday . . . The Condensed Version.
After my son pleads, Blue Cross and Blue Shield agrees to write off their portion, but the pharmacy charges me the original $994 co-pay, since the card is only good once each month. I know that my family will still eat, but I’m thinking Christmas is going to be slim. I speak with the manager, who asks the corporate office to waive my charge. In the end, my family was blessed tremendously.

You agree: it’s a wonderful story, but how is it writing-related? After all, this is a writing blog.

Well, (1) I’ve written this down so my family will remember a time when we were very blessed. Also, (2) I’ve published this story here to give Walgreen’s and Blue Cross and Blue Shield well-deserved recognition. Finally, (3) I’m writing letters thanking the local manager and the corporate offices for their generosity.

When someone in your life is kind or thoughtful or gives service beyond what’s expected, I urge you to put your thanks in writing.

~Roxanne Sherwood~

Book Review: Through the Storm

Lynne Spears with Lorilee Craker

Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World

272 pp. Thomas Nelson Publishers

By Scoti Springfield Domeij

Through the Storm reveals Lynne Spears struggles in her marriage, the pain of her husband's alcoholism, the frenzy of her daughter's rise to mega-fame, and the relentless stalking by paparazzi. Lorilee Craker captures Lynne Spear's southern voice and clichés, sharing bits of humor and the emotional conflicts of Lynne's life from the death of her father to Jamie Lynn's teen pregnancy. Lynne's story recounts her feelings and regrets regarding many of the events her family faced as Brittany's fame skyrocketed their family into the public spotlight.

The most griping chapters deal with her first phone calls and meetings with Sam Lutfi, his hold upon Brittany's life and her parents' battle to regain control over their daughter. When she tells about Lutfi's first sickening phone conversations with her, I found myself wondering, Why would Lynne consent to meet with him?

After telling the reader about her husband's alcoholism, I started feeling irritated at repeated mentions of his alcoholism. However, I must say, I have not struggled with that kind of pain. I caught my breath when she described Brittany's first husband. Her putdown and her beloved sister's comment reminded me of cruel small town gossip. The comments were demeaning and unnecessary to the story. Then her warm affirmations of K-Fed felt like a disconnect when compared to his lack of moral fiber—dating Brittany while his other girlfriend was pregnant.

She swings between feelings of guilt to being naïve to rationalizing to second guessing herself to expressions of her faith in God. I slogged through some of the biographical parts of the book, along with chapters about her friends and thought, If an unknown author sent in a manuscript that dull, it would be rejected. Near the end of the book the sermonizing seemed thrown in to give the book a spiritually "up" or redeeming ending. The chapter "A Mother's Heart" may provide a cautionary how-to for young parents.

It's obvious that she loves her children and grandchildren dearly. I found myself cheering her on, "You go, Girlfriend," when she sprayed the paparazzi with water. Lynne Spears describes the frustrations and helplessness a family feels when fame strips privacy away from normal (or perhaps it's more accurate to say dysfunctional) family life. Parts of the book live up to the title Through the Storm, but the tone of the book fails to deliver on the subtitle's sensationalist promise "A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World."

Dive In!

Olympic divers amaze me.

They climb up a ladder, walk out on the diving platform, take a few preliminary bounces, and dive--leaping off the board, twisting, turning, arching--finally slicing through the water to finish their routine.

Amazing.

The purpose of Olympic diving is to dive--to get off the platform and into the air and then into the water. If the diver just stood there bouncing on the board well, I'd get tired of waiting.

"Dive already!"

"Jump!"

"Just do it!"

Writing the lead paragraph for your article is like diving off the platform. You don't want to spend too much time up there on the board, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing ... you need to set up your piece and then dive in.

We're writers. We love to write. We love words. We especially love the words we write. And sometimes we are convinced every single word has to stay in that article we've oh-so-carefully crafted. No slicing, no dicing.

Part of writing is--dare I say it?--editing. And editing is more than just polishing the words you've written. Editing is also figuring out what words you need to delete.

Too many words can become too many sentences, which can become too many paragraphs, which becomes a lead that is way too long. It's like a diver taking too many bounces on the board. He's up on the board, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing ...

Dive already!

The next time you're working on an article, look at how many "bounces" you take before you dive in to the rest of the story. Your lead should set up your article and then allow you to move on.

You decide if you need a sentence or a paragraph or half a page before you're "off the board" and into the rest of the story. If you're on page 2 and you're still setting up your story, you're probably overdoing your lead. You're just bouncing on the board. Step back and rework it so you're not wasting valuable word count on a lead that's too long.

What is Deep Point of View (POV)?

The point of view where a reader experiences being inside a character’s mind, knowing his actions, feelings, emotions, and thoughts.

The reader becomes the POV character.

Before you write a scene, decide which of your main characters—or possibly the villain—will be the point of view character. Everything in the scene will be experienced through this character. Consider:
--Which POV character has the most at stake?
--What must be revealed or remain hidden? (If a character has a secret, you don’t want the scene to be in his head.)
--Which character has the strongest emotion in the scene?

Layers of Deep POV.
On the surface, the reader experiences the actions of the POV character. Going deeper, the reader perceives what the character sees, hears, feels, tastes and touches, which also establishes setting. Then, the reader discovers the thoughts, emotions, and feelings. Finally, the character displays a unique voice that’s based on sentence patterns, age, gender, education level, career, and attitudes.

A five-year-old protagonist sounds different than a college professor. Male characters should sound different than female ones. A reader selecting a random page in your novel should be able to tell which character is speaking by the unique voice you’ve given to each POV character.

Setting.
Setting becomes more than mere description and reveals qualities of your character. Describe setting through the POV character’s eyes. If your POV character wouldn’t notice the setting, then it’s not important to the reader, so you’d give minimal description. But if your character is an architect or a building contractor, you‘d describe the building in more detail then if your character is a mailman. If your character is a forest ranger or a botanist, you’d describe the field differently than if she were a hairstylist.

Choosing Vocabulary.
My husband used to say there were only sixteen Crayolas in his box. He’d recognize beige and tan as synonyms for light brown, but words such as ecru, fawn, cream, sand, oatmeal, or taupe weren’t colors in his vocabulary. However, if your POV character is an artist, paint contractor or fashion consultant, he might have a wide pallet of colors.

Rules:
1. Write the scene before worrying about a lot of rules. Then, edit and decide which rules you need to follow.
2. AVOID: seemed, appeared, and looked.
Example: In the moonlight, Sara looked at a tall man limping toward her.
Better: In the moonlight, a tall man limped toward her.
3. AVOID: He or she thought/felt/saw/noticed/wondered.
Example: She wondered, how many times had Nick warned her to observe the details the police would need to solve a crime?
Better: Nick had warned her to observe details the police would need to solve a crime.
4. AVOID: describing your POV character's physical traits. I know I’m a petite brunette. I don’t think about it, and your character shouldn’t either.
Example: Suzy ran her hands through her long, silky, blond hair.
Better: Suzy pulled her hair into a ponytail.
(The reader will learn the color of her hair when another character notices it.)

TIPS:
1. Become your POV character for a day. I’ve heard of several authors who say they’ve done this. As you sort laundry, stir cream into your coffee, run errands, think of how your character would react in each situation. It sounds crazy. But we’re already crazy, since we hear voices. It’s worth a try.
2. In a workshop, Author Suzanne Brockmann advises to write the scene in first person, then rewrite the scene in third person point of view, changing as few words as possible.
3. Read The Power Of Point Of View: Make Your Story Come To Life by Alicia Rasley.

When writing deep POV, every word should reflect the personality of your character and bring him or her to life.

Blessings,

~Roxanne Sherwood~