I stand by earlier assertions that those two words are the most beautiful in the English language. They felt even more true than usual when I typed them a couple of days ago.
For months, I've been saying that this book has fought me like no other (OK, except for the one before it, and the one before that). But in truth, the story itself was fine. I was the one putting up the fight, trying to force it into boxes I’d used before.
Once I tore it apart and started over, it became wonderfully cooperative and even – gasp – fun. Regret tinged “The End.” It struck me just how much I’ll miss these characters who’d dug in their heels and refused to go along with my early, wrongheaded notions about them, insisting upon having their story told the right way.
For me, there’ s a moment in every book – one that usually happens far too late for my taste – where the book takes over and strides toward the finish, much like my childhood pony who’d clench the bit in his teeth and gallop for the barn, trying his best to scrape me off under every tree branch along the way.
I wrote the final chapters in a frenzy this week, including a crazy day where I logged 4,000 words, part of it while working on the patio in the midst of a heat wave because I couldn’t stand another minute in my darkened, albeit air-conditioned, office.
I’m not really done, of course. These characters and I will spend another few weeks together as I launch into revisions, my personal favorite part of any novel. I’ve got pages full of notes about things that need to be tweaked, rewritten wholesale, or thrown out altogether – not to mention the margin reminders about smaller issues.
But we’ve made it through the hard part. The End.
Book News – New month, new deal
Hot enough for ya? Sorry (not). The heat wave is making me shameless. You know what else is shameless? This plug for the Kindle Daily Deal on The Least Among Us, my legal thriller set in the middle of a frigid mountain West winter. There’s a lot of ice and snow and c-c-cold in the book. Kirkus Reviews even described it as “a chilling look at the [legal] system.” (See what I did there?) The sale price is $2.99, i.e., cheaper than a cold brew, and it will be here all month. I’ll show myself out now.
Bake of the month - Breakfast on my mind
It’s a shameless kind of month. Because the small person in my life has declared herself a Swiftie, I’ve become one, too, which is how I happened to read that Tay won over Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs teammates with her homemade Pop-Tarts, a phrase that registered italic in my mind. Homemade Pop-Tarts?!
Fellow crime novelist Gabriel Valjan recently broke my heart by sending me a list of foods banned in Europe because they’ve got all kinds of bad stuff in them. Pop-Tarts, a guilty pleasure of mine, was on the list. Che peccato! Homemade to the rescue. I combined three different recipes – one for the dough, one the filling and one the icing. No more guilt, at least in terms of the ingredients.
When it comes to bananas, I run hot and cold, which means sometimes they disappear immediately and sometimes they just sit around and turn black, theoretically to be used in smoothies but all too often thrown out. I bypassed either option this month and turned them into banana muffins with a streusel topping. Yum to the yum.
What I’m reading: Two crime-fiction standouts
I have a rule about audiobooks: I can only listen to them when I’m walking. I logged a lot of extra miles listening to Kellye Garrett’s Missing White Woman because I had to know what happened next. Several times, I was sure I’d figured it out, only to be confounded every time. Garrett’s previous novel, Like A Sister, was great; this is even better. Also, the title - with its nod to the lack of news coverage when women of color go missing - is irresistible.
I’ve said this before about E.A. Aymar’s books – no one is better at slipping humor into crime fiction. I was laughing out loud just a couple of chapters in to When She Left. Aymar doesn’t stint on violence, but it’s always of a piece with the situation, and never feels gratuitous. It’s a fast read, rocketing along to the gut-punch of the last line.
A word about Alice Munro (PS: Neil Gaiman)
Two newsletters ago, I added my own inadequate voice to the worldwide rapturous tributes following the death of Nobel Prize-winning Canadian short story author Alice Munro. Her flinty stories about girls and women, mostly in rural settings, have bowled me over for decades. Now comes the news that Munro looked the other way when her daughter reported Munro’s husband began abusing her when she was nine. Munro’s view, her daughter wrote, was that “it had nothing to do with her” – news that put many Munro stories in a very different light. I don’t know how to read them now. I don’t know if I’ll ever read them again. The usual words – sickening, inexcusable, etc. – seem inadequate as the mourning for Munro takes a hard swerve into sadness for her daughter.
I’ve only read one of Neil Gaiman’s books, American Gods, so he wasn’t the hero to me that he is for so many. That said, the news that two women have reported he assaulted them (he’s denied the allegations) doesn’t land more easily. At least there’s a reckoning.
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Thanks! This one really put me through the wringer.
Congrats on wrapping up another one! 🤗