The deadline for entries for the 2010 Scare The Dickens Out of Us ghost story contest is October 1. You’ve got less than two weeks to go if you’re serious about the $1000.00 first prize, or even the $500.00 second prize and $250.00 third prize. Plus there’s the Junior contest with the $250.00 first prize. Full rules are available at www.clarklibraryfriends.com.

We’ve received entries from Australia, Canada, and the U.K.  A lot of writers from Florida are entering. California is represented. We’ve had entries from several other states, but very few so far from Texas, and Texas pretty much cornered the market for winners last year. Of course, if this year is anything like last year then we will be getting a whole lot of last minute entries on September 30 and October 1. Maybe that’s where the Texans are.

THE LIBRARIAN ON THE ROOF!  By M.G. King and Illustrated By Stephen Gilpin.

The photo illustrating this blog post is of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas. The Scare the Dickens Out of Us ghost story contest entry fees go to the Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library and are used to support this library’s programs. The children’s picture book Librarian On The Roof by M.G. King is also about the Dr. Eugene Clark Library. Based on a true incident about when the town librarian took to living on the roof of our 100-year-old library in order to raise $20,000 for the library’s children’s section, this colorful little book is a gem of history writing. And if you’ve ever been in the Clark Library you will recognize it in the book’s cheerful illustrations–from the stained glass windows, to the stage with the stuffed chairs on it, and even the scene of downtown through the open door. Published by Albert Whitman & Company www.albertwhitman.com , it is also available through Amazon.com.

Blog photo by Roxanne Rix.

What I’ve read this week.  Well of Shiuan by C.J. Cherryh. St. Dale by Sharyn McCrumb. I can highly recommend St. Dale.  Who would ever have thought I’d love a book about NASCAR driving?

If you are a big fan of Harlan Ellison or someone who collects famous writers’ memorabilia, then check out the link under the longhorn photo. HE’s put one of his original typewriters up for sale. Wish I had the money and the space, but I don’t. I have met Harlan twice. He was my favorite writer for a very long time.

http://www.photographyhistory.com/harlanellisontypewriter.html.

Different topic—just finished reading Shooting Loons by Margaret Maron.

Other interesting site to visit– www.author-debsanders.com  .

THE COWBOY’S BABY continued

Marcia leaned forward, careful to keep the top of her blouse from gaping open, he noted, and placed the papers on his desk. Then she sorted them into separate piles and pulled the top sheet forward on each.

“This is it,” she said.

“To cut a long story short, there’s nothing we can do. Mrs. Lennon owns the land all right.” She huffed with exasperation, blowing at her new bangs again. “How did we ever get ourselves in such a mess? Christ! Didn’t anyone hire surveyors? Didn’t we use lawyers? Did they do this on purpose?”

Startled, Ellison looked at her passionate face.

“When was the vote taken? Do you remember?” he asked, trying to contain his anxiety.

“It’s in that pile somewhere,” she replied. “It was a legal vote. The board got the requisite approval. Everything looks right. But that damned back nine is right in Mrs. Lennon’s property plat, wall or no wall,” she said, voice rising. “The land is hers, Ellison, and I don’t have the slightest idea why she let it happen. Or what to do about it.”

She paced rapidly back and forth in his office, whacking at the chair backs as she passed. When he thought she was done he opened his mouth. Marcia interrupted.

“I guess this will mean our jobs, right?” She slammed at another chair. “Even if we had nothing to do with it?” Another chair. “Damn and damn and damn!” she cried. “I like it here. I’ve bought a house!”

“Calm down,” he said, appalled at the burst of emotion, surprised at her attack on his office furniture; this was so unlike his efficient, pretty and likable assistant. “We’re not going to lose our jobs,” he said. “And yours shouldn’t even come into it, if we did. Even if I did,” he amended.

The wall-long picture window of Ellison’s office faced the front nine holes of the original, and charming, he’d always thought, golf course. He saw green, green and green, varying shades of, just as it should have been. Soon afterwards Marcia stalked out. He narrowed his concentration and studied the scene at the first tee, trying to get his mind off their problems for just a second and off Marcia’s emotional outburst. I can’t believe we built the back nine on that woman’s ranch, he fumed, failing to distract himself. He took a deep breath and forced himself to focus on the golfers in his sight. An hour later he was still watching them.

The Cowboy’s Baby by Gretchen Lee Rix, copyright 2010. To be continued… Blog photo by Roxanne Rix

www.amazon.com/The-Cowboys-Baby-ebook/dp/B003UYUVZC.

I’m going to jump forward about a year to when I should be blogging about how I wrote Arroyo instead of  The Cowboy’s Baby. This would be that blog.

Early fall last year I woke up after a dream about Stephen King who was probably in my head because I’d just finished reading UR, which I enjoyed, and because my sister Roxanne had entered his Stephen’s Empire photography contest. Anyhow, as I was getting dressed and the dream was fading, I thought about why Stephen King is so good—-partly it’s the way he uses a lot of contemporary everyday detail in his stories. His characters, for example, don’t reach for the toilet paper, they grab the Charmin and then they gripe about how much the price has gone up in the last couple of years. They don’t drink soda pop, they guzzle Cherry Dr. Pepper and then spike it with the Mexican vanilla they brought back from the Carnival Cruise they took to Cozumel during Hurricane Ike.

I had an image of fig newtons during that thought. I won’t say any more than that. I don’t know right now when fig newtons were invented, but they went right into my 1880’s novel that night as I wrote on it.  And better yet, I had a maliciously good idea crop up right after this one involving the new character I’d just introduced that I felt would change the whole tone of this section. Both were courtesy of the Stephen King dream, and to the fact that I got it down on paper ASAP. Thank you, muse.

Arroyo stood at 33,762 words at that time, which was closed to half-done if I was aiming for the 80k limit.  And for those of you who are interested in how something came into being, this was how my character Ramona Livingston finally fell in love. And this isn’t a romance novel, guys, it’s a pulp adventure horror fantasy science-fiction romp through the American West in the 1880’s, primarily Texas. How do you like that combination of genres?

Back to the present. Assuming I remembered why my characters suddenly had fig newtons in their hands a year from when I wrote it, the above would have been my blog. Photo by Roxanne Rix. This is the Travelocity gnome we bought from The Amazing Race site and took with us to the Davis Mountains on vacation a short while back. This is the veranda of the Limpia Hotel in Fort Davis, an absolutely great place to stay. More of Hubert to come when I get back to Arroyo.

What I read this week—The Librarian On The Roof by M.G. King, Illustrated by Stephen Gilpin  ISBN 9780807545126  and Cybill Disobedience by Cybill Shepherd and Aimee Lee Ball  www.amazon.com/Cybill-Disobedience-ebook/dp/B002KAOQSK. 

Many writers come to a point in writing their  novel where they are suddenly lost, or their interest wanes, or they think what they’ve been doing is crap. I think Stephen King gave  the best advice (though I have heard it from others as well) in his book On Writing when he said to keep writing until you finish the story. No matter what. Don’t stop to revise or correct errors, and don’t give up on it either. Once you are finished you will have a fleshed-out story you can use as a template, if indeed you didn’t end up with a pretty damned good first draft. You can fix it all later. But if you’ve stopped and pushed it aside for something new and more exciting, of if you’ve wadded it up and thrown it away, then you’ve got nothing but a pattern of never finishing what you start.

I had a huge slump early in The Cowboy’s Baby and am surprised that the three chapters I ended up with survived the years. And yes, I set it aside for something new and more exciting which I still haven’t finished. I wish I had completed The Cowboy’s Baby when I first started it. If I had, I probably would have ended up with five or more completed novels to my credit by now and would be a better writer for it.

I am now at that point in my new novel Arroyo (help, I need a better title), but I am going to soldier on and get the first draft up to 60,000 or 80,000 words before fixing anything. Because I know what will happen if I don’t. When I was young and just beginning I used to stop and throw away page one every time I made a typo (this was way back in the days of typewriters and liquid paper). I eventually ended up with a perfect first couple of paragraphs, and that was all.

So, even if you have to write your own version of “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” for several paragraphs before you get yourself back on track, just keep on truckin’. You can fix it later. And even if some of what you write during this time turns out to be total crap, maybe the rest of it has possibilities.

Blog photo by Roxanne Rix. www.amazon.com/The-Cowboys-Baby-ebook/dp/B003UYUVZC. The Cowboy’s Baby mini-excerpt—She had a bullwhip wrapped casually around her arm and was dangling it to the ground like a particularly nasty snake.

What I’ve read this week—-Killer Instinct by Robert W. Walker and Gate of Ivrel by C.J. Cherryh and UR by Stephen King.

Met someone new this week via Nightmare Factor and Twitter. If you love Halloween and the macabre, check out www.amandanorman.com   She photographs graveyards, gargoyles and spooky people.

“Just what did you do to that poor woman?” Marcia asked, moving towards him with papers in her arms, no longer badmouthing him. “She was trembling. And how did she get in here anyhow?”

Marcia was becoming way too casual with him, Ellison suddenly realized. Abruptly tired of her judgments and eager to hear what she had found out he curtly interrupted. “Does it matter?” he asked.

Her pretty face flushed with the rebuke. Ashamed of himself, he backtracked. He waved his hands at her. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s already been a bad morning. Let’s start again. No reason for us to get testy so soon.”

He waited.

And she waited.

“Good morning, Marcia,” he said finally, with forced pleasantry, giving the twenty-two-year-old female wunderkind his patented employer/employee smile, pausing for her expected reply and feeling really, really fake.

“Good morning, boss.”

Still grumpy, he thought.

Ellison raised his voice to address the staff in the pro shop since almost all of them were simply standing around watching the two of them. “Let’s get back to work guys,” he said. “And don’t let anyone else in who doesn’t belong. Do you understand?”

The teenaged boy Peter stood up from collecting golf balls on the floor. Gangly to the extreme, he raised one hand high, showing them a key, then made a twisting gesture to illustrate locking the door. That was the equivalent of a whole speech for Peter, Ellison noted as he saulted him with a bright smile. He then marched Marcia and himself out of the public store and into his private office.

“Seriously though,” Marcia asked. “What did you do to Mrs. Bishop? She had the strangest expression on her face.”

Ellison fluttered his hands in the air and her blue eyes went wide with mirth.

“Oh, no, you didn’t?” she exclaimed. “The giggle? You sicced the giggle on her?”

It wasn’t that funny. He’d been told countless times he giggled like a girl and it wasn’t the self-image he preferred. He had never found it that funny.

“Now you’ve got that same expression,” Marcia observed.

“Enough. See if you can fix the damage. I don’t know what she wanted.” He looked back towards the pro shop. “Golf balls, I guess, since that’s where she ended. Silly staff let her in.”

“Don’t blame them too much,” Marcia advised, hiding her smile. “It’s pretty hard to keep Mrs. Bishop from doing whatever she wants.”

Ellison filed that information away for further thought then dismissed Mrs. Bishop from his mind. They had bigger problems than customer relations. “What did you find out?” he asked.

Excerpt from The Cowboy’s Baby… to be continued. Copyright 2010. www.amazon.com/The-Cowboys-Baby-ebook/dp/B003UYUVZC.

FUN THINGS TO DO IN LOCKHART, TEXAS

Black’s Barbecue in Lockhart, Texas has a genuine old-fashioned friendly atmosphere and really good barbecue. It’s one of the four reasons Lockhart is the Barbecue Capital of Texas. People come from all over the world to eat here. They even take photographs of the outside of the building. Love it! And for those of you too far away to eat in, they ship. Go to www.BlacksBBQ.com.

Again, photos on this blog are by Roxanne Rix/Subliminal message: buy my book, buy my book, etc.

I’ve run into the writer’s muse often during several ordinary activities most people have in common, and probably you have too. You can meet the muse while you’re engaging in mindless exercise, like walking the dog.

On the left, here is our dog Boo Radley. As you can guess, she is walking me and not the other way around. While we walk I try to make sure she doesn’t knock me down or push me over or pull me into someone’s yard where I will fall, but most of my mind is wandering. Sometimes it finds the perfect ending for the WIP (that’s work in progress for the uninitiated), sometimes it comes up with witty sentences, but it almost always comes up with something I wish I could have remembered when I got back home. You should see me, almost home and muttering “they took the train, they took the train, the train”. Part of the reason you get the muse on these outside exercise jaunts is because you have nothing to write with.

Another common activity that brings on the muse is taking long, hot baths. This is the origin of the “eureka” shriek, and it’s not a cliche for nothing. It really happens. Again, you don’t have anything to write with and probably won’t remember your idea by the time you’ve dried off.

Lastly, you will meet your muse when you sleep. Not in dreams, but in the last thoughts you have before you fall asleep and in the first thoughts you have as you wake up. Sleep can solve many of your writing problems. Really. Get some good sleep. And this time, you might just have a notepad and pen sitting beside your bed to write it all down.

There are several equally famous ways to engage your muse, but since they are generally unhealthy and/or illegal I will leave them out. Plus, I don’t think I’ve ever used them that way anyhow.

I ended up figuring out what the cowboy’s baby was by driving around Caldwell County and looking at the scenery, but I wasn’t planning my book as I explored. When I got back to writing and had to continue after “the cowboy’s baby is going to get me!” sequence, the solution just jumped right in there. SPOILER ALERT (I didn’t realize they could jump straight up over fences).

What I’ve just read this week–Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

Aware that the chill only enhanced his attraction, and wanting to make an example out of her, Ellison approached with lithe grace and compacted power. He had everyone’s attention riveted on him now.

“Mrs. . .” he inquired, with a mere lift of his chin warning the staff to stay out of it, standing over and staring down at the lump of womanhood puddled gracelessly amid golf ball boxes and loose golf balls on the floor.

She croaked getting her name out, gasping “Bishop!” up into his face. He immediately thought of a frog. A fat frog in a blue knit dress. And that was all it took to break the spell. He unexpectedly grinned, struggling mightily to keep a very unmasculine giggle from escaping his lips, and failed. He giggled.

It wasn’t often that one of his unwanted admirers brought a smile to his face. At the sight of her very expensive butt sitting on so many new golf balls like a chicken hatching eggs (eggs that were now used golf balls and would have to go for half-price) Ellison laughed out loud, his irritation defused. Confused, Mrs. Bishop beamed and straightened at her dress.

Like a contagious yawn, his amusement set off light tittering in the background from the staff. Someone new came in the back entrance. The woman at his feet cautioned another wide smile, and, to his surprise, slowly turned from an ogling would-be Ellison fancier into a contrite, wealthy resident who, no, wouldn’t clean up the mess herself but would call her husband in to do the job if that was all right with him. Red in the face, she couldn’t get out fast enough, though she took one last look at him as she exited.

What in the world had just happened, he wondered. Could it be so easy? Maybe he just needed to start laughing at them.

Marcia Dowson entered the front door just as Mrs. Bishop stumbled out. He caught his assistant’s brief, irritated look his way as she blew breath upwards to scatter the long bangs of a new hairstyle. Ellison started to say something admiring but stopped himself just in time.

“Why don’t you just get fat and save us all this trouble,” she muttered, careful to wait until Mrs. Bishop was safely out of earshot, he noted, but not so careful he didn’t hear.

She meant him. It wasn’t the first time she dared him to change his fate by changing his looks. He ignored her comment and kept his own to himself. There would be time later to compliment her new hairstyle. His glare this time told the staff to stop with the hilarity and get back to work.

To Be Continued…Copyright 2010 by Gretchen Lee Rix/photo by Roxanne Rix. Link to The Cowboy’s Baby at Amazon.com  www.amazon.com/The-Cowboys-Baby-ebook/dp/B003UYUVZC. 

Jessica Scott has a good blog that goes beyond writing. She’s a writer who is also a soldier. www.jessicascott.net/blog/ . Keep up with guest blogger Deb Sanders at www.author-debsanders.com/ Help feed people and learn new words with  www.freerice.com  and help feed pets with www.freekibble.com . Check out places to submit your short stories at www.duotrope.com. AND ENTER SCARE THE DICKENS OUT OF US www.clarklibraryfriends.com You’ve got one month left.

Vampire lovers will eat this up–J.K. Beck has a new paranormal series called The Shadow Keepers, and the first entry is When Blood Calls. For those of you who think vampires are the perfect lovers and soul mates, this will give you your vampire fix until Season Four of True Blood comes back on HBO. She’s got six related novels coming out wham, bam, thank you ma’am, one after another starting in September, and are they sexy! Fast-paced and suspenseful, Beck begins with vampire Luke having the best sex of his immortal life with a random human beauty he meets in a bar. Turns out they have more than a bar in common.

Sara’s an attorney newly assigned to the supernatural branch of Homeland Security. Turns out Luke will be her first case–after their tryst he’s charged with brutally murdering a judge. Soon she’s rubbing shoulders with demons, werewolves, jinn and all manner of fantastic creatures of the night who’ve been hiding from human beings and policing their own crimes.

The vampires are beautiful and dangerous. The crimes are heinous. The heroine is strong, resourceful and independent–until she meets her man. I mean, her vampire.

Did I say sexy? Oh, yes. Out in September in paperback. Go to www.jkbeck.com for more.

SCARE THE DICKENS OUT OF US

There’s a month and a week left to get your entries in for the 2010 Scare The Dickens Out of Us ghost story writing contest and fundraiser. The entry fee of $20.00 (or $5.00 for the Junior contest) goes to the Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library for library projects. All the entry money.

First place winner gets $1000.00 and a trophy. Second place gets $500.00 and a ribbon. Third place gets $250.00 and a ribbon. There are more ribbon prizes, but no more money. The Junior contest winner gets $250.00 and a trophy. Second, third, and fourth place, etc, get ribbons.

And all we want are original, unpublished ghost stories up to 5000 words. You retain all rights. We won’t be publishing anyone (though the top winners will be read at the Dickens luncheon this December at the Dr. Eugene Clark Library).

At worst, you’ve written a good ghost story and helped out the oldest continuously-in-use library in Texas. At best, you’ve done all the above and you’ve got $1000.00 in your pocket. It’s fun. And there are markets for ghost stories out there after the contest is through with you. 

Go to www.clarklibraryfriends.com for the full rules.

MORE FUN THINGS TO DO IN LOCKHART, TEXAS

If you live within thirty miles of Lockhart, Texas, then you might be interested in the annual Evening With the Authors dinner the first Saturday in October. This year, among others, horror and thriller writer Joe McKinney and Newbery Honor winner Jacqueline Kelly will be featured. Come meet the San Antonio homicide detective who’s written zombie thrillers and been nominated for the Stoker award. Others in attendance are Jeff Abbott, Steven L. Davis, Nadine Eckhardt, Miriam King, Jake Silverstein, Rebecca Rather, and Rose Styron.

For your money (this is a Friends of the Library fundraiser) you get wine, food, and the temporary companionship of the above writers while sitting outside in the garden of a Victorian house. Take a look at Lockhart’s beautiful courthouse and library when you drive up. See you there. Full information at www.clarklibraryfriends.com (Same as the story contest)

This week I’ve been reading Topper by Thorne Smith and When Blood Calls by J.K. Beck. I’ve been watching Dexter, Season Four.

From across the room he turned his back, a coldness settling into him, his mind racing, desperate to repair the damage he had just done with one gray-eyed glance. He didn’t want any more smitten admirers. Why had he interfered? She might have cleaned up the mess herself if he hadn’t stepped from his office. Now she only stared greedily from the dirty floor where she had tumbled, golf balls rolling everywhere, and waited for him to come forward to help her up.

The tiny pro shop was being remodeled; no one but staff and construction workers should have been inside. The pale green paint on the walls was damp, not all of the tiles were even set, and someone had made a mistake trying to restock the shelves while all this was going on. But at the Creighton Resort in Central Texas, money most certainly talked, as its manager Ellison had finally learned, and the well-groomed woman on the floor in the blue knit dress was obviously money.

Yes, the staff was decidedly cowed, he saw; and they were standing way too near the newly painted walls for his comfort. Irritated at the lot of them, Ellison turned on the woman, irrationally considering just how far to push this wealthy Texas housewife to appease his mood. His gray eyes turned dangerously dark.

Copyright 2010. To be continued… www.amazon.com/The-Cowboys-Baby-ebook/dp/B003UYUVZC.  

Except for the first three chapters, The Cowboy’s Baby was written entirely during the one-hundred-word-a day- challenge of my local RWA® group. One hundred words is about a paragraph, guys. I made it into an hour-a-day challenge for myself, but there were times I only managed the hundred words. I finished the rough draft in the spring of 2009 and wrote eight short stories just to stay in this writing challenge while I let my novel sit and age. But I dropped out of it when I got to the revising stage and then the  copyediting and proofreading.

You don’t need a formal writing group in order to set goals for yourself. See what I did with just an hour a day. And even a hundred or so words a day adds up to 36,500 words a year. If you double the amount you do a day you’ve got the rough draft of a novel in less than a year. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible either.

Note–the photo of the Luling, Texas chicken is by Roxanne Rix.  What I’ve read this week–Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean, still available through Amazon.com and others, and Life With No Breaks by Nick Spalding  www.amazon.com/Life-No-Breaks-Second-ebook/dp/B003ICWJ4C .

Now listening to Old Gray Mule Sound Like Somethin’ Fell Off The House. Go to www.oldgraymule.wordpress.com/ 

The Life and Times of an Unpublished Writer 

I’m a writer. 

People have snickered and rolled their eyes when I’ve said that because I’m not published. Therefore, I must not be a “real” writer. 

I’ve always lived by the words of Dr. Wayne Dyer. “When you believe it, you’ll see it.” To help solidify my dream of becoming a published writer, I visualize myself attending book signings, imagine my name on the New York Times Bestseller list, role play with an invisible agent as we discuss my next project. I’ve even designed covers for my unsold manuscripts and pinned them to my bulletin board. 

And then reality hits. There are bills to pay, issues that need resolving, grandchildren that need a hug, a husband who needs a hug. It can be difficult to maintain a dream when life adds a sobering dash of reality. 

I’m a writer. I will persevere. 

After everyone is asleep and the chores are done, I sit in front of my computer and summon my muse. Some nights are easier than others, but eventually the words come. A few at first, then a deluge until the pages tick by one at a time. 

I would like nothing better than to be a full time writer, published or not. Writing makes me feel alive. The need to tell my stories calls to me like the song of an unseen siren. I must write. I have no choice. 

The most difficult part of my journey to publication has been the incredible amount of patience that’s required and expected. I’ve even factored that knowledge into my submission process as I search for agents and editors who accept electronic sumitttals over snail mail. It’s actually quicker to graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree than it is to get published. 

Think about it. You spend six months to a year writing and revising your manuscript, and that’s a conservative estimate. If you query an agent, it can be three months to more than a year before you receive a response, but at least you can query multiple agencies. If you query a publishing house, you must wait for a response before sending it to another. Again, you are probably looking at six months to a year. Let’s say an agent requests a partial. Several months later, they request a full. If you’re lucky, they will start sending it out immediately, but there are no guarantees. And if you’re very lucky, an editor might decide to pick it up. This process might take another six months to a year, especially if the editor wants revisions before they offer a contract. 

Finally you can smile. You’ve sold your first manuscript. But it will be another year to eighteen months before it ever arrives on a book shelf. Advances and royalties are balanced against net sales and returns. Don’t toss out those Ramen Noodles yet. 

I think this archaic system is why so many writers are exploring the option of self- publishing through venues like Kindle and Smashwords. It’s also why a growing number of published authors are self-publishing their backlist once they’ve regained their rights. It’s quick. You have control of the process. 

On the flip side, you’re also responsible for all marketing efforts. It’s certainly not for everyone, but I like the fact that the opportunity is there. While you’re waiting for “the call”, you can be building a backlist of titles and a following. In this economy, that’s an attractive option to a print publisher. 

If you’ve reached this point in the blog, you’re probably wondering why I even bother to pursue a writing career. The investment of time and energy is huge. The payout–at least in the beginning–is meager. It’s not easy and it’s often dehumanizning. Why do I do it? 

I’m a writer. 

Deb Sanders 

www.author-debsanders.com 

www.newkindsonthewritersblock.blogspot.com