What is it about?

The most natural question to ask an author about their new book is: "What is it about?"

That question makes total sense. Of course someone wants to know what something's about in order to decide if it would interest them. It's a great question.

And I am hopelessly bad at answering it.

The pain starts with having to write a synopsis when you try to submit your book anywhere. My knee jerk reaction is always, "If I could tell this story in a page, I wouldn't have bothered to write a whole novel!" And reducing a story down to its simple plot line doesn't capture anything relevant. If you handed the same synopsis to Stephen King, Nora Roberts, and Ann Patchett, and asked each of them to expand it into a book, you'd get three completely different novels. So what does summing it up even tell us?

And yet, there are genres that don't hold my attention, or subjects I don't really want to spend time with, so I get why it's necessary. I need to be able to talk to people about my writing in a way that lets them know if my book is something they would enjoy.

Here is my attempt to do that with Just Friends, Just War. And instead of pitching the story particularly, I want to share some thoughts about what was knocking around my head when I wrote and revised it, and explain the kinds of questions I was hoping it could address.

My second novel is called Seducing Cat, which many people were reluctant to pick up because when they asked, "What is it about?" I usually answered, "A woman who has an affair."

It's about much more than that. It's about temptation and how we define ourselves and where the line is between living your life to the fullest and behaving selfishly. But I can never think to say that when someone asks me in person what that book is about, usually because I'm like a deer caught in headlights where the whole book and all of its nuances flash before my eyes and it's too much for me to reduce to a single sentence. (It's a little like when someone asks, "How are you?" and your choices are to lay out all of the joys and traumas and your existential crisis of the moment, or just say, "Fine." Most of us only have time for "Fine.")

In any case, Seducing Cat was about two people who were together who probably shouldn't have been. I decided as a launching point for my next book, I wanted to spend time with two people who were not a couple, but that others would think should be. That's where Just Friends, Just War began.

When I write, I start with the characters, and make sure I understand them well before I begin putting them into different situations. I came up with Alex and Claire.

I wanted them to be different, but compatible. I thought about political discussions I'd had with various people back in college--people I liked, but disagreed with. I thought about the kinds of lines we draw when we disagree with people, particularly about politics. Some opinions you can let slide because they are simply different. Others make you question someone's morals or character. I find those lines interesting.

I wanted Claire to be strong, and Alex to be stubborn. I wanted their attachment to each other to be obvious, but not something that needed to be said in words to one another. If I wrote them right, I wanted readers to go back and forth between liking Alex a lot, and not liking him much, and to sometimes be uncomfortable about what to do with that. I wanted people to go back and forth between admiring Claire, and not always understanding her.

Once I had the personalities of my main characters fleshed out, I needed a setting. I decided to draw on my experiences in a dojo where I'd spent a few years.

My husband and I got our black belts together at the Futen Dojo in Milwaukee, and our sensei there literally turned my notes on doing techniques into a book for students to use. I was not particularly good at jujutsu, but I loved it, and was sad when I started having children that there was no more time for it. I stopped going when I was about four months pregnant with my first baby and couldn't tie my gi closed anymore. By having a dojo be central to the characters and their story, it was a way of reflecting on all the hours I'd spent in that space, and getting to relive some of it again. My characters meet in a dojo and it becomes an important element of their relationship.

Back when I wrote the draft for this book, I was also bracing for my husband to be deployed at any minute. He was in the Army Reserve, and that's a perspective on war that doesn't get portrayed often. By having Alex involved in the same kind of units my husband worked with, I was able to learn a little more about his military experiences while adding details to my character's story. Just Friends, Just War was also a way for me to grapple with my own fears about what deployment would mean to my family when it happened to us.

The power and nature of different friendships interest me. It wasn't until I started writing this book that I realized I was unusual at the time for having so many friends of the opposite sex. I talked to several women in particular who had never had a male friend, aside from someone they interacted with as part of a couple. It would never occur to them to get together with just the guy, and for me it's not an issue at all. I think that dynamic has changed somewhat in recent years, and my children don't think it's strange for people of the opposite sex (or different gender identity, or sexual orientation--not visible options when I was growing up) to be friends.

Likewise, I'm also interested in how your sex matters in different situations. People's expectations of themselves and others can be deeply rooted in their sex, and that topic never bores me. Alex and Claire were good vehicles for comparing and contrasting in what ways being male or female mattered to who they were, how they were treated in the world, and who they could be to each other.

This book spans over a decade of Claire and Alex's relationship, so it begins back in 1995. I had fun researching any time markers in the book in terms of technology, what songs were playing in a particular year, when certain episodes of TV shows were on, and what commercials would have been common. My favorite inclusion was an ad for 1-800-COLLECT, not just because I remember that commercial playing incessantly, but it really dates the time period back when "long distance" was a concern when making a phone call. (I tried to explain to my kids about how when I was young, we had to wait until after "business hours" for the long distance rates to drop low enough we could call someone out of state. They didn't seem to understand how that was a thing.)

And finally, I wanted by the end of this book for the reader to feel the weight of time and experience in terms of how relationships are built. When you've simply known someone long enough, mundane things become meaningful, and shared memories become like legend and lore. By the last few pages, every line should have meaning that it couldn't in the beginning. Because you've walked through so much with them, the weight of each object and gesture should be almost palpable. Alex and Claire should feel like your friends, too.

My new novel is Just Friends, Just War.

What is it about? Friendship, relationships, love, war, sacrifice, and martial arts.

I worked hard on it. It's good. You'll like it, and I believe the characters will stay with you for some time. Find your copy here, or better yet, come get one at Boswell Book Company on April 1st at 7:00pm when I do my reading and book signing--support a great independent bookstore and snack on homemade cream puffs. (Hope to see you there!)

Writing Retreat: Chapter Two

November is National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo if you want to get weirdly abbreviated about it). It's a nonprofit group that gets people to commit to trying to complete a novel in a month, and provides structure and support for those who need help. I've never participated, but it sounds fun. I just don't have the kind of schedule that lends itself to other people's timelines. I have to carve out my own moments to write, and that doesn't overlap with the beginning of birthday season and Thanksgiving.

But I did arrange to do a second writing retreat up at the cottage with a friend at the beginning of October. I got a lot done.

This year was chilly and it rained most of the time, which was perfect for keeping us indoors and writing. The last few days we even kept a fire going in the fireplace and it was really lovely.

Took a few walks, ate soup, and I even treated myself to my first pedicure in the little shopping square when I needed a break (and decided writing would go faster with pretty toes).

I had three projects to ponder this year.

The first was the last of the copy edits on my novel Just Friends, Just War. (That book is in the proofreading stage right now. I decided to order proofs of it with a placeholder cover, simply because I never spot certain typos until they are actually in print in the book. So I'm proofreading the actual book and can make changes before it goes live.) Just Friends, Just War is the last of the three novels I wrote over a decade ago when I first decided to try my hand at fiction. That book (along with Almost There and Seducing Cat) took a lot of reworking and rewriting to finish. I didn't know what I was doing, and it showed. But failure is how you learn, and figuring out how to edit those books so they functioned was useful. Just Friend, Just War should be ready to publish in early 2020. Here's the current blurb for that:

Alex and Claire are just friends. They are fine with that. Nobody else seems to be. But as they move from high school to college to adult life, there are many ways—both big and small—to test a friendship. Just Friends, Just War follows a friendship from the day it begins through all of its joys and challenges. Sometimes being just friends is more than enough.

My main project was the novel I'm writing now, called 1001 Weddings. This is a novel I had an idea for a long time ago and am finally getting around to it. The big difference is that now I know how to go at a writing project of that size right from the start. I know how I want to handle the point of view, I know how to pace things, I know how to use my voice better. I think it's a good book. I have to flesh parts of it out a bit more, but it's essentially there. When I get to editing, that won't require major overhauls and scrapping whole chapters to repair the basic structure. I'm excited about that. It means I may finally know what I am doing.

My major question with 1001 Weddings is whether or not to try and find a traditional publisher, or do it myself. I've only had two test readers on it, but they both enjoyed it, and it's a super-pitchable book. Here's the first stab at a blurb for it:

Jemma Best is a musician who plays weddings. When she becomes engaged herself, she decides to drum up a little extra business to pay for her own wedding by contacting brides from the past to see if they would like their original quartet to play for an anniversary. Because wouldn’t that be romantic? Seems like a great idea. Until Jemma discovers how all those stories turned out.

I've included lots of wedding stories (most of which are true), and I went out on a limb and made the main character's fiancee a luthier. There's a little danger in that, but I have to admit, I had a lot of fun inventing a fictional shop and getting to complain about luthier things through my character. The book is fun, and structured more like a romance than anything else. My writing retreat friend (who is a professional book reviewer and understands what's out there) thinks it wouldn't be hard to find an agent for, and she could easily imagine it as a movie. That all sounds good, but I have control issues, I guess. I don't like the idea of someone else having the rights to my work. I don't want to be forced to make changes I don't believe in. But I also want to be read, and marketing is not my strong suit. (I suppose I'll worry about that later when the book is finally done.)

The third project is odd. I wrote a whole novel sort of by accident. I was supposed to be working on 1001 Weddings, but then I had an idea about something else and couldn't get it out of my head, so I simply wrote it to be done with it. But then there were more ideas. So I wrote those. And then I was at 106,000 words that I didn't really mean to write. I let two friends read it who were the only people who knew where the original ideas came from, and they both read through it fast and I think liked it. Or parts of it. But at my writing retreat, my friend with no preconceived ideas about what it should be, ripped it to shreds. As she should have. It was not developed right. Because it was an accident.

But! Here's the thing: She still read it in one night. She didn't intend to. She planned to read maybe a chapter and go to sleep. So even though she found it implausible and the characters all too similar (because again, not developed, so they all had my draft voice instead of their own), she still kept reading. She liked the writing. She was almost dismissive about that part, as in, "Of course it's all written well, but...."

That's big. It means I know how to write, right from the first draft. Even if it's not good yet, it still keeps people turning pages. Plot points and characters I can fix. I'm actually really looking forward to tearing that novel down to the studs and rebuilding it after I've given it real thought. But to be able to pace things and lay them out in a manner that people want to keep reading? I feel like that's something different and more fundamental. Sort of like back in music school, if you were a person who brought real expression to your playing that made people want to listen, rather than someone who did things technically well but came across as cold. That's hard to teach. In my experience, either players have that ability to be musical, or they don't. I've always been told I'm a musical player. I now feel as if maybe I have musicality in my writing, too.

Unfortunately, when I take time off work, the work doesn't stop appearing on my bench. So I haven't had any time to write anything since I returned from the cottage. I've merely been trying to dig out of the hole of rehairs and instrument repairs, but after many late nights in the shop I'm almost caught up. (There are many people who wander into my violin store and marvel at my "dying art" which always makes me laugh. As long as people keep dropping things, my art is alive and well. And people never stop dropping things.)

I hope I find some time soon. Because in addition to ideas for my novel, I'm also working on a repair diagnostics guide for violin teachers that I think will be really good, and fills a need.

Why are there so few hours in the day to get everything done? There is so much I want to do that I never get to! (And on that note, I need to get off my laptop and start cleaning the house. Because for those who ask, "Where do you find the time?" the answer is: my house is a mess. But I think at this stage, I'd rather be remembered for things I've created than for a nicely made bed.)