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View From My Place 4/14/2011 5:24:52 AM
Thursday, April 14, 2011The Sting of Spring
I like spring. Don't get me wrong. I like all the usual things that inspire poetry - the singing birds, the blooming flowers, the growing grass, and warmer temperatures. Spring, however, falls flat as having a shot at being my favorite season because of the severe weather.
Today I wake up to a chance of "severe storms" in the area. Everyone from the folks at The Weather Channel - whom I am none too fond at the best of times because I don't like the way they hype the weather - to the local forecasters are predicting dire doom and gloom.
While I'm not afraid of severe weather, I have a healthy respect for it and I would prefer not to experience it - because I have, too many times.
Since I live in what some call Tornado Alley, tornadoes and other severe weather events are just a fact of life. We can and do have tornadoes in every month of the year but spring is prime time around here.
Just a few years ago in May a major tornado ripped through the area passing just a few miles north of me cutting a very large swatch of destruction and death. Since moving to my current house, we've had a few near misses or that passed too close for comfort. What is called a "micro burst" destroyed the convenience store on the highway near my neighborhood within the first year of moving into what passes for the suburbs in a small town.
I spent a long night in a Tulsa hotel room a few years ago while multiple tornadoes raged around the city and watched, from the darkness incurred by a power outage, as a funnel cloud dropped from the sky - just past the hotel. I once took refuge in Holy Trinity Catholic Church in downtown Shreveport when tornado warnings erupted just as I was about to go there anyway.
My biggest experience with tornadoes and the most personal impact happened when I just thirteen. At the time, my family was new to southwest Missouri and we lived in a mobile home. On an April night, tornado warnings went out and my mom, because of a premonition she had a few weeks earlier, took the kids and left. My dad, getting ready to go work the night shift, remained at home. We took refuge in a laundromat down the road and when we emerged, we could soon see nothing remained of the mobile home park. We walked back into that rubble, stepping over downed power lines that snapped and hisses like giant cobras, to search for my dad.
My amazing father survived the storm even though the mobile home broke into pieces around him. He had gone to find us and when he returned, our reunion made the news as television cameras filmed the scene.
That night left me owning the Levi jeans and T-shirt that I wore - little else except what we could pick out of the destruction and mess that remained.
I grew up that night with a vast leap that took me from the last of childhood into a near adult adolescent.
The fall out from that night lingered for years and my mother, to this day, remains terrified when the possibility of tornadoes arises.
I have learned to deal with the possibility, just as I suppose those who lived in Pompeii dwelt in the shadow of the volcano or as Californias (and others along the New Madrid fault) live with the chance for earthquakes.
I don't like the sting that spring delivers but it's just part of life and so I carry on, no matter what the weather.
I am a survivor, tornado and otherwise.,
Posted by Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy at 4:18 AM 0 comments Email This
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Labels: disaster, Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy, New Madrid, Pompeii, spring, tornado, tornado alley, weather, weather channel, weather forecast
Wednesday, April 13, 2011What A Difference A Day Makes
I'll borrow the title of the classic song, "What A Difference A Day Makes" because yesterday when I sketched out the details of an average day in the life of this writer, I expected things to roll along as usual.
Yesterday turned to be more than a little different.
The first thing that happened that turned mundane Tuesday into an awesome day was that Evernight Publishers offered a contract for the follow-up story to LOVE TATTOO. I accepted (of course) and I am delighted that Will and Cara's unique story will continue in LOVE SCARS.
Next, I got my first round edits for my September release, LOVE NEVER FAILS, from Rebel Ink Press and I'm eager to jump in to get started with those. My read through of the comments and editorial suggestions made me excited with how the finished result will turn out and the time table works perfect with my schedule. Being on the same wavelength has been an ongoing thing with Rebel Ink.
As if that were not enough, just after supper last night I sat down to check email and had another offer, this one from Astraea Press for "The Marriage Cure", a historical romance with the title taken from an old Irish proverb that basically translates as "there is no cure for love but marriage.)
Thus yesterday was not quite an average day but I love the writing life.
You just never know what will happen but I'm enjoying the good news and rolling up my sleeves to get to work.
Posted by Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy at 3:44 AM 1 comments Email This
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Labels: acceptances, Astraea Press, evernight publishing, Love Never Fails, Love Scars, Love Tattoo, novel contracts, rebel ink press, The Marriage Cure
Tuesday, April 12, 2011A Day In The Life of A Writer
Since on occasion I run across people who think that all writers live glamorous, exotic lives and for the people who have trouble equating the woman they see at the supermarket or the discount store or at a school event with someone who writes for a living, I thought I would offer a run down of an average day in the life.
This is how today began and how I expect it to continue although we all know that the best laid plans of mice, men, and writers often go awry.
I got up this morning just before 5am, later than some days but today, although I could have risen earlier because my husband is forced by his job to rise early and be there by 5:30am, I thought - well, I won't use the actual words that I thought in case it might offend someone's sensisiblities.
After two cups of coffee, I saw my husband off to work and opened my laptop. The first thing that I do is to check my emails, both professional and private. I take care of anything that needs it and make a note of anything I need to see about later. Then I stop by Facebook to see what's cooking, if there is anything new that I need to know about.
After that I do a Google search to see if there is anything new out about me or any of my books. I discovered a neat little app on Google search after you run the initial one that lets you sort through to the latest results.
Then I come to the blog, hoping I have a topic of the day, and write it. By the time I finish up here, it will be time to wake up my three kids - fifteen year twin daughters and a ten year old son - if they are not already awake and stumbling into the kitchen for food. I feed them, make my son - the picky eater - a lunch if he doesn't like what the school is serving today.
Between 6:15 and 6:30, my former neighbor Luz will drop off her two lovely daughters, my son's close friends so that they can ride the school bus to their elementary school. They just moved and the local district won't let them go to the same school for the weeks remaining in this school year unless they can be taken there which is impossible; all the adults in the household work and must keep their jobs. So instead, with the school's permission since we all signed a paper stating this would be the status quo, the girls come here and get on the bus with my kids.
Just before 7am, I make the morning phone call to my widowed mother who lives up the street and fifteen minutes later, I shepherd the five kids up that way (because the bus stop is across from her house) feeling like Mother Hubbard. After the bus picks them up, I visit with Mom for a few minutes and then head home.
Once here I toss the breakfast dishes into a sink of hot, soapy water to wash later with my minimal lunch stuff and start the first load of laundry. Since my laundry room is in the basement at the farthest end of the house from where I work, I gripe en route and by then, if I haven't already, I decide what I'll cook for supper....or these days, IF I'll cook for supper. The big freezer is down there too.
After that, barring any phone calls to handle or errands that must be run (I got a check yesterday for an article submitted more than four years ago and accepted recently that needs to go the bank but I'll wait because errands cut a big chunk out of my writing day) I settle down to writing.
This morning I hope to finish the WIP which I'm calling for now LOVE KNOTS. I'm close and I'd like to put this one to bed so it can sit a few days before I go through it for edits. I've got a start on the next WIP, one I'm calling "The Carpenter's Rule". I love that title already and I'm getting to like Caleb Anderson a lot even though he has a few odd quirks and ways about him.
At some point I will go over my calendar to see what guest blogs or interviews I have upcoming and I will write any that are coming close. If I'm doing edits for one of my novels - something I expect for LOVE NEVER FAILS (Rebel Ink Press, September 2011) at the end of the week, I'm on that.
I'll check into e-mail and Facebook a few times.
When the mail comes I'll dash out with high hopes to see what the mailman has brought hoping it is more than just bills.
Sometime I'll pause for a quick lunch and then back to work until about one pm or so. Then I check in on my mother, do up the dishes, see what needs to be done about supper (for instance yesterday I made meat loaf so I mixed it and put it in the pan at that time), check the laundry.
Often it's back to writing, once in a while I sit down for a break to watch a little television or sit out on the porch.
Before I know it, it's time to go meet the bus and then the wild rumpus (borrowed that term from "Where The Wild Things Are") begin! My three kids erupt off that bus - unless one or the other has after school activities which is common with my high schoolers - full of sound and fury. They all want to babble about the most exciting point of their day at the same time. Somewhere around that time, my husband shows up from work, we bid my mother adieu, and I go cook or finish supper, listening to the events of the day.
We eat supper, clean up from supper, and more often than not I have something to finish or work on so I do.
Somewhere around 8 o'clock or so I stop for the night, take off my shoes, and unwind. Sometimes it's a movie or television although I don't watch much network television or if the weather is fine, it's the porch or deck with a favorite beverage in hand or maybe an indulgence in ice cream.
Then it's off to bed where my mind cooks on the next scene, story, or other writing and if I'm lucky, I sleep a few hours before it all begins again.
Glamorous? Not quite. A lot of hard work - you bet.
