Swan Song

I’ve had a good run with RWI and the Writing Sluts but it’s time to say goodbye.  I moved to Tulsa in 2000 and it took me a few years to find RWI but once I did, I hit the ground running. I attended meetings, conferences and volunteered as newsletter editor. I category chaired for contests and even ran for office. As a member, I remained active and engaged.

But when we moved overseas, it took me so far away, it was hard.  I can’t attend the monthly meetings and see the programs.  I missed the retreat and the holiday party.  It’s still a requirement to volunteer, and I’m lucky that I was able to work on the contest committee from clear across the globe.  The reality is that I won’t be coming back to Tulsa.  We sold our house and my husband advanced to the point where there’s not a place for him in the OK plants.  His next post will probably be at headquarters in Houston.  So, with a heavy heart, I am not renewing my membership to this fine RWA Chapter.

I want all the Sluts to know that because I’m not rejoining, it doesn’t mean I want to lose track with my friends.  I’m keeping all of you.

But technically, you have to be a member of RWI to be a contributing writer on the Writing Sluts blog, so you won’t see my scintillating posts for much longer.  Soon, they’ll realize it and kick me off.  But until then, I’ll keep posting weekly and giving you my thoughts on things.  If you’re an Inker and you want a spot in the lineup, Thursdays are available.

–Sandee Wagner

Maybe the Mayans Had Something…

So far, 2012 has been a pretty stressful year.  I came to the states to help my son and his family while they moved into a new house.  I imagined Grandee playing with the kids while their folks busied themselves unpacking boxes.  It was like that.  Sort of.

On moving day, the two boys were projectile vomiting and the girl had diarrhea.  Oh joy.  We dealt with it.  It was a stomach bug that was going around and luckily the adults did not pick it up.  The next day, the baby got his hands burned pretty badly so there was a panicked trip to the ER and all the subsequent guilt and drama.  The next morning, when trying to take the baby to see a burn specialist, their truck wouldn’t start.  All this by the second of January.

I’m Irish enough to believe that bad things come in threes.  I’ve been hopeful that this trifecta of trauma is all the excitement I’ll experience while I’m here in the frozen tundra.  One can hope.

When your family is in the middle of a stressful event like moving to a new home, any little extra or unexpected thing can send you over the deep end.  The straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were.  I’m praying that we’ve seen all the bad things that 2012 will be bringing.  No more excitement is necessary to usher in the new year, God willing.

If it continues stacking up at this rate, I’ll begin to believe that the Mayans were right and the end is near.

–Sandee Wagner

Happy Anniversary to My Hero!

Today, I’ve been married for 33 years to my one true love.

We got married right out of high school. They said it would never last, but we were stubborn. When others were calling it quits, we dug in and fought fair.

We have three wonderful children and five gorgeous grandbabies. I could not be more pleased with the way myown love story worked out.

Our life together has not been a fairy tale.  And truthfully, we didn’t have enough conflict to make it a good romance story.  Regardless, I will always be happy I met Bert in that high school debate tournament, and the rest became history.  Even if I still think I should have won that round…

–Sandee Wagner

Holiday Traditions

I wish I could say that every Christmas Eve, my family gathers around the big Christmas tree to sing carols and drink eggnog. We don’t do anything worthy of the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. In fact, my children and grandchildren seldom figure into my Christmas plans.

When my adult children married and inherited in-laws and other family relations, our holiday issues became algebraically more complicated. Instead of adding stress, my husband and I chose to not put any stress on the kids regarding holiday plans. Because of this laissez faire attitude toward family togetherness on Christmas, our kids have chosen to simplify their lives by either doing their own family Christmases, or joining their in-law families. We seldom see our kids or grands at Christmas.

My husband and I have shared a few quiet holidays and although they are rewarding, it’s not the same as being surrounded by family. I come from a very big family.  Our holidays were akin to spending hours in Grand Central Station–with all the brothers and sisters coming and going, dragging their kids and pets with them. On my eighteenth Christmas, my mother announced to the gathered hoard that she was no longer hostessing a family Christmas and the next year, she and my father would be out of the country for the holidays. They did and we were all on our own.

The next year, we didn’t pack up our kids and make a trek across the state to spend time with my folks.  Instead, we woke up with our babies, oohed and ahhed over Santa’s presents and had our first nuclear family Christmas.  I came to appreciate the gift my parents gave us by removing the expectation from our holidays.  It allowed us to make our own holiday traditions.

I’ve decided that we need some new holiday traditions in my house. I’ve accepted that I’m not going to get all my kids and grands gathered for a big family feast. If you drew a triangle in the middle of the US, my three kids and their families reside at the three points of that triangle. Far, far apart. And I don’t like making choices.

So this year, instead of sadly facing a day with just my DH and myself, we’re trying something different. We’re volunteering for the USO. Over the Christmas holidays, we’ll be serving young servicemen and women who are far, far away from their families for the holiday season.

I may not be cooking up a meal for my kids and grands, but whatever goodies I bake will be going to someone who craves some home cooking. Maybe by spending time with folks who are parted from loved ones this holiday season, I can treasure my own quiet evening with DH.  If I spend a little time ‘giving back’ my own season won’t seem so sad and lonely.  So, wish me luck.  Or maybe, wish the USO some luck!

–Sandee Wagner

No Lack of Heroes

I’ve been reading a lot of genres besides Romance lately and I’ve happened upon a conundrum.  Stick with me for a moment.  Imagine you’re reading the latest thriller which bounces from character to character in points of view.  As much as I enjoy ‘getting to know’ all these characters deeply, I find myself without someone to root for.

I recently read Preston & Child’s “The Ice Limit” which is a modern retelling of the Moby Dick story.  I mean it.  It didn’t even take one of the characters saying “call me Ishmael” for me to see the parallels.  They used Melville’s storyline and gave it a modern twist to make it interesting.  But I can’t tell you who the hero was.  And I was paying attention.

In that book, we were in the POV of an old man meteor hunter who died, then a young meteor hunter who I thought would be the hero. Then we were in the POV of an engineer, a millionaire and a Chilean destroyer captain. We bounced back and forth between all these characters and got to know them quite eloquently. Each one was archetypical and gave the story a lot of depth of character.  But I really don’t know who the hero was.  The guy I thought was the hero ended up not being terribly heroic.  The guy who started out heroic kind of had a meltdown.

There were plenty of people who could have been heroes or protagonists, but I truly cannot say who was the main one.

In one sense, Romances make that easy. You may be introduced to any number of secondary characters, but the relationship makes it pretty easy to identify the hero and heroine.  In a thriller, it’s not that cut and dried.

I once heard that the reason first person POV books aren’t popular in Romance is because the reader can’t empathize or imagine themselves as the hero or heroine if they are in a single person’s POV.  With that ‘locked in’ viewpoint, the reader is stuck in the mind of the narrating character and can’t get to know anyone else deeply.  As long as the viewpoint character is quirky or interesting, I prefer to be in single POV for mysteries, thrillers, etc.

With a single viewpoint, there is no doubt who the hero is.  In some of these books, there is no lack of viewpoint characters who may (or may not) actually be a hero–whether or not they act heroically.  My head hurts.

–Sandee Wagner

Jetlagged

I’m sitting here rubbing my eyes and trying to decide if my double vision is a problem or not. I’m tired. Really, REALLY tired. Like a baby who gets his days and nights mixed up tired. We traveled to the US from Dubai for Thanksgiving and we just got back a couple of days ago.

I’m not sure how long it takes for the average person’s Circadian rhythm to get back on track, but for me, it’s longer than a week, shorter than two weeks.

The part of the US where my kids live is a ten hour time difference from Dubai.  It’s morning here in the middle of their night and vice versa.  When you add that time change to a really long travel day (~18 hrs of flight time), you’ve got the makings for a short tempered, punch drunk writer.

I generally give myself a pass the first day or two back.  I unpack, do laundry and veg.  Mostly because that’s all I’m good for, for a couple of days.  Today, my only goal is to get my Christmas decorations up.  It’s about all I can do… because my eyes won’t focus.

I don’t care much for the feeling of being jetlagged.

One of the things I do like about traveling is all the interesting people I meet.  On the flight from Houston to Qatar, I sat next to a very nice Indian lady who quizzed me about my writing.  She has a friend in the business.  She lectured me quite forcefully about self publishing and getting my work out as an e-book.  She even quoted prices to me.  I find it fascinating that of the 300+ seats on that plane (and it was packed full!) I ended up next to someone who knew a little something about publishing.

Do you think this is God’s way of telling me to get my latest novel out there?  Or is that just the exhaustion talking?

–Sandee Wagner

I Won NaNoWriMo!!

Another November has come and gone, and I wrote 50,000 words on a new novel. I took the challenge and I won. That’s the beauty of National Novel Writer’s Month, you compete against yourself.

I didn’t write 50,000 good words. Or 50,000 words that will definitely end up in the final novel. I turned off my ‘inner editor’ and just cranked them out. I wasn’t sure that I could. We left Dubai on the 17th of November and were on the road until after the 30th.

Because I knew we’d be traveling, I set a pretty ambitious writing schedule. When I left on the 17th, I had over 45,000 words written. Once again, not necessarily keepers, but words on a page.

I really like the feeling of adding that last word count update online. I didn’t dance around screaming, “I won, I won!” But I did give it some thought.

I will complete this novel. I will work through it, improving the weak spots and marveling at the stuff that flew out my fingertips in a mad writing dash. It’s an accomplishment that I will celebrate and a work in progress that I will polish and expand.

But for today, this is my mantra: I won NaNoWriMo!

–Sandee Wagner

Happy Thanksgiving

Tradionally, the fourth Thursday in November is our Thanksgiving holiday in the US. This is an American celebration, much like the 4th of July. It’s not celebrated in other countries.

Since we were planning on returning to the states for Thanksgiving but NOT for the Christmas holidays, I found myself explaining our actions to lots of other expats.

People from all over the world understand Christmas as a family holiday, but fewer understand what Thanksgiving means beyond turkey dinner and football.

To me, Thanksgiving is a day to celebrate plenty. An autumn harvest of family and loved ones. I like the shared meal and the feeling that all I have to do is enjoy my family and spend time thanking God that I have them.  Fall usually gives us a crispness in the air and the certainty that things are about to get colder.  I have always liked the idea that the early colonists took time to share what they had with neighbors and formed connections so they could pool resources over the long cold winter.

Writers do a solitary task. When we get together to pool our resources, we share the load a little.  I’m thankful for all my associates.  It would be a long cold winter without you.

–Sandee Wagner

Traveling

I’m sitting in the Dubai airport people watching. As I’ve admitted before, I’ve followed someone through an airport to see how they moved and tried to commit them to my writer’s memory. Airports are full of busy, bored, efficient, foreign, frazzled… Well, you get my meaning. It is a great cross section of human life.

When you are looking for a physical ‘type’ do you look at pictures on the Internet? Do you imagine a movie star? I generally either bring up a mental image or find a real person.

I’m always entertained when an author spends social networking time taking ‘casting suggestions’ from fans. I love trying to find the perfect visual image for a character.

Gotta go, I just saw a really interesting looking guy…

–Sandee Wagner

The Ongoing Character

As a reader, I love a long series of books with ongoing characters. Because you’ve already had a ‘history’ with the characters, it allows you to ‘drop back in on them’ later in time. You don’t have to spend a lot of time figuring out their backstory or motivations, because you know them so well.

I started watching the first season of Castle on DVD.  The series starts out with a mystery writer who has killed off his sleuth and is blocked creating his next character.

It made me wonder about authors who have long running series and write the character over and over again.  Take one of my personal favorites:  Jim Butcher.  He writes an urban fantasy series about Harry Dresden, modern day wizard of Chicago.  I love these books.  He cannot write them fast enough to make me happy.  When a new one is coming out, I go back and re read all the books in the series to get me warmed up for the new one.  Do you see where I’m coming from?  I love Harry Dresden.  But maybe, Jim Butcher doesn’t.  He’s written some other fantasy books that he pimps pretty regularly.  I picked up the first trilogy and didn’t even get through the first two books.  All I kept thinking was, “Butcher is wasting time writing this when he could’ve been cranking out a Harry Dresden book.”

So, maybe the creator is bored with his creation?  Maybe it’s the human condition to always want something we don’t have.  Maybe that’s why Madonna is always trying to act when what she’s good at is singing?

I don’t know.  I guess I’d like to have the problem.  I’d like to create a character so popular I can write book after book and have fans clamoring for more…  Then maybe boredom would set in… Nah.

I hope I would be thanking my lucky stars, counting my advance and getting to work on the next in a long series that would make my readers happy.

–Sandee Wagner