Magic

Before we get to Alice's blog, we wanted to wish you a wonderful 2015!  "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." --Eleanor Roosevelt 

Dream big. And then go for it! You'll never know what you can accomplish in 2015 until you try.

And now, here's Alice!

Magic
by guest blogger, Alice Loweecey

What? Magic happens. One of my favorite magic memories is of Doug Henning on the Mike Douglas Show in the 1970s.

I realize I just aged myself.

Doug Henning

Doug Henning was the first magician I saw perform the Metamorphosis trick. That’s the trick where he tied his assistant in a bag and locked her in a trunk, then he stood on the trunk and brought up a curtain on a circular rod around the trunk and himself. Then with maybe three seconds’ delay he counted down: “One. Two.” He whipped the curtain over his head and whipped it back down—and his assistant stood there in his place and finished: “Three. It’s me!”

It’s the same way with one of my favorite table magic tricks. The magician has someone at the table take a sugar packet from the holder and write their name on it. He then performs distraction and patter while he’s doing something that also took hundreds of hours to perfect. The result: He takes a lemon, slices it in half, and the same sugar packet it folded up inside the center of the lemon, with the audience member’s name on it.

I don’t want to know the specifics of how the tricks are accomplished. I just want to enjoy the show.

What I do know is: It requires hundreds and hundreds of hours of practice to perform complex magic tricks in such a way that the payoffs appear completely seamless to the audience.

Segue to…

Writing! (See what I did there?)

Henning was colorful and happy and always fun to watch. I don’t want my readers thinking of the hours it took to learn to write believable characters. Or the hours it took to write smooth dialogue. Or especially the thousands of hours it took from the first draft of my first book to Nun Too Soon, my new mystery in stores on January 13. I want my readers to enjoy Giulia, my private investigator, and her sidekicks and their comic misadventures as they solve a case.

I want readers to have fun.

One. Two…

Image courtesy of By digitalart, at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Three! It’s book magic!

Baker of brownies and tormentor of characters, Alice Loweecey recently celebrated her thirtieth year outside the convent. She grew up watching Hammer horror films and Scooby-Doo mysteries, which explains a whole lot. When she’s not creating trouble for Giulia Falcone-Driscoll, she can be found growing her own vegetables (in summer) and cooking with them (the rest of the year).

Her newest release, Nun Too Soon  (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1) is available January 13th. To pre-order at Amazon click here.

Resolution as Metaphor

This year, I made two New Year’s resolutions. The first was to carry only the essentials in my purse.

I’m a person who delights in handbags. In particular, I like to carry totes, which accommodate lots of extra stuff. As a result, my shoulder and back are constantly aching from the weight I carry.

Hence, this year, I determined to lighten my load.

My second resolution was to drink more water. Perhaps part of this resolution came from the fact that I had the flu the last week of the year, and discovered the keys to getting better were taking the antibiotic, getting lots of rest, and keeping hydrated.

Liquids are very comforting when your throat is sore and nothing tastes good. They’re both filling and moisturizing, two very satisfying feelings associated with a comfortable, healthy lifestyle.

At some point during my recovery, I read in a writing craft book that characters should be viewed as metaphors rather than people. Interesting concept. Rather like the passion plays from the medieval times where audiences were encouraged to associate characters with good or evil.

It made me wonder if resolutions should be viewed as metaphors instead goals. Is a resolution a plan for action or a reflection of what you think about yourself?

What does it say about me that I want to carry less around and concentrate on drinking enough fluids? Are those signals that I want to shed unnecessary baggage and focus on keeping refreshed and vital?

How do those resolutions relate to my writing?

If you travel only with the essentials, you’re not overwhelmed with personal objects. You can watch what’s around you and enjoy new experiences. And if you keep hydrated, you have what’s essential to life. You are, in fact, embracing what makes up most of a human body (50 to 75 percent) and of the environment (about 71 percent of the earth’s surface and about a trace to 4 percent of the atmosphere).

Lightness and water are two ideas associated with movement and flow. They enable the journey and keep the adventurer fueled to seek new possibilities.

So far this year, I’ve been able to keep my resolutions. My shoulder and back don’t ache, and I’m rarely thirsty.

I know it’s hard to stick to resolutions. I’m sure the day’s coming when I slip that extra book into my tote or stay at the computer too long without taking a break to fill my glass.

But, maybe when I stray, remembering how much better I felt when I was following the resolutions will bring me back to them again. Perhaps I’ll read over some of my writing from a time I carried only a notebook and pen instead of my iPad or laptop and wrote at a coffee shop drinking refreshing mint tea. Maybe I’ll notice the easy movement of my prose when I was less encumbered and better lubricated. Then, I can sit down at my computer with a full bottle of water, type from my notes, and feel like I’m making progress.

And, isn’t that what resolutions are all about? Getting us started going forward into the New Year?

 

Have you made any resolutions? If so, what do you think they say about you and your writing?

What Makes a Friend?

Friends used to be people you grew up with or worked with or lived next door to, and of course, they still are. But friends are now also people who live across the country from you whom you never worked with or went to school with or even physically met. The internet has changed our lives in that way, connecting us closely to people we never would have met in the old days.

Some of my closest friends are people I only have a chance to see once a year or so at a national conference. Still, we are in touch all year long, and we give each other all kinds of support and real old-fashioned, loyal friendship through the internet. Some of my good friends are people I have never had the chance to meet in the flesh. We’ve done projects together, set up funds for good causes together, carried each other’s sadness during hard times, and confided secrets to each other, but our hands have never actually touched.

I think this is one of the big changes that the internet brought us—this kind of intimacy with someone  we may never have the chance to meet physically. Yet is it so strange? People are marrying people they meet online and building successful marriages and families with them, so why wouldn’t we build strong, important friendships that way also.

I’ve been thinking about this because a dear friend (whom I’ve never physically met) is going through a tough time as her husband’s cancer has come back and she has her own severe physical health issues. We have been there for each other through deaths, surgeries, disability, and various cancers. She has certainly been there for me, and I am trying to be there for her. Given her situation and mine, we may never actually meet in person, though we have spoken by phone, as well as Facebook, Twitter, and emails.

I suddenly find myself working on an anthology of poetry for a great cause with a friend I’ve never met in the flesh, although we laugh about the many things we have in common and wonder if we’re sisters somehow separated—couldn’t be twins because I’m much older. Next month, I’m going to stay with a friend whom I have met in person at a conference after making our acquaintance by the internet—and keeping in touch the same way. We’ve become closer and closer friends, even though we see each other once a year or less often.

Each of these three women are people I count as dear friends, closer than many people who live near me and whom I see often. They are heart friends. I have some deep heart friends whom I’ve known for many decades and see often, and then I have these deep heart friends whom I almost never see. Neither category of heart friend is closer or more valued than the other. It’s rare enough to make that kind of connection so I value it wherever I find it.

So here’s to good, close friends, whether we’ve known them forever and see them often or we’ve only met online. A sympathetic soul and a heart connection are what matter when it comes to friendship, after all.

Do you have heart friends whom you’ve never or seldom seen in the flesh? How do you think the internet is changing friendship?

Linda Rodriguez’s third novel featuring Cherokee detective Skeet Bannion, Every Hidden Fear, was a selection of the Las Comadres National Latino Book Club and received a 2014 ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Award. Her second Skeet mystery, Every Broken Trust, was a selection of Las Comadres National Latino Book Club and a finalist for the Premio Aztlan, took 2^nd Place in the International Latino Book Award, and was selected for Latino Books into Movies. Her first Skeet novel, Every Last Secret, won the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition, International Latino Book Award Honorable Mention, and was a Barnes & Noble mystery pick.

Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” which appeared in Kansas City Noir (Akashic Books), has been optioned for film. For her books of poetry, Skin Hunger and Heart’s Migration, Rodriguez received numerous awards and fellowship, including the Thorpe Menn Award for literary excellence, the Midwest Voices and Visions Award, the Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, the 2011 ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. She is chair of the AWP Indigenous/Aboriginal American Writers Caucus, immediate past president of the Borders Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, Kansas City Cherokee Community, and International Thriller Writers. Find her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com.