Lifescapes

Hill Country drought notes: #1

 We are entering the twenty-fourth month of drought here in the Hill Country of Central Texas. I'm going to begin making short notes on local drought effects, mostly for my own records, but also with the thought that some of you may be interested, either because you're local or because you're considering moving here. The photo: one of our drought-stressed cypress trees, turning russet in July, as it usually does after the first frost.

Two drought-related events, both recent. West of San Antonio, at the southern edge of the Edwards aquifer, the city of Kerrville was told to reduce the amount of water it draws from the Guadalupe River, which is down to 90% of its normal flow. This will force the city to pull more water from the aquifer, which will reduce the amount of aquifer supply in communities outside the city. Farther north, in a 180-home subdivision (White Tail Estates) between Georgetown and Leander, on the Trinity aquifer, wells have gone dry. Residents have the choice of drilling deeper or going on the subdivision is being added to the Georgetown water system. Since Georgetown gets its water from Lake Georgetown, from which the city takes 40 million gallons every day, this will (eventually) place more stress on the lake. But not right away. It will take 15 years to complete the project.

Our wells here at Meadow Knoll are still holding, although its impossible to know the situation below ground. We're careful, and have a small water catchment system to augment our aquifer withdrawal. But the only "rescue" for Texas is the forecast El Nino--or a hurricane or two (which nobody wants).

Global warming? There was a seven-year drought here in the 50s, so this has happened before--at a time when the region was much less populated than it is now. But for me, at least, it's not possible to think about this drought without thinking of man-made climate change. For the last two years, here on the 98th meridian, we've received around 15" of rain annually, half of our long-term "normal" of thirty inches.

Reading note. [The hundredth meridian] divides the country into its two most significant halves--the one receiving at least twenty inches of precipitation a year, the other generally receiving less. Any place with less than twenty inches of rainfall is hostile terrain to a farmer depending solely on the sky, and a place that receives seven inches or less--as Phoenix, El Paso, and Reno do--is arguably no place to inhabit at all. Everything depends on the manipulation of water...--Mark Reisner, Cadillac Desert 

Starting a new series: Part 1

People often ask me how I go about imagining a book series. The conclusion of the Cottage Tales is in sight: I planned eight books in this Beatrix Potter series, just finished the seventh and sent it off to New York this week. So I'm starting a new project--my fourth adult mystery series. I thought I'd write a couple of blog posts about how this process works for me, with the idea that it might be interesting to readers and perhaps to other writers.

I love the challenge of writing historicals (enjoy the research, the opportunity to inhabit another world), so it was a given from the get-go that the new series would be an historical. I thought of continuing the Cottage Tales with the animals as the lead characters, but I've spent nearly eight years writing about the Lake District in the early 1900s. I love those badgers and the owl, but eight years felt like enough.

For me, writing grows out of reading. I confess. I'm addicted to books. print, ebook, audiobook, books in all forms. I read to learn (I know this sounds dweeby, but that's just me) rather than to be entertained, and I've always had a "reading project" underway. I choose a subject (nonfiction) or a writer, and begin reading everything I can get my hands on that topic or by that writer. I borrow, beg, and buy books. I annotate the books I intend to keep, make lists on the endpapers of important pages, write notes on Postits and stick them to the pages, and collect items from bibliographies. Sometimes my reading projects (yes! there can be more than one at any given time) connect with a writing project, sometimes not. But very often, I want to write about what I am reading.

When the current recession came along, I decided to read about the Great Depression. I remember hearing my mother talk about it with her mother and her sisters. Since she and my father had lived through it, my childhood (in the 1940s-50s) was very much influenced by the lifeways they adopted in the 30s--things they had to do just to get by. I'm sure that my life was influenced by their experiences in ways I don't yet understand.

The more I read, the more I began to feel that the next fiction project would be set in the 30s. The period is close enough to be familiar, far enough back in time to feel "historical." I was intrigued by the idea of writing about ordinary people (like my mother, my father, their families) who were going through what many of us are going through now: tough times. How did they handle that challenge? What kinds of resources did they have or develop? How did they work together? What conflicts were there? You get the idea. It didn't take long for me to get hooked on the period. So the new series, called The Darling Dahlias, is another historical. It starts in the spring of 1930, after the stock market crash in October, 1929.

In another post, I'll talk about the series theme and location, so watch for that. And in the meantime, if you haven't yet checked out the trailer for my upcoming memoir, Together, Alone (University of Texas Press) you'll find it here. 

 

 

Reading note. Real reading, of course, is a kind of work. But it’s lovely work. To read well, you have to respond actively to what the writer’s saying. You can’t just lie there on the couch and let it pour over you. You may have to read with a pencil in hand and underline passages and write notes in the margins. The poet John Milton understood that the best readers are rare. He prayed to his muse that he might a “fit audience find, though few.”--Wendell Berry

Crafting a trailer

For the past couple of weeks I've been working with Masha Holl to produce a trailer for the new memoir, Together, Alone, which is coming out next month. I met Masha when I spoke to the San Antonio Romance Writers in May. She announced to the group that she had just finished her own trailer and posted it online and would be glad to work with other authors who wanted to create a trailer for their books. I heard that (see? it does pay to toot your own horn!) and when I got home, I emailed her. It didn't take long to decide that I wanted Masha to do my trailer.

In case you're curious about the process, here's how it worked. I had an idea of what the project ought to look/sound like--3 minutes, with photos, text, music. I wrote a script and selected a batch of photos for Masha to work with. She arranged them--did a great job with zooms and fades, and captured exactly the look I had in mind. We jiggled around with the reading a bit, and ultimately decided that I should do it. (Many thanks to Becca Taylor for her help with the recording!) I knew the music I wanted ("Simple Gifts"). Masha located the perfect versionand showed me how to purchase the rights. Then she put the photos, the music, and the reading together, and uploaded it to YouTube. From there, Peggy Moody  posted it to the website.

You can see that this was very much a team job. Thanks to Masha, Becca, and Peggy for making it happen. I'm delighed with what we achieved. Hope you like it, too!

You can watch it here. Oh, and you can read the first chapter there, too.

Reading note.  To establish oneself in the world, one does all one can to seem established there already.--François de La Rochefoucauld   

The Mystery of the Multiple Pseudonyms

MadTownMama (the pseudonym of a blogger named Susan, over at Mad Knitting) wrote yesterday, with this query: ""Do you mind (sometime) explaining all the pseudonyms you've written under? Why weren't you just Susan Wittig Albert for all those books you wrote? Just wondering!"

Writers use pseudonyms for lots of different reasons. There's a good article on the subject here and a much more general Wikipedia article here. In my case, there have been three reasons.

I began writing under the name Susan Blake because (small confession here) I was still working at a university and didn't want my colleagues to know that I was moonlighting as a writer of mass market young adult fiction. Carolyn Heilbrun did the same thing. She was an English prof at Columbia who wrote the Kate Fansler series (really good!) under the pen name of Amanda Cross, because she feared--with good reason--that she wouldn't get tenure if the senior profs knew what she was up to in her spare time. You can read the story here, then go read Death in a Tenured Position, Amanda Cross at her best. BTW, I really was Susan Blake once, when I was married to a man with that name. By the time I used his name as a pen name, we were divorced, and the use of that name to earn money was sort of like thumbing my nose at him. Maybe you know the feeling?

Second reason. The several young adult series I was writing in were created, for obvious marketing reasons, under one single name. Examples: Carolyn Keene, Franklin W. Dixon (the Hardy Boys), Francine Pascal (Sweet Valley Twins). All the writers--over the years, there were dozens of us in a single long-running series--wrote under that name. How else could Carolyn Keene write her first book in 1929 and still be alive and kicking? When you're hired to write a book in that series, you use that name. The various pseudonyms I've used belong to the series--I call them "series pseudonyms."

In the case of the Robin Paige mysteries, Bill and I were required to use a pseudonym because the publisher felt (most publishers do) that fiction written under two names doesn't sell very well. Readers might balk at the idea of a team-written book. That's less true now, probably, but it was certainly true when we sold the series in 1993. So we scratched our heads and came up with the bi-gendered name, Robin (masculine in Britain, feminine in the US).

Does that solve the Mystery of the Multiple Pseudonyms?

(Thanks, MadTownMama, for asking!)

 

Nancy's Legacy

 

Did I ever tell you how I got to be Carolyn Keene?

If anybody asked me, when I was twelve, what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was easy: I'd love to be Nancy Drew (wouldn't every girl?). But really, I'd add, I'd rather be Carolyn Keene--and I meant it. Even at twelve, I had dreams of being a writer. I'd rather write a Nancy than be Nancy.

And in 1985,and for some years after, I really was Carolyn Keene. It happened because I had written a YA mystery called The Haunted Dollhouse, under the name Susan Blake, for Dell's Twilight series. An editor for Megabooks (the company that produced the Nancy Drew Case Files) read Dollhouse, tracked me down, and called me. I picked up the phone one morning and the voice on the other end of the line asked: "How would you like to be Carolyn Keene?" I was astonished. Well, wouldn't you be, if someone phoned to grant your dearest childhood wish?

My first Nancy was called White Water Terror. I went on to write several Nancys, by myself or with Bill, and several more Hardy Boys, as well. (You can see a full list of our books here.) During those years--the late 1980s--I also wrote in a great many other YA series, under different pseudonyms. After a while, I got tired of working within the formulaic limitations imposed by these series, and went on to do my own work. But the Nancys, Hardy Boys, and other YA books were a good apprenticeship for me: they gave me a chance to learn the craft, practice the discipline of writing-to-earn-a-living (not an easy discipline, by any means), and get acquainted with editors, editorial preferences, and the publishing business--from the inside. When I began the China Bayles series in 1992, and the Robin Paige Victorians in 1994, I wasn't a novice. What I learned as Carolyn Keene (and Francine Pascal and Susan Blake and Eileen Goudge and others) prepared me to do the adult mysteries. It was an invaluable beginning.

Which is why I had to smile when Judge Sotomayor said that Nancy Drew represented boldness and intelligence. And when I read "Nancy Drew's Granddaughters" in the New York Times this morning, I was very glad that Nancy is getting all the respect she deserves. She meant a great deal to me: courage, the willingness to take risks, and the chance to imagine myself doing things I wasn't allowed to do--and get by with it. And so did Carolyn Keene.

For a full history of the series, its evolution and various spin-offs, check out Wikipedia. I also enjoyed Melanie Rehak's book, Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her.

Reading note:  “I needed Nancy Drew,” said [former Congresswoman Pat] Schroeder. “She was smart and she didn’t have to hide it! She showed me there was another way to live,” added Ms. Schroeder, who would earn her pilot’s license at 15, and become a feminist politician from Colorado. For women like Ms. Schroeder and Judge Sotomayor, the acquisition of the books is central to their Nancy Drew narratives.--"Nancy Drew's Granddaughters"

Record heat

I love this hot-color coleus, don't love but am learning to live with these hot-hot days. 106 yesterday, maybe cooler today as the high pressure that's been keeping the lid on the Texas hot-plate drifts slowly off to the west. The last thirty days: the hottest ever, EVER, since records have been kept in Austin. No wonder my beans are sulking. Blossoms, but no pods. Even the eggplants (a tropical nightshade, climatized for hot weather) aren't setting fruit. If you have that problem, too, I found some ideas here. Basically, though, we just have to wait for the end of this heat, probably another 30-45 days.

But the best news is El Nino. Computer models for October/November/December, JFM 2010, and AMJ 2010 show above-normal rainfall for CenTX. Even getting back to normal would be a blessing: above-normal seems almost unimaginable. Two years of 15" annual rainfall spells disaster for local gardeners, farmers, ranchers.

Working on the revisions to Extraordinary Year, staying cool, knitting a sock for an hour in the evening, watching a film (last night, Doubt, which I absolutely loved and will watch for a second time tonight), currently reading Cadillac Desert, which I ought to have read years ago but somehow didn't, and thinking about water resources and the Texas aquifers, especially the Ogallala, which we cross when we drive to New Mexico. The nation depends on the croplands that have been supported by this aquifer, but the fossil water there will be gone in a matter of decades. Another of the changes (along with climate change and energy depletion) that our children and grandchildren will be learning to live with.

Reading note. The irrigation of the Ogallala region, which has occurred almost entirely since the Second World War, is, from a satellite's point of view, one of the most profound changes visited by man on North America; only urbanization, deforestation, and the damming of rivers surpass it.--Mark Reisner, Cadillac Desert

An Extraordinary Year

 

Sunflowers. Lots and lots of sunflowers blooming right now. They seem to thrive on the heat, although I'm sure they'd like a brisk summer shower. Nothing on the horizon until the end of the week, when our rain chances shoot all the way up to--wait for it--20%. Wow.

The project I mentioned yesterday (and promised to tell you about today) isn't exactly new. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I spent all of 2008 writing a journal-for-publication, with the idea that the University of Texas Press might be interested in the manuscript. I finished the manuscript and handed it over to Theresa May at the Press at the end of March. She sent it out to two reviewers, who just returned their evaluations. Both recommend publication--with plenty of suggestions for revision, of course. Armed with their notes, I'll be spending the next two weeks going back through the manuscript, getting it ready for final review. If all goes well, the book will be out in September, 2010.

When I originally pitched the project to Theresa May, I had it in mind that an "extraordinary year" would be about growing older ("sage-ing," as my friend Judith calls it). It was my 69th year, the first year of my eighth decade--a landmark year in anybody's life, wouldn't you say?.

Well. I had no idea.

For me (and I suspect for most Americans) 2008 was truly extraordinary. We elected the first African-American president. We watchd gasoline prices soar, oil production peak, the banking system go belly-up, and Galveston get totally whacked by Ike. We looked with astonishment at our 401Ks, melting faster than the polar icecaps, and at the forest of for-sale signs and foreclosures invading our neighborhoods. We began to count food miles and species extinctions and diminishing water resources and think about becoming locovores, ecovores, gardeners, chicken keepers, and seed savers. The electric car began to seem possible again (after it became extinct in California a decade ago), and wind turbines mushroomed across the West Texas landscape.

So forget the part about me being 69 and counting. Turns out that 69 is a pretty ordinary event. Everybody gets to do it once--those of us who live to be 70, that is. But 2008 was an astonishing year, a wonderful/awful/incredible year to document. Journaling it made me even more conscious of just how amazing it was.

So. Beatrix #7 gets printed today and mailed tomorrow. And I'm back to my extraordinary year, reliving 2008, for the record.

Reading note:  When we look back, 2008 will be a momentous year in human history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us “What was it like? What were you doing when it started to fall apart? Could you see it? What did you think? What did you do?"--Paul Gilding

Green tomato pie

 

One of my mother's favorite Depression-era recipes was her green tomato pie. We ate quite a lot of green tomatoes when I was a kid, usually in the fall, before the first freeze killed the vines. Now, gardening in Texas, I'm cutting back my spring tomatoes (seeded in January, transplanted in early April, bearing late May-early July), to encourage them to produce again in the fall. I still have ripe tomatoes, but quite a few green tomatoes too, and yesterday, I baked Mom's green tomato pie.

The pie begins with thin-sliced green tomatoes, peeled and cored (green tomatoes often have a crunchy core. Just for the heck of it, I added a couple of sliced zucchini. I sauteed the slices in butter, mixed them with lemon juice, sugar, salt, spices, and flour, and put them into an unbaked crust, topped with pastry. Bill (who generally prefers his tomatoes sauced and won't eat a zucchini unless he doesn't know what it is) thought I had baked him an apple pie and enjoyed it so much that he ate two pieces.

 

Mom's Green Tomato Pie
3 1/2 c. peeled and sliced green tomatoes
3 tbsp. butter or margarine
6 tbsp. lemon juice
1 1/4 c. sugar
3 tbsp. flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. cloves

Saute the tomatoes in the butter and lemon juice until just tender. Combine tomatoes with sugar, flour, salt and spices. Line 9" pie pan with pastry, pour in filling, dot with butter and cover with top crust. Bake at 450 degrees 10 minutes then reduce to 350 degrees and bake until crust is brown (about 35-40 minutes).

Book work. Hoping to wrap up The Tale of Oat Cake Crag today, at 89,000 words. If you've been following this project with me, you know that I began on May 4. I've taken some time off for book talks, shopping, and the ordinary stuff of life, and several days out because of the storm in early June, which knocked the power out. (This would not have bothered Beatrix, who wrote her books in pencil and ink in lined, bound notebooks.) All told, I have 62 days in the project, including five days for revisions. Which means I averaged a little more than 1400 words a day. I'm saying this to make a point: that if you write every day and if you stay with it long enough, you can manage a book-length project, or a collection of short stories, or a substantial journal. It's the dailiness that counts.

Tomorrow, I'm picking up another project. I'll tell you about it when tomorrow comes, so drop in again in the morning. I'm also spending some quality time over at Facebook, meeting new friends and book readers and enjoying the sense of community. Who said writing was a lonely business?

Reading note: If you want to write, if you want to create, you must . . . write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy head.--Ray Bradbury

 

Tomato trim

 

This is the "after" photo of a tomato that's just had its serious July trim. In CenTX, we grow tomatoes in the spring and in the fall--and sometimes, when the plants look strong, we can carry them over from spring into fall. Here's the "before" photo, so you can see the difference. (Click to enlarge.)

By the time summer gets here (usually about mid-May or early June), the plant is still producing blossoms, but the blossoms don't set fruit when the daytime temps are above 90 and the nighttime temps are above 70. So the fruit that's on the vines in early June will be the last for the season. I had 16 plants this year and harvested about a bushel over 45 days--too much to eat, not enough to bother canning, so I dried what we didn't eat and made tomato powder.

Now that the plants have stopped producing and most of the tomatoes are ripe, it's time for the July trim. This guy (top photo) will be back in production in September, when (we hope) the days and nights will be a little cooler. That's the theory, anyway. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Depends (at least in part) on whether the tomato hornworm gets to the plant before I get to the hornworm. And on the constancy of my watering, and on the rain.

Thanks to all who clicked on over to Helen Ginger's blog for yesterday's Rhys & Susan show, a conversation about writing British mysteries between me and Rhys Bowen, award-winning author of a couple of British mystery series. The post is still up, if you missed it yesterday.

I'm pushing hard to finish The Tale of Oat Cake Crag today or tomorrow. "Finish" is a relative word, of course. There's a bit of trimming to do, and the author's note, but the storylines are tied into pretty knots and all the characters' dilemmas have been resolved. This is the seventh book in an eight-book series, so getting all the carry-over plots in shape for final resolution in Book Eight has been an interesting challenge. Somebody wrote to me the other day and asked me how I could possibly do three books in a year, when all she could manage was one short story. I suggested that she read this blog for a while, and she'd see. But the real answer is simply that I write every day. Write. Just write. Oh, and trim tomatoes.

Reading note. I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy.--Madeleine L’Engle

Garden views & a blogging conversation with Rhys Bowen

 

This is the pretty side of the garden, with the bean towers, the corn (this is flour corn, not "eating" corn), the zukes, and a few tomatoes and beans in the foreground--and a nice shot of the open meadow on the other side of the lane. These are the raised beds I built last year; the whole thing is fenced to keep the deer and bunnies from feasting on the veggies. It will be expanded this fall by another five beds. Lots of growing going on here, some of it productive. (The zukes seem to put out a great many more leaves than squash, but maybe things will change when the temps cool down a little here in the Hill Country.)

This is the working side of the garden (you can click on the photo and see a larger view). This is where the action is, where most of the real work goes on. What happens on this side of the fence makes the plants grow on the other side of the fence. From front to back, you can see grass mulch, leaf litter from the woods, dried cow manure, grass clippings, and one of the two compost bins. This is my "soil factory," where I mix up all the "extras" that give the veggies something to grow on. Our soil here is very alkaline, with clay. So the more compost I can dig into it, the happier the plants will be. I'm not a believer in buying a truckload of soil for the garden (anyway, it wouldn't be any better than what we have, likely), and I'm lucky to have three manure producers working away at manure production in the next pasture to the north (two cows and a sheep). I won't run out of soil amendments any time soon.

Today's the day that Rhys Bowen and I are having our conversation over at Helen Ginger's blog. Rhys is a Sister in Crime and a mystery author buddy. Both of us write British mysteries, and our conversation is about some of the things that have come up for us when we're working on our series. Join us at Helen's, leave a comment or a question, and I'll try to get back to you. Rhys is off on tour today, but she'll do her best to pop in. Thanks, Helen, for hosting us!

I'll have some more nice news about a writing project in another day or two, so check in and see what's going on.

Reading note. Nothing can grow unless it taps into the soil.--William Carlos Williams