On Pseudonyms

My dear departed father, an excellent writer in his own right, loved to use his pen name, RJ Nalla. His name was Allan Maxwell, Junior. RJ Nalla? Allan Jr backwards.

Once, in the early 1980s, he even made it onto NPR. All Things Considered had solicited "First signs of Spring" from listeners. Living in our house in a suburb of Los Angeles as he did, Daddy sent in his postcard with a comment about the camellias blooming in February (those are camellias behind him in this picture from his 1980 second wedding day). He was notified ahead of time that they were going to read his contribution, so I, in Boston, made sure to have the radio on at the correct time. What did I hear? "Listener RJ Nalla from Southern California reports..." His moment of fame, and he couldn't even use his real name? Well, that quirk was part of my father's loveability.

(Fun side story. My home town of Temple City sponsors the Camellia Parade every year, with floats made completely of camellias and their leaves by Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, and royalty drawn from the first grade classes.Think mini-Rose Parade. I was a Princess when I was six! And look here, the parade continues, complete with the floor-length dresses for the girls. Maybe this weekend I'll venture into the attic and find you the picture of ME in that princess dress.)

I myself am now presented with the need for a pseudonym. I always planned to publish all my books under my good solid name, Edith Maxwell. It even sort of sounds like an authorial name, right?

But in reviewing the contract for my three-book Local Foods Mystery series with Kensington Publishing, I noticed a clause. It said I have to deliver all three outlines and manuscripts to the publisher prior to the delivery to any other publisher of a book-length work unless that book is already under contract. They don't want me to come out with two mysteries by two different presses at the same time under the same name. That makes sense.

Well. My first mystery, Speaking of Murder, is currently being considered at several small presses after the contract with Trestle Press fell through, but it is not currently under contract. I want it to be published, though, and have plans to self publish if none of the reputable small presses want it.

I asked my agent, John Talbot, what to do about that clause. The resolution from the press was that I had to agree to publish Speaking of Murder and its sequel only under a pseudonym. While I'd rather use my real name on all my books, I agreed. I figure I can always link to the other name under my Amazon author page or whatever.

So now I get to make up an entirely new name for myself and am having fun playing with family names and combinations. Nicky Henderson? Ruthie Adams? Cat Flaherty?

Speaking of Murder, featuring Quaker Linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau in northeastern Massachusetts, is a traditional murder but a little darker than a cozy. I want to get the right feel and sound to the name. It has to be easy to spell, easy to say, easy to remember. Somehow, Htide Llewxam doesn't roll off the tongue anywhere nearly as well as RJ Nalla did. Any advice out there from those of you who have done it on how to design a new personality? Any feedback on the three possible choices I listed in the previous paragraph?

Flu, Writing, and Weight Loss

Okay, so having the flu and losing a few pounds might be related. But how do they relate to this blog, that is, to writing?

Well, one doesn't expect to be stricken with an extreme and involuntary form of a cleanse. Sure, I didn't have to purchase a Kleanse Kit or follow a recipe for purging my system of toxins near and far. The flu did that for me, complete with fever and narcolepsy. But cleansed I was. No writing was possible. Consciousness was barely achieved.

By the third day (this is not a religious treatise, so don't get your hopes up), I was eating small amounts of gruel and tea. As a woman with legendary appetites in several directions, I know I'm sick when I'm not hungry and I eat a little only because I know I should.

But then I started getting short of breath. Sweated through fevers at night. Coughed prodigiously. One doctor (not my regular one) listened to my lungs and bronchii and declared I was having an asthma flareup, not bronchitis or pneumonia. Hmmph. I was able to work from home for a couple of days, but no creativity emerged.

The next day, the one I weekly devote to writing fiction, I was determined not to let illness stand in the way of accumulating word count on the first draft of the work in progress. Because of the continued night fever, I returned to Holistic Family Practice to get my lungs checked again, this time by my long-time family doctor. Nope, still clear. Okay, so it was aggravated asthma flareup.

In some way this gave me extra energy for writing, now that I knew that my demise was not imminent and, actually, I was apparently not even sick. So let's write! On that day and the following, I moved the story forward by almost 5000 words. Whee!

Oh, the weight loss? Being sick took off about four pounds I'd been unable to shed on my own. Now that I'm finally feeling better after ten days, I'm back on my fast-walk exercise routine and determined to keep them off. But what about today's delivery of my annual ten-box order of Girl Scout cookies? Uh. Umm. Well, the ritual consumption of an entire sleeve of Thin Mints on delivery day has been held to a half sleeve.

And tomorrow is Writing Friday again, wide open for fiction, walking, and self control. What about you? Do you get extra hungry after surviving a stomach flu? Find inspiration for writing during a fever or only aftewards?

Out in the World

Writing-related musings on being out in the world, after a few days sick at home.

I have an Author page on Amazon. On Amazon! Makes it seem real.

I had the chance to visit Turkey Shore Distilleries recently. They're down the street in Ipswich, and they make a line of hand-crafted rums with table-grade molasses from Louisiana sugarcane and a custom-built 250-gallon copper still built in Kentucky. They aim to produce rums like those made in Ipswich several centuries ago. They handed out tastes in little plastic cups.

Since I had only ever tasted pretty low-level rums, I was amazed. It was smooth, it had flavor, and you didn't even need sweet stuff to mix with it. I could imagine sipping it straight in front of the wood stove on a snowy night (if this winter ever gets snowy). So I trotted right home and added that vendor to the Locavore Festival scene I was in the middle of writing, despite the fact that the molasses Turkey Shore uses isn't local.

With reluctance I canceled my registration to Malice Domestic for this year. It's a fan tastic conference geared toward mystery readers. I went last year for the first time. I greatly enjoyed seeing fellow writer buddies and some fans, meeting the great and gracious Louise Penny, heading south at the start of spring to a warmer clime with flowers in bloom. But since I don't have a book to sell this year, I decided to conserve my resources and go next year (and the year after and the year after!). I'll miss my pals and a chance to see my son who lives in the area, but there will be other times, Goddess willing.

The Chocolate Challenge is this month and I decided to join up. It's a bunch of Guppies who try their best to write as many words as they can. We provide mutual support, and whoever writes the most words gets the prize - all the other Gups send her chocolate. Now that's a prize. I doubt I'll win, since I have the pesky matter of the day job, but I'm going to do a big push on getting another third of the way through A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die. Two years ago I managed to write 28000 words in the month. This brought me to the point of typing THE END at the end of Speaking of Murder, which was a huge thrill.

On Deadlines

A friend, the fabulous Robert Isleib (who now writes as Lucy Burdette), posted a casual little note today on Facebook. She said she was back at the starting line. Page 1 of Book 3, which she said is due September 1. (I should say that her Book 1, An Appetite for Murder, is a great read, and a wonderful start to a new series.)

Hmm. A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die is also due September 1. However, I already have more than a third written on the rough draft, 27,000 words at last count. Am I way ahead? Well, sure, way ahead of Lucy in this case. But this is her third book in the series and probably the tenth book (or more?) that she has written.

This is the third book I am writing and the first in this series.

Should I slow down? No way! Two other authors and I have formed an email support group, because we all have the same agent and the same deadline for the first book in our new cozy series. Jessie decided on a personal deadline of April 7 to finish her first draft. I decided on the same.

Why? So I can have lots of time to revise, edit, and get some critiques done before I turn it into the publisher. I do NOT have ten books under my belt, and I do NOT have two other books already written in this series. I'm still developing the protagonist and the other characters. I'm still honing descriptions of the setting. I'm still learning how to write.

I used to be much, much more of a procrastinator. You know, finishing papers in high school and college at the last possible minute. Wrapping Christmas presents into the night on Christmas Eve.

Now I am able to work ahead and finish projects with plenty of time to spare. Why? Because I have other demands on my time, like the day job? Because I'm more, ahem, mature? Not sure. I already have a short story written and revised to submit to this year's Level Best anthology (to be called Blood Moon!), and it isn't due until the end of April.

What I am sure of is that furthering my fiction-writing career is one of the most important things in my life these days. I want to be sure I have enough time to hone, polish, and improve my stories and books so they are the absolute best tale I can tell before I release them into the hands and inboxes of editors, agents, and most important, the reading public.

Of course you might ask why this week's post is delayed. It wasn't from procrastination, really! I was just busy and a topic hadn't come to mind.

What about you? Plan ahead and work steadily toward the goal? Save it for the last minute? Or does it depend on what the work is?

Finalist!

I got some great news last night. Speaking of Murder is a finalist in a contest.

I submitted it to the Linda Howard Award for Excellence contest last October. The book wasn't under contract at the time and hadn't been published, so it was eligible for this competition run by the Birmingham, Alabama chapter of Romance Writers of America (RWA). I selected the category of "Suspense: Romance-based novels that include an element of mystery or suspense." There is certainly romance, mystery, AND suspense in the book.

I didn't think much about it since then, not expecting that I would have a chance. I'm not even a member of the organization, and I don't write in a southern style. Imagine my surprise when I received the email that I am a finalist, one of only five! The organizers said that category was flooded with entrants.

The final judges are an editor at a press and a literary agent from an agency. I have to submit a two-to-five page synopsis of the book, which I already have, and resubmit the first twenty-five pages I sent them the first time, revised if I so choose. Okay, now I'm nervous.

The winners will be announced at the RWA Gulf Coast chapter's Silken Sands Conference, held in sunny Pensacola, Florida in mid March. Hmm. Maybe a plane ticket is in my future? Keep your fingers crossed and your good-luck mojo pointed my way.

When Is It Too Late?

When is it too late? I've been thinking about this a lot lately for a couple of reasons:

• The push for resolving to do things differently at the change of the year can also promote thoughts of, "It's too late for me to change that."
• The recent death or illness of several people close to me or close to those I love makes me want to be sure I have said and done what's important before it's too late.

It's certainly NOT too late to do more situps, to drink fewer glasses of wine, to write more letters, to worry less. Will these things happen? Maybe, maybe not, but I know it will never be too late to try as long as I walk this green earth.

It IS too late to tell my father, my cousin Mike, my favorite aunt Jo, or Bette and Roy Lockhart one more time that I love them. I feel confident that they knew of my love before they "went on ahead," as Bette used to to say, though, and I make sure my elderly mother and my sons knows it every time I talk with them.

It IS too late for a friend who had a difficult relationship with his mother to clear the air with her, since he didn't do it before she died.

It's NOT too late to learn a new language, to visit new countries, to begin a meditation practice, to take up the cello again. I'm pretty sure, with my joints, it IS too late for me to climb Mt. Washington or take up cardio-kickboxing.

But you know what? That's okay with me. I already ran the Boston

Marathon, got my black belt in karate, and did my share of hiking. As long as I can still walk a hilly mile and dance for a couple of hours at a stretch, I'm happy.

I wondered for almost two decades if it was too late to finish that mystery novel set on an organic farm that I wrote much of seventeen years ago. I'm so pleased that it isn't too late to at least bring the farmer and her world back to life in A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die, even if I discard most of the original writing.

Seize the day - carpe diem - is an excellent rule of life, along with Live your life so you have no regrets.

What in your life do you feel it's too late for, and what are you glad it's not too late for?

Drinking Locally

In A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die, farmer Cam Flaherty enjoys a sip of locally brewed ale or wine from the local winery. But is this plausible in Massachusetts?

You bet it is. The Ipswich Brewery has a new Five Mile Stock Ale (you can read about it here and here). It's good, too. Here's their description:

"With most of 5 Mile’s ingredients locally harvested from Massachusetts farms and with one ingredient grown within five miles of Ipswich, 5 Mile is truly a local brew. Dry-hopped with Cascade hops from our very own Ipswich hop yard, 5 Mile is a big, malty stock ale brewed to be enjoyed by Locavores and Omnivores alike."

The Alfalfa Farm Winery is just down the road in Topsfield. I helped out on their vendange, or harvest day a couple of months ago. In return they fed the volunteers lunch with wine and let us all pick out a bottle to take home. In the book, Cam is sipping a glass of the Marechal Foch when she discovers the body. Mill River Winery is also nearby, but I haven't had a chance to check them out yet.

Turkey Shore Distilleries is in Ipswich. They make a white rum at their micro distillery. I haven't tried it yet, but plan to. Maybe we'll pick up a bottle to celebrate my son's return from Rum Central (Puerto Rico) later this spring.

National Public Radio just did a story on the Mohawk Bend restaurant and bar in Los Angeles that stocks only wine, beer, and spirits from California and serves only locally grown foods. That's a good place for such a venture. A restaurant like that in Massachusetts would likely have a much smaller selection.

A couple of the volunteers who belong to the Locavore Club won't drink coffee because it isn't local. Coffee plants don't tolerate frost. They thrive on shady land in humid climates with temperatures ideally around 75 degrees Fahrenheit. In the US, it's only grown commercially in Hawaii. I guess you could nurture a single plant in a big pot on wheels in Massachusetts. If you had a heated indoor pool at home in a glass enclosure, you could probably overwinter the coffee there. In Iceland they grow coffee in greenhouses heated by volcanic steam.

Do you have any local drinks you're particularly fond of? Ever tried growing a coffee plant in a frosty climate?