Carol Lanham

Everything Must Go!

When the first Borders store opened near my home, I imagined long afternoons spent roaming the isles lazily running my finger from spine to spine and drinking up the titles along with a cup of flavored coffee.  I could just see myself sitting at a little table with a big stack of books, enjoying a dozen different first pages and happily devouring a scone.  It would be a spa for my mind.  Time would magically stand still and I’d become like Burgess Meridith after he stepped from the vault, only my glasses wouldn’t be broken.  I assumed this was how Borders worked.

Over the years, I felt frustrated by the reality of running half a mile across the mall parking lot in the rain to grab a gift card for my daughter’s teacher.  I’d smell the coffee on my way through and promise myself that next time I’d not dash in and out.  After awhile, I didn’t even smell the coffee.  Borders became nothing more than a nagging email to be deleted daily and I discovered I could pick up their gift cards at Walgreens.  Some slightly sticky risidiual must have remained of the daydream though, because I still pictured those people who got my gift cards eating scones and lingering over books.

It’s not Borders fault that my fantasy never came true.  They provided all the necessary ingredients to make it happen except they didn’t blow up the world and create endless time for books.  That was their first mistake.  Now my store is closing.  All three stores near my home are closing, actually, and I never once had that scone.  Do they even have scones?

In the past few weeks, I’ve been lured in several times as the prices have dropped on “all re4mianing items”.  I’ve been offered the opportunity to buy everything from their almond coffee syrup to the wheelie cart they used for cds.  A stand that holds up to a hundred magazines can be had for fifty dollars.  I passed that by but I did get a damn fine deal on a Lindt Orange Essence candy bar.  If I wanted to, I could purchase all of Borders unsold coffee beans and take a stab at making my dreams come true at home, but I’m not going to do that.  It wouldn’t be right to drink it while vaccuming.

Currently, all books are 30% – 60% off so I finally let my fingers walk over a few spines.  It wasn’t how I dreamed it would be.  It’s hard to pay twelve bucks for a hardback, no matter how good the bargain, when I can download the same book on Kindle for $8.99.  I know.  I know.  There are some books you want to have and to hold.  I feel that way too, believe me.  But pickings are thin now and while there are still many books left that I would have snapped up in an instant a few years ago, I’m going with the marked down candy bar and my Kindle these days.

Thus, the demise of my hometown Borders store.

I won’t generalize and say that everyone is in a rush these days but I think that’s mostly true.  I’m not sure any of the teachers I bought Borders cards for ever had any more time than I did to properly enjoy the bookstore experience that Borders was offering.  I’m sad about that.  I don’t personally think that it’s all gloom and doom for the brick and mortars but there’s no denying that things are rapidly changing.

When I was a kid, it would have been easier to believe that I would own a light saber some day than picture a time when people would chose to read a book on their Blackberry rather than make the trip to the library.  For one thing, I wouldn’t have been able to understand how a book could fit on a little piece of fruit.  But still.  Who knew that human beings would choose to invest their brainpower in creating a fancier phone rather than the Orgasmatron.  The future is a difficult thing to figure.  Me, I wanted what Borders wanted; a place of respite and cinnamon buns.

My kids keep asking me what will happen to the Borders building once they close their doors for good.  I wonder about that too.  Will the people of the future conduct tours through its empty hallowed halls?  Here’s where the gift cards used to be.  And here’s where they used to keep an archiac form of something that the ancients called Books.  Maybe they’ll make it a CiCi’s pizza?  In any case, please do me this favor: If your Borders store is still brewing fresh cups of Seattle’s Best and offering books at slightly higher prices than you really need to pay, go spend the afternoon there before it becomes a dark, forgotten ruin.  It’s what the Athenians probably wished they’d done before the Venetians struck the Parthenon with artillery fire.  It’s what I’m wishing too.

Best wishes to all the Border’s employees who are losing their jobs!

carolelanham.com

horrorhomemaker.com

Years ago, when my kids were babies, I took up scrapbooking with my sisters and we enjoyed many a pleasant hour at the dining room table, surrounded by photos and stickers and baby bottles and bags of chips and dip.  We were accomplishing at least three things at the same time, four if you count the dip.  First of all, we were organizing the massive amounts of pictures we were taking of our kids.  Second, we were creating a lovely pastel record of their childhood for their future enjoyment.  And third, we were getting in some much-needed adult conversation.

My sisters had gotten a head start on me with this hobby so when the day came that I looked back at that first page I had so lovingly created in my son’s book, they knew before I even said a word that I was going to want to rip it out and start again.  “This is horrible!” I said, wondering why I ever thought that drawing little trains running around a newborn’s head was a good idea.  TOOT!  TOOT!  JAKE’S ARRIVED! “I’m going to have to do this over.”

My sisters smiled as they cut and glued.  “Oh, you’re not allowed to do it over,” they told me in that all-knowing, well-seasoned scrapbooker’s way.  “Everyone hates their first page.  Just live with it, Carole.”

I understood in my heart of hearts that my first page was worse than everyone else’s so I tapped on those little trains and said, “But I’m so much better at this now.”

My sisters knew what I was only just beginning to learn; that you should never destroy the road to experience.  If you start tearing things up, you’ll have one page in a photo album that’s been redone over and over again and the rest of the book will have to remain blank because you’ve used up all your time.

It’s the same with writing or anything else.  I have often thrown up a little in my mouth when rereading my earlier work.  I can’t love it anymore because I’ve moved on.  I’ve learned more and I’ve lived more.  I have an old novel manuscript that I’ve sworn to see in print someday but every time I go back to take another look, I can’t get past the first page.  I’m lucky to get past the first paragraph.  Even if I never do anything but torment myself with that manuscript, it serves an important purpose.  It has value because it’s helped me get to the point where I am today.  And that stands true also with the point where I am today.  A year from now, my current work might look to me like little hand-drawn trains running around a baby’s baldhead.  But that’s progress even so.  Right?

In many ways, I’m mostly writing to myself today.  I still need to warn myself not to sit too close to the shredder when reviewing old work.  I used to pitch stuff willy-nilly.  I used to hit DELETE.  My writing magazines instruct me to file away every note I’ve ever written to myself on a dirty wrinkled bank envelope.  You never know, I might become outrageously famous one day and my grandkids can auction my envelopes at Christy’s.  Regardless, it really is all about the journey, isn’t it?  When you get right down to it, it’s all Journey and there is no end to learning and evolving until we’re in our graves.

But you know what that means, don’t you?  Jake’s girlfriends are going to have themselves a big laugh when they get a load of all those Toots.

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Carolelanham.com

Angry Baby photo available at Decibel Magazine

Finding Your One True Love During the Submission Process

Submitting your work can feel like plucking petals from a daisy — He loves me.  He loves me not.  It’s the ultimate dating game and actually, for me anyway, it’s sometimes more like He loves me not.  He loves me not.  He loves me not…  Well, I can pluck petals until I’m blue in the face because I’m a romantic and I’m looking for nothing less than the perfect match.

No one likes getting rejection letters but I doubt there’s ever been an author in the history of authors who has managed to avoid one.  Unless I’m soliciting a market that I have good reason to believe will love me back, I honestly welcome a good rejection letter.  The way I see it, once we’ve scratched each other off our lists, I’m one step closer to finding true love.

In the early stages, it’s easy to doubt yourself.  Maybe I need more lipstick? I’ll think.  Or, Why did I come on so strong?   I go out the door with a hopeful smile and this really cute scarf flung around my neck and when the first person doesn’t whistle, I’ll admit the truth, it smarts a little.  I’m reminded that the world is brimming with all kinds of beauty and I might not appear to be as special as I think.  But then I’ll also remember that love is complex and if I want to find the real deal, I will need to be patient.  I’ll need to persevere.

Some will drop out of the dance, that’s a given.  Some will run off at the first sideways look and change their perfume.  It’s always a little hard to decide when the time has come to take a new approach because there are no concrete rules to follow.  Everyone has a different opinion about how many He loves me nots should be tolerated before it’s time to put on a new dress.  I base it on the individual project and how well I’ve done my homework when it comes to finding Mr. Right.  Before it gets to that point, I read all professionally written rejection notes like this:

Dearest Author,

 Please forgive this very general observation but time and the sheer number of raving beauties I have to choose from prohibits me from responding personally to your numerous and wonderful attributes.  Suffice to say, I prefer red heads. 

Sincerely,

 Mr. Wrong

I’ve known plenty of people who will stomp their feet in anger at the unfairness of it all at this point, and bitterly exclaim that love sucks when really they haven’t even gotten to the love part yet.  They’ll viciously rip another petal off their flower, forgetting that anything worth having takes some effort.  It’s easy to become discouraged.  It’s easy to forget that some guys are just legmen and your strong suit is your ass.  So why would you want a legman, anyway?

If it comes to that, even a shoeboxful of rejections can be a positive thing if you try and learn from them.  Don’t let a lackluster query hold you back forever.  Comb out the tangles and try again.  If your story strikes too many people as flabby, jump back on the treadmill and tighten it up.  And if the color you’re wearing right now is getting you nowhere, why not try blue?  It really brings out the sparkle in your eyes.

Having been rejected a few times in my life, here’s what I believe:  Rejections make the whole experience that much sweeter when that box of chocolates finally arrives from the one who is meant for you.  It’s not always an easy thing to do, but try and embrace those rejections a little.  At the same time, don’t give them too much of yourself.  Save that for the wedding night.

The best gift anyone can ever give me for Christmas is time to laugh and eat and relax with the people I love.  I was blessed with this precious gift in spades this year.  Outside of two very special homemade presents given to me by my children (priceless wonders that mean all the world to me), the next best gift I got was my new Kindle.

A lot of writers at Storytellers Unplugged have remarked on their experiences with a Kindle, or the like.  In fact, my desire to own one was born of what I read here.  It dawned on me rather slowly that I would greatly enjoy one both as a reader and as a writer.  Reading is just about my favorite thing on the planet and I wanted to understand how e-book devices work and what opportunities might be out there for writers.  I could research this in several ways, of course, but owning one is proving to be such fun.

One thing I had not expected was the thrilling feeling I would get just picking the thing up.  It’s the same heart-pounding, out-of-my-mind-with-joy sensation that comes over me every time I step into a bookstore or a library.  What a great surprise!  I pick up my Kindle and suddenly I am Jesse James feverishly spinning around in a giant vault piled to the ceiling with money, plotting how much I can carry out with me.  What a time to be alive!  A single person can hold an entire library in the palm of their hand.  It’s a miracle, really.

Here’s another thing that surprised me: I don’t know what sort of covers are available out there but mine is like a book.  It’s not nearly the leap I thought it would be in terms of the way it feels to read this way.  If it was, I suppose I’d have to get used to it because such devices are not going away.  For this reason, I think it’s great news that e-readers have familiarity built into them.  I am presently reading a hardback copy of This Rock by Robert Morgan and it’s a beautiful book and a good story but it’s heftier to hold then the novel I’m reading on my Kindle.  I’m not chucking my books, mind you, just appreciating both the similarities and the differences.  I’ve also discovered that I have a habit I never knew I had; I slip a finger between the pages when I’m getting close to the bottom of a page, in preparation of turning it.  I didn’t know I did this until I began reading on the Kindle.  I can’t start turning the page with my Kindle until it’s time to turn the page.  I can live with that though.

As for what’s available to read – I’m going for the free stuff first.  There are a lot of classics out there that I’ve always meant to get around to.  My favorite thing about my particular reader it that it has an E-ink display, which means that it looks like a book.  I stare at my computer screen way too much as it is.  I’ve no desire to read all the great books that can be found in public domain on the Internet because I don’t much like reading long stuff on my computer.  Print that is not colored or lit is a great fit for me.  I have a reading light clipped on the side of my cover and I recently used it at night in the car while traveling over the holidays.  It works pretty good.  I’m currently reading The Portrait of Dorian Gray and I’ve lined up many exciting selections to follow.  What a splendid time I’m having treasure-hunting in the Kindle store!

It goes without says that I’m still new to the Kindle and have a lot to learn and experience.  It’s impossible to guess how much I will be liking it a month from now.  So far so good.  I am anxious to begin investigating how writers are making the most of reading devices.  Giving away free chapters appears to be one popular marketing idea.  I’m too distracted to go into that much at the moment, however, because even as I write, I have the strongest urge to simply go and hold a big bookstore in my hand.  In fact, I don’t think I can resist any longer.  Before I leave my computer for my Kindle for the day, I wish you happy reading any which way you find it in 2011!

If you scooped me out of my desk chair this very second and dropped me down in the Black Forest with a blindfold tied around my head, I’d know instantly that I was in Germany.  The air there is distinctive somehow; a subtle, pleasing, not-like-here fragrance that followed me down the autobahn, up the steps of Heidelberg, across the Alpine foothills…  It’s fresh and its old.  It’s iris and stone.  It’s trains and caraway with a hint of kristallweizen.  No single ingredient stands out in the overall essence, and yet the smell forms a long, gorgeous veil that drapes my every memory of Germany.  You can’t get a whiff of it in the pictures I’ve taken either.  You have to go to the Black Forest and smell it with your own nose or else you have to travel the path of prolific stepping stones left by articulate wordsmiths who have ventured there in your place.

Most writers have rich imaginations.  Good ones can puzzle together realities they’ve never touched or tasted in person but, for me, visiting an actual destination, whenever possible, always adds a depth of understanding I might not have been able to grasp otherwise.  Few things get my blood pounding like research and the best kind of research transports me both spiritually and bodily to my heart’s dream destination.  It doesn’t have to cost anything or be far away to prove worthwhile.  There is a pioneer cabin that has been lovingly preserved and furnished by the city I live in and it’s conveniently located in a park two minutes away from my house.  This cabin is the closest I can come to stepping back into the past and it’s no trouble at all to make the trip.  I’ve also enjoyed cemeteries, prisons, and a dark, dank missal silo on a dark, dank night; all within a short walk or drive from my home.

Over the years, I’ve been lucky to go a little farther away, as well.  When I was writing about London vampires, my husband brought me along on a business trip and we spent a few extra days expanding upon my literary fumblings by touching, tasting, and absorbing things that the Internet thus far cannot deliver me at home.  Similarly, I’ve hiked the Alps, spent hundreds of weekends poking around the most remote areas of Death Valley, and lived in a van down by the river.  Well, I lived in a van for a couple of weeks along the Redwood coast.  Had I not experienced these things first hand, I might have gone my whole life believing that Death Valley is a scorched, forbidding place.  In actuality, that view is too limited and far too clichéd to be remotely true.  Some landscapes are easier to imagine than others.  Some you can’t begin to know until you’ve felt their heat against your own face.

This past week, I had the unique opportunity of spending two nights in a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Wisconsin.  The house was built in 1939.  Boy was that fun!  We are architecture nuts in my family and we’ve toured several FLW homes in recent years.  Before last week, I’d leaned over velvet ropes and craned my neck around the taller heads of people in tour groups only to get a passing glance at his art glass and cantilevered roofs.  It was a shock to the system to actually be able to throw my feet up and drink a martini in a house designed by the man.

The owners have done things right at Still Bend and do not balk at sharing – not only their fine home – but the cocktail glasses, dip bowls, knickknacks, pillows, books, and toys of the period, all of which really do help a girl step back in time.  I channeled some former residents while sleeping within the brick walls of the maid’s room, and felt the unexpected warmth of the heated cement floor as it climbed through the sole’s of my feet and settled in my bones.  If you’re a fan of FLW, you know he did amazing things with fireplaces.  Throwing a log into his fireplace has stoked the flames of my creativity as no Googled photo ever could.  It was a special experience guaranteed to vividly color the new project I began there, and you gotta love a place whose name, Still Bend, is an oxymoron that so beautifully marries inactivity and movement.

Taking in the sights from my desk chair at home is not without it’s advantages.  I love my computer (when it’s behaving nice anyway) and I can drink coffee while visiting the other side of the world, and wear torn pajama pants, and throw in another load of laundry, if I must.  Until that better, distant grandchild of the Internet comes along that allows me to step through my monitor (in the ripped pants, with my coffee mug) and stand under the hipped roof of a farmhouse in the sweet-smelling Black Forest, I know I will always need to step outside my office sometimes and visit the real thing.  If I haven’t the time or means to explore an English castle for a gothic story, I can hop in my car and drive to Pythian Castle in my home state instead.  It’s a real renovated castle and, who knew; it smells ever so slightly of apples.

For more information on renting a Frank Lloyd Wright house, visit:

http://www.theschwartzhouse.com/Home.html

Being new to Storytellers this month, I’ve had “beginnings” on the brain. It was for this reason that I’d decided to take a look at some of the things that have motivated successful authors over the years. I’ve always been fascinated by that tiny seed that grows up to be a towering Redwood. This week, while digging around the roots of old novels in search of acorns and nuts, I hit upon a completely different discovery. Sure, it’s neat to know that Injun Joe was based on a real guy who wore a scary red wig and died from eating pickled pig’s feet, but I was surprised to realize that sometimes the more interesting story behind the story is what didn’t inspire the author.

Perhaps the most startling piece of non-inspiration I bumped into is some recent evidence suggesting that Dracula is not based on Dracula. The New Annotated Dracula by Bram Stoker makes the claim that Stoker was not even aware of Vlad Tepes when he first began his manuscript. He renamed his original count Wampyr after he was already deep into his work. It would appear that it was simply a lucky coincidence that history and fiction matched so perfectly. I might doubt the chances of this happening had I not experienced similar things with my own writing. The fact that Stoker did not steal from the dark past of Vlad the Impaler makes his novel all the more creative in my opinion.

On the flip side of this, consider the theories of one Prof. Emeritus Radu Florescu, a respected authority on Eastern Europe who enjoys studying the origins of mythical characters. Florescu believes that Mary Shelly’s original Frankenstein seed got planted in a castle in Germany, not Byron’s infamous Villa Diodati on a dark and stormy night in Lake Geneva. Shelly, he says, once toured Castle Frankenstein, the home of Dippel Frankenstein, a dubious alchemist with a yen for a laboratory and the ability to perpetuate life. Dippel was said to be in possession of a special oil that could make a person live two hundred years. He rounded up cadavers as part of the process. A prior visit to Castle Frankenstein doesn’t really change things of course but, unlike Stoker’s historical lark, Shelly’s impromptu ghost story gets less fictional upon closer examination if Florescu has the background right.
I don’t much like the thought of this last one but, according to Windblown World: the Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954, evocative Jack did not, as the old story goes, write On the Road in a feverish three week scribble on one long continuous roll of paper. Rather, he kept a highly detailed account of all his thoughts and experiences. Furthermore, he wrote Psalms in his spare time and did not consider himself a hipster at all, but more accurately an “observer of hipsters”. In this instance, I sort of miss the image of an endless spool of paper bleeding confessional ramblings

Frankly, some of these claims are a bit hard for me to swallow. Dracula not Dracula? Kerouac a beatnik wannabe? Then again, the genesis of greatness can be a highly elusive thing. I can tell you right now, I will never tire of hearing stories of how an author got started – that brief flash of genius Eudora Welty experienced after seeing brightly colored bottles on the ends of tree limbs, the convent with the iron swings that launched Carson McCuller’s on-going theme of spiritual isolation, the way Fitzgerald’s life flowed from the tips of Hemingway’s fingers in the form of The Snows of Kilimanjaro… Sometimes inspiration is truly divine. Other times, its just another nice story to go along with the story. In any case, we all have to get started somehow, right?

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