Category: Destinee Faith Miller Mystery

Destinee Faith Miller Mystery, Friends of Mine, Lancient History

Sneak Peek. Literally.

the outside lane

I told you earlier that Destinee and I are not much alike.  However, some of my life experiences are just too much fun not to pass along to her.  Leslieann, Karen, Renae, and most unfortunately, Leslieann’s ex-husband can tell you the version of this story that happened to me.  But here’s how it played out for our favorite Beauty Queen:

I knocked at the restroom door, and no one answered, so I opened it a hair and shimmied in.  No need to expose the whole room to the toilet, so perfectly framed by the doorway.  Shutting it behind me, I carried my clutch over to the sink and took out my lip gloss.  I find that when I am not feeling myself, just having a moment in front of a mirror with a good lip gloss can turn my mood completely around.

I don’t know why that is.  I suppose it might be because I feel fully in control of my makeup.  I know I can paint myself up to look like anything I want, and when I feel out of control in every other arena, I find comfort in my travel kit.

For just a minute or two, I let myself get lost in following the lines of my lips with the fuzzy applicator.  My heart rate calming as I watched them fill out and plump up with the cayenne in the gloss I was using.  When I felt a little better, I put everything back into my bag and thought I should probably spend the extra few seconds it would take to avail myself of the facilities.  I had been drinking water all day, and with the schedule I keep, it’s not always easy to take a break.

I took the two steps up to the toilet and laid my clutch down on the back of it, then did as one does in such a situation.  I was midway to full relief when a motion caught my eye and I realized the doorknob was jiggling.  “Occupied,” I called out, but the knob kept turning.

I just knew it would stop because I was sure I had locked it, but to my horror, I watched it continue to turn and then the door swung wide open.  In a heartbeat, I found myself looking out over Bobbie’s wedding reception from a toilet on a platform about four feet off the ground, and then realized that Bobbie’s wedding reception was looking straight on at me.  Do you know what is eye level to the average bear when someone is sitting on a toilet that is built up on a platform about four feet off the ground?

There I was, on the proverbial throne with Victoria’s Secret down around my ankles, and my own secret flashing the groom himself.  I squealed and slammed my knees together so hard and so fast, I bruised them both, calling, “Hey!  Shut the door!”

books, Destinee Faith Miller Mystery, writing

Slap Fight

the outside lane

Another quick note about writing, since that’s what I’m spending all my free time on right now.  One of the hardest things, for me, is staying in character.  It is very easy for me to conceive of ideas, plot points, twists and turns, but staying in character is difficult.  When you are writing in first person, how your character acts and reacts is what drives your plot.  Getting out of character can ruin a scene.

Destinee is an optimist.  She is a bright girl with a low-level education, whose vocabulary and speech patterns are a mix of small town Alabama and national pageant interview training.  She hasn’t read many of the Classics, but she is very well read when it comes to current events, and she would surprise you with her knowledge of geography and politics.  She absolutely cannot work higher math, but she is a savvy business woman and keeps her own accounting.  She is incredibly confident in the way of professional athletes, in that she can strike out in a major way, then get up again swinging without losing her sense of value or worrying that she’s not good at her game.  She looks at the world through the eye of a coach, but she is not critical until it comes to mean people.  And, she is completely independent, but wants to be close to home.  She has chosen to live next door to her family because she loves them, not because she’s afraid to be without them.

Destinee is very different from me.  I am cautiously optimistic, at best.  I am well educated, but I have not spent nearly enough time on anything of real importance.  I am not an entrepreneur.  I do not have the same kind of confidence.  I am not fearless.  I prefer bagels to bikinis.

When writing in first person for Destinee, it is easy to project my own ways onto her.  I spent a couple of hours writing a scene, but it just wasn’t feeling right.  I finished it out, slept on it, and woke up realizing the problem was that Destinee wasn’t acting like herself.  She was acting like me.

Where Destinee should have taken a few seconds to assess her situation, then taken full control of it (because she’s Destinee Faith Miller, ya’ll), she had assessed the situation and allowed it to consume her, never acting, only reacting.

If you slap me, I will gape at you and wonder why you hit me, and I will worry that if I slap you back, you’ll slap me again and it will hurt worse, and I will try to figure out how to get away from you without any more handprints on my face.

If you slap Destinee, she’ll slap you back harder and tear out a hank of your hair for good measure.

So, if I write into my personal comfort zone, the scene veers off in the wrong direction, changing the course of the entire novel–and that’s why I needed to rewrite so much.

 

A Day in the Life, Counting Blessings, Destinee Faith Miller Mystery, Explaining the Strange Behavior, Friends of Mine, Lancient History, The Book, Tiara Trouble

Glenwood, Glue, and Eating Beads

the outside lane

You know that Gavin Degraw song, Chariot?  I always thought he was singing Carrion, not Chariot.  Changes the whole song when you know that.  I am the Queen of Misheard Lyrics.  You get one little word wrong…

Along with the marketing I’ve done, I dropped notes to a few of my former alma maters (there are nine or eleven, depending upon whether, or not you count colleges) to share news of the release.  The one I least expected to hear back from was my original elementary school, Glenwood School, in Phenix City, Alabama.  TIARA TROUBLE is set in Phenix City, and one of the tiny characters is very, very, very loosely based around my experience representing the school at the Little Miss PC pageant.  I got the happiest surprise today to find that not only did they respond to my email, but the respondent was a classmate!  She said she remembered me vividly, which is worrisome, but it is nice to be remembered at all, non?

It made me think about what my most vivid memories of Kinder and First Grade are.  Funnily enough, my classmate mentioned a boy who plays a role in one of those memories.  As I told her, I remember that boy walking into my classroom and thinking, “Oh yeah!”  I was going to make him my boyfriend.  I thought he was adorable, and I was so glad he was in my class.  I wasn’t even six years old, people.  Turned out, he was in the wrong class, so I only got to see him on the playground.  He did not share my feelings of kinderlove, and did not enjoy being chased.

Another vivid memory is of being dropped off at the school early one morning, and going out on the playground (by myself) to find that someone had torn out the pages of what must have been a Hustler magazine and strewn photos of naked women all over the place.  I went around collecting, considering, and discarding my finds, very, very confused by the amount of hair I was seeing, but more concerned that all these women seemed to think it was fine to wear shoes, socks, and sun visors (or terry cloth sweatbands) but nothing else.  I mean, if you’re going to be naked, take off your shoes.  I spent the next few weeks doodling naked ladies in my spiral notebook, drawing them with massive afros in their crotchal regions.  My mother found my drawings and we had to have A Very Serious Talk.  I promised to stop drawing naked ladies, but was so fascinated by her horror that I kept at it until I got A Very Serious Spanking.  After that, I only drew ladies with dresses on them.

There was the glue fight, which is my greatest memory of injustice done to me, and an excellent example of just what a stubborn little thing I was.  I had to wear orthopedic shoes for several years.  All I wanted in the world was a pair of red shoes.  Orthopedic shoes do not come in red, so when I was finally able to have a pair of normal shoes–normal red shoes–I was prouder of those than I was my own teeth.  For some reason, Mrs. Barnes left the classroom while we were working with Elmer’s Glue.  The little girl who sat behind me purposefully, and with great aim squirted glue on my New Red Shoes.  I was as livid as a 5-year-old can be.  I aimed my glue at the middle of her chest and got her good.  She did the same.  I aimed for her long, red hair.  Take that, Shoe Ruiner!  She tried and failed to get glue in my hair.  Mrs. Barnes returned, and while the other girl was telling on me, I squirted glue in her desk chair.  I think things might have been fine, but when she sat down in the glue, it was all over for me.  I spent a very long time sitting out in the hall, after talking to the principal.  My little friend?  No punishment other than glue in her pants.  I also refused to apologize.  p.s., My shoes were fine.  (To be fair, I probably started it by saying something smart.  I just don’t remember that part.)

I did spend a lot of time sitting out in the hall for talking in class.  I remember thinking that if I could just get a dog costume, I could put it on and crawl out of the school, and no one would ever know.  Maybe the principal would even pat my head and try to give me a treat?  So I spent most of my hall time, trying to conceive of where to find myself that dog costume, and how to conceal it on my person for such occasions.

My last memory of First Grade happened the last day of school.  I was standing with a friend, talking about how we were leaving Alabama, and moving to Virginia.  I was sad and scared, and she was sympathetic.  She also had tiny beads on her shirt that looked like candy sprinkles.  She suggested we pick them off and eat them to make ourselves feel better.  So, we did.  That is my very last memory of Glenwood: My granny driving up to get me, finding me eating beads off another child’s shirt.

Somehow, I managed to grow up to become a productive adult.

 

 

books, Cozy Cat Press, Destinee Faith Miller Mystery, Lane is Writing

Things You Know

the outside lane

The thing about writing is that you never really know what you know, or what you don’t know until you start trying to put it down on paper.  I think the funniest thing is finding out what you do know.  What bits and pieces of information have settled into the grooves of your brain, collecting dust for years until you suddenly you find yourself recollecting it in the heat of the writing moment.  I was having some of those moments last night.

I tore up nearly 20 pages of work to revamp my opening last night, only to realize it isn’t my opening at all.  It’s somewhere closer to the middle.  I had to rewrite a lot of Telling with some Showing.  I can say, “Bobbie’s mother-in-law thought she dressed poorly,” and that tells you something.  Or, I can say, “Margaret Clayton eyed Bobbie’s get-up with an expression of fearful disgust that I only ever saw when my mother was cleaning out Rusty’s pockets before doing laundry. And even then, there was some fondness in her eyes.  Mrs. Clayton?  I had a feeling Bobbie could trade in her Target for Talbot’s and the only softening in her future mother-in-law’s gaze would be for the brand tag sewn into her shirt back.”  That shows you a lot of things.

If I just tell you something, you have to trust my word and that’s that.  But if I show you the picture of something, you are allowed to infer and draw your own conclusions.  If I do it properly, you enjoy it more.  If I do it properly, I’ve given you a wider view of the character’s world.  If I don’t do it properly, you just get a lot of strawberry scented elegance, and I do try to avoid that.

And that’s why I had to tear up 20 pages.  I spent 20 pages telling you things I should have shown you.  That’s good, though.  I mean, you need to know just why Mushroom and Cockatoo made Bobbie cry, and how that came to be, or else when it comes time to start pointing fingers at murderers, you aren’t going to care.

 

books, Counting Blessings, Cozy Cat Press, Destinee Faith Miller Mystery

The Boston Book Festival and Me. Mostly Me.

the outside lane

Meet me at the Boston Book Festival on October 19, 2013. Look for her and TIARA TROUBLE at the Cozy Cat Press booth.
Meet me at the Boston Book Festival on October 19, 2013. Look for her and TIARA TROUBLE at the Cozy Cat Press booth.

 

I am very excited to announce that TIARA TROUBLE and I will be at the Boston Book Festival at Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts on October 19, 2013.

I’ve never been to Boston, so I am doubly excited to visit.  And triple-y excited to get to see Boston in October!  Trees!  Colors!  Harbors that taste like tea!

Most, I am excited to start promoting TIARA TROUBLE.  I can’t wait for you to get your hands on a copy, and let me know what you think of Destinee and her Dolls, Tishelle and her Divas, and the mystery murderer and his/her motives.

For information on attending the festival, visit the website at www.bostonbookfest.org.