about those resolutions . . . .

Welcome to the New Year.

This is going to be a different sort of year for me than past years.

For one thing, it will be my first full year as a retired person.  That seems to be working out just fine, fine, fine.  (This is where I do a few back flips).


I'm finding myself more prone to just being quiet and doing a lot of pondering.  I like to ponder.

source:  parisandbeyond-genie.blogspot.com

Sitting quietly and allowing thoughts to just wander is a luxury.  One I'm allowing myself more of.

source:  chrisridley.photoshelter.com

And it's the year I'm truly going to try to stretch my wings.  To grow creatively.



And also try to learn to "just be."



It's the year I'll be attending my first Malice Domestic convention, which I am super excited about.   Some of my all-time favorite writers will be attending, Jan Burke is this year's Guest of Honor, Dana Cameron is Toastmaster.   And - a huge big major plus for me -  a woman I admire more than I can say, Elizabeth Peters aka Barbara Michaels, is being honored.  I would not miss this for the world!  I think I own every Barbara Michaels book published and re-read them all often.

I'm riding up to the convention on AmTrak.  My first experience on AmTrak.  I haven't been on a train since I was at Brandywine College and used to scoot around to a few favorite cities for the weekend - and loved it.  I'm pretty much through with planes, I think.  If I can't get there conveniently by car or by train, it's probably not gonna happen for me.  I worked in the airline industry for several years in the late 60s/early 70s and I remember how much fun it was; it is so far from fun these days that I've decided it's just something I'm not going to do.



This was year I gave in and made some resolutions.  Three of them.

One, to write.

Two, to read Julia Cameron's THE ARTIST'S WAY, and do the accompanying exercises.

Three, read David Busch's book about my camera and learn to use all its features.

So, nine days into the new year it may be time to give an accounting.

I'm writing.  Happily so!  I now have 48,214 written words.  Not that they're all great words, or even THE words, but it's a pretty decent start, I think.

I've been getting lots of questions about this new venture of mine, and I have to say, I'm surprised at how much interest y'all are showing - Thank You!!!

I'm not ready to say too much yet (isn't that bad luck, or something?), but I'll tell you what I feel comfortable telling you.  I started writing "The Book," in April of last year.  It takes place in the south (surprise!!  LOL!!).

 

Actually, truth be told, y'all are probably going to be sick to death of this book way before I ever get to "The End."

I'm reading THE ARTIST'S WAY, and have started doing the Week One exercises.  It's interesting.  Some of what she says is the sort of thing that makes me kinda itchy.  It's not my normal way of looking at things, or going about things.  I'm not one who puts the name "God" so "out there" in my normal course of conversation.  But.  At the same time, some of what I've read so far has resonated with me.  So, I'm going to continue and we'll just see how it goes.

Sadly, David Busch's book about my G12 camera is still sitting on my nightstand looking a little lonely.  But, it is after all, only the 9th day of the year.  There's still time!

The one thing that has suffered so far this year is my reading.  My "reading for fun" reading.  It's very unusual to have only read one novel in this many days.  I'm going to change that, or end up with a major case of the blues.

I hope all of you who made resolutions this year are feeling as though that's working out and feeling proud of yourselves.  And I hope you're all reading more than I seem to be!!!!!

Happy 2012!

Finding Anna by Dana Cameron

Dana Cameron’s short story in Boston Noir, “Femme Sole,” was nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards; two more Anna Hoyt colonial noir stories will appear in 2011. Her second Fangborn story, “Swing Shift,” appears in Crimes by Moonlight,and was recently nominated for an Agatha.   A third, “Love Knot,” will be published in 2011. When not exploring the dark colonial past and the violent but hopeful lycanthropic present, Dana finds herself writing across a wide range of crime genres. She lives in Beverly, Massachusetts. You can find Dana on FaceBook and Twitter (@danacmrn) ; she blogs at her website (www.danacameron.com) and with the Femmes Fatales (www.femmesfatales.typepad.com).



 

Finding Anna
by Dana Cameron
 

When I first encountered Anna Hoyt, we were both in a state of desperation. I needed a story for Boston Noir and had never written in the subgenre before. Anna turned out to be an 18th-century tavern owner struggling to keep her property from a variety of violent thugs, including her husband. Maybe it was my own panic to figure out how to get the story done, but in the end, Anna surprised me—and scared me, too.

And that's just fine. If a writer is unnerved by something she wrote, chances are, readers will be, too. But when it came time to write another Anna story (“Disarming,” which appeared in the June 2011 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine), I initially froze up. I knew Anna's secrets, I knew that she was not the person I believed she was when I started writing “Femme Sole.” I wasn't sure I could do her justice, knowing what I did. Ignorance may be bliss, but it's not something awriter can afford.

I was thinking Anna might just be a one-off, when I realized, “Anna's got problems, and she's sure got issues, but she just wants what everyone else wants. It's just she goes about it differently.” The moment was a little like the Masterpiece Theater version of Moll Flanders, where Alex Kingston (as Moll) looks straight into the camera and asks “What would you do?”

I didn't need ignorance, I needed to know Anna better. In writing “Disarming,” I could use the homesickness I felt when I lived in London for a year and I could use my experiences in getting to know the culture there to inform Anna's story, but when she started to deal with her problems in a way that made me uneasy, I needed to let her do it. In fact, the more she worried me, the better I felt about the story.

I once told an interviewer that I related more easily to my “Fangborn” characters (werewolves and vampires) than I do to Anna. That's partly true; all of us experience fear and rage and other dark feelings. With the Fangborn, I know their violence is in the service of good. With Anna, you never know.

Anna's in a third story, “Ardent,” which will appear in the forthcoming Cape Cod Noir. I wanted to know whether Anna had ever been truly in love, and if so, what would she do to protect that love. Given Anna's history with men—and crime--it made me very nervous indeed.

And that's just fine.

Dana, with editorial assistants Kaylee and Zoe