Happy Reunions? by Sandra Ruttan

Sandra Ruttan is the editor-in-chief of Spinetingler Magazine and blogs regularly at Do Some Damage.  Her published books also include WHAT BURNS WITHIN, THE FRAILTY OF FLESH and LULLABY FOR THE NAMELESS, and two of her titles have been translated into Japanese.  For more information visit her website:  www.sandraruttan.com

 

HAPPY REUNIONS?

by Sandra Ruttan


Several months ago, I took an enormous risk.  Many have heard about the girl who solved her own abduction more than twenty years after the fact, and was reunited with her biological parents.  And most of us have heard of Oprah’s dramatic discovery of a sibling she never knew existed, and their eventual reunion.

But what a lot of people don’t realize is how risky these types of reunions are.  Children who search for birth parents after adoption sometimes find people who want nothing to do with them.  The initial rejection is followed by new hurt, and these are wounds that will never heal by reconnecting, getting answers to long-asked questions.

My husband is a bit of an anomaly.  He always knew his dad was out there, somewhere, and his mother made sure he never got the chance to meet him or know him while he was growing up.

But Brian never considered finding his dad.  It wasn’t that his mother had more than filled the gap; they have a horrible relationship, and she’s far more interested in the children she had with her second husband.  Brian was discarded much the same way her first husband was, to the extent that she doesn’t even bother with her only grandchildren.  It’s only been in the past year that they’ve even realized that she’s “technically” their grandmother.

Me, I’m far too curious.  Unlike Brian, I had a hard time letting the issue of finding his real dad drop.

So I asked some questions.

Realized Brian’s great aunt hadn’t told me the truth.

Started to wonder what else he’d been told over the years wasn’t accurate.

And found Brian’s biological dad.  On Facebook.

And not just his dad.  His brother and sister, too.

Best of all, most of his immediate family lived within driving distance.  It wasn’t long before emails turned into phone calls, and phone calls turned into a face to face meeting.  And for the first time in their young lives, the kids actually got to meet their grandparents.

And Brian got to meet his dad.

But in those moments leading up to the reunion, there were a lot of nerves at work in us.  What would these people really be like?  You can think you’ve covered your bases, asked all the right questions, but we were early in our relationship.  There was so much we didn’t know.

I’ve heard other stories where the outcomes haven’t been great, they’ve been pretty much a letdown. 

But for us, it was the exact opposite.  Our experience discovering Brian’s family has been fantastic.  We’ve been at ease from early on.  The kids have quickly accumulated a stockpile of grandparent memories – picking peaches, going for walks in the mountains and seeing bears, swimming, playing games, watching movies, drawing, Christmas celebrations…  and his parents and brother were at our wedding.

And for the first time in his life, just a few weeks ago, Brian got to spend his birthday with his dad and mom (we’ve banned ‘step’) for the first time.

As you can probably imagine, it’s been a pretty emotional experience.

One that got me thinking, about writing and reading, and characters.  Yes, my mind is a bit odd and makes interesting leaps, and this might be one of those times.

I couldn’t help thinking what a gift it was to discover we clicked so effortlessly with Brian’s family and really enjoy talking to them and spending time with them.

And I couldn’t help thinking that if they’d been alcoholics or bad-tempered, or holding on to angst and anger over the past that the growth of our relationship probably wouldn’t have been so smooth.

Which is when I started to wonder about so many characters I read and even write about in crime fiction.  The reality is, a lot of these characters aren’t people I’d want to hang out with.  I completely understand, as a writer, the interest in delving into the psyche through your writing.

But what about the nice guys?  Doesn’t anyone want to spend time with the kind of guy they could bring home to their mother?  I mean, that’s not Rebus.  Or Reacher.  Or Thorne, or countless others I could name.

Back when I was starting my first mystery manuscript, I didn’t want to write characters who swore with every other word, who drank to excess, who were so weak they had dependencies to help them avoid their issues, and they jumped into bed with every available partner they encountered throughout the pages.

I wanted to create two people I could imagine living next door.  Two people I’d actually want to have live next door.

Meet Tymen Farraday and Lara Kelly.  I threw the conventional procedure out the window as well, paired a detective with a reporter, and the focus was on two people trying to hold on to their principles and values in a town filled with and controlled by people who were corrupt.  Two people trying to sort out their doubts and initial distrust of each other as they stepped into a case unlike anything they could have imagined when it all began.

SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES was always – always – about the characters first.  I really, really liked them, and hoped to develop a series.

Things went sideways after the book was initially published, and I won’t bore you with the details, but it is only now, four years later, that I can tell you a sequel is in the works.  SC is back in my hands, and is now –  or a limited time – available on Kindle for 99 cents.

For me, this is really exciting, because as much as all my characters have a special place in my heart, these are two characters I’ve been waiting for a long time to bring back.  And they’re two characters that – just like my in-laws – are a pleasure to spend time with.

I hope you’ll give them a chance to grow in your heart, and that you’ll agree.

How The Man-Eating Tapeworm Killed My Plot by Sandra Ruttan

Award-winning author Sandra Ruttan had her first newspaper column at the age of 13. In her past lives she’s worked in customer service, as a baker’s assistant, in shipping and receiving in a hardware store, as a hotel front desk clerk, ice cream scooper, school photographer and receptionist. For the past eleven years her focus has been on education. She’s worked for early intervention programs, implementing speech therapy, physical therapy and occupational therapy exercises with students, as a kindergarten assistant, and as an aide in an ED program.

When she’s not busy writing she has her hands full with her partner, two step children, as editor-in-chief of Spinetingler Magazine, and reviewing for several print and online magazines.


The third book in her Nolan, Hart and Tain thriller series, LULLABY FOR THE NAMELESS, hit store shelves in December and has been called “a vivid noir portrait.” Her website is www.sandraruttan.com

Mo shares Sandra's Office and helps plot the next thriller

How The Man-Eating Tapeworm Killed My Plot by Sandra Ruttan


“There it is! Schoom schoom schoom.”

I’m not sure what surprised me most; that the play guns sounded so weird through the floor boards or that the kids were playing X-Files.

Yes, X-Files.

Did you have the same experience I did as a child, discovering the wonder of losing yourself in the pages of a book, being so completely immersed in that world that you didn’t want to leave it? For me, it was Narnia and The Great Brain, countless books about horses that somehow saved children’s lives, and The Call of the Wild. The neighbor’s granddaughter and I spent summers mushing through the woods behind my house, traveling across the Yukon in our fantasies.

And my kids are downstairs, playing X-Files.

On the surface, that might seem sad. My play was inspired by books, and theirs stems from a TV show that many might not even think they’re old enough to watch, but there’s a reason we started letting them watch selective episodes.

It all started when Brian and I took the kids to a, ahem used book sale. Patrick stumbled across a book he wanted. Now, Patrick hasn’t been the easiest reader. Oh, he can read fine, but he wasn’t in to it the same way his sister was. It was always easier to find something she liked. Patrick’s always been fussier.

But for 50 cents, it wasn’t much of a risk. The book of scary stories came home, and instead of having a partner who had his nose in a book at the dinner table, I started having kids who were more focused on reading than eating. Predictably, the book caused fights, and we had to track down more.

Then, Brian and I stumbled across a garage sale. A tower of used Goosebumps books, 60 in all, for less than a dollar a piece. Sold.

The kids now have a bookshelf six shelves high, filled with their horror collection.

After watching a few of the Goosebumps shows on DVD, we realized they weren’t bothered by the scary stuff. We picked one of the monster X-Files episodes – the one about Big Blue, the prehistoric lake monster – and let them watch it. That episode led to The Ghosts That Stole Christmas, the one about the haunted house. And from there it’s been monsters and aliens steadily ever since.

Despite all that, I have to say I was a bit surprised when I sat working on a manuscript and could hear the kids playing X-Files beneath me. Our girly-girl to the extreme, who lives in shades of pink and has her Barbies set up on a fashion runway, designs clothes and sings Taylor Swift songs in the shower is running around the house with a gun in her hand, chasing a man-eating tapeworm.


As I’ve watched her interest in the show grow, I’ve actually found myself wondering if our little fashionista might end up pursuing a career in law enforcement one day. Six months ago I would have thought anyone who suggested it was crazy. Now… I realize it may just be a little blip on the radar, but she’s more interested than I expected.

The funny thing is, when they started blazing through the Goosebumps books, I was happy they’d found something they liked so much, but just a wee bit disappointed that it was horror. Weren’t the kids going to grow up to share the love of crime fiction Brian and I both have? Now, I’ve got kids playing X-Files and Bry squealed with glee when she found Nancy Drew books under the Christmas tree.

As I’m working on a manuscript that I’d actually tried to partially pre-plot, it’s taken my kids to remind me of why it is I never could write character bios before I started a project. Nobody starts off fully formed. In the same way that we have to spend time with someone to really get to know them, I find I have to spend some time with my characters in the story to see them clearly. Others can get to know them before they type the first words. For me… it’s just never worked that way.

Sometimes, I’m jealous of the people who can pre-plot, who can see the end from the beginning when they start writing their stories. Me? I guess have to endure the roller-coaster ride, the uncertainty and the surprise all the way through the story with my characters. It took a TV show that’s inspired the kids’ play to remind me why.

But, like my own games as a youth, this is a journey that, for them, started with books.

Rhythm and Rules by Sandra Ruttan

If it's true that a person is the sum of their experiences, it would be hard to describe Sandra Ruttan. She had her first newspaper column at the age of 13, and enjoyed making up stories about her classmates in her elementary school years. During her teen years she worked part-time jobs during the school year, and worked full-time in the summers, doing everything from working cash at Stedmans to being a dishwasher and take-out cashier at Dixie Lee. She worked at Gravenhurst Bakery, and she worked with mentally and physically handicapped adults.

After high school she spent a year living overseas, witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, and covered most of Western Europe. After returning home she studied journalism before moving to Vancouver Island, working as a receptionist. She eventually ended up in Calgary, trained for a career in education, married, moved with her husband's transfers, worked in special education, worked with kids with behavioral issues, traveled to Asia and Africa, got a publishing deal, split up from her husband of eight years, met someone else, became a step-mother, continued writing and publishing books and currently works in a school in Baltimore while researching a new book set in Maryland.

Her fourth book, LULLABY FOR THE NAMELESS, will be in stores in December and has been described as "a police procedural of the first order".

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LULLABY FOR THE NAMELESS Dec 09 Dorchester
http://www.sandraruttan.com/






Rhythm and Rules
by Sandra Ruttan

Hey, get rhythm when you get the blues
Hey, get rhythm when you get the blues
Yes a jumpy rhythm makes you feel so fine
It'll shake all the trouble from your worried mind
Get rhythm when you get the blues…

It’s probably safe to say we’ve all been there. A cloud of black fog rolls off your brain but it’s still dark out. You lie in bed for a moment, wondering what time it is, before you sneak a glance at the clock. 5:05 am. No wonder your body is giving you a metaphysical kick in the backside to get up. No wonder your bladder is in complete agreement.

It isn’t until you’re half way to the bathroom that you realize that it’s Saturday. The day you can sleep in. The day you can make up for all the late nights and early mornings throughout the week. The day you’re supposed to be able to relax.

You head back to bed to see if you can’t eek out another hour or two, which is when the cat finds something on the floor that’s suddenly fascinating. All those people who lobby against carpet and for hardwood for health reasons failed to mention the noise factor.

That’s what I was thinking about last Saturday morning as I listened to our one-year-old cat, Mo, knock something around on the floor. The seven-year-old cat, Cookie, was sitting on the bookshelf headboard right above me, growling.

The dog was completely oblivious, stretched out on his back with his head on my leg and his hind paws pushing into Brian. Oblivious until a door across the hallway opened. One of the kids was up. Suddenly, Indy was on his feet, jumping to the floor, racing down the hallway to see who it was.



There was no way I was going to get back to sleep.

I think part of the reason music is such a popular form of expression is because people get into rhythms. We can call them routines, structures, or whatever; we become accustomed to doing certain things at certain times and our bodies tend to protest if we try to push them too far off schedule. Think of how many things we tend to do instinctively – like turning off the stove or turning the coffee pot on - without consciously thinking of them, just because it’s become part of our habit. Our rhythm.

Perhaps I’m more sensitive to the importance of scheduling than most. Five days a week I work in a school in Baltimore. I have spent years working with kids who have learning challenges, and kids who have behavioral issues, and one thing that’s been very important to most of the kids I’ve worked with is a sense of routine. Minimal disruptions can throw them off balance for the rest of the day, and have a profound impact on their mood, ability to focus and behavior. These kids rely on the rhythm of their day to help them stay on track.

I can’t blame Mo for thinking that 5 am is an acceptable time to play. Five days a week I’m up at 5 am, and last I checked he didn’t know how to read a calendar. I can’t blame the kids for getting up early either. After all, five days a week they have to be ready to be out the door at 6:15.

Last night’s episode of The Sopranos sprung to mind: Christopher’s going to help his girlfriend become a producer but the band’s material fails to impress the seasoned music industry expert, Hesh, who points out the songs are all chorus with no verses. The singer starts whining about how songs have followed that same old boring structure for decades.

No record deal for them.

As I was thinking about all of this, my mind kept going back to books. I think it’s the importance of rhythm that can make us frustrated when authors don’t play fair. It would be like listening to the original Johnny Cash song and instead of hitting the chorus the second time a flute cuts in, followed by a guitar solo that seems better suited to a Jimi Hendrix cut than the music of Mr. Cash, and after that someone starts screaming out the lyrics in an undecipherable voice that belongs on stage at a mosh pit.

Following enough conventions to engage readers and not writing a book that’s completely predictable are the goal posts. I’ve been reading a lot lately, and reading books not of my own choosing. Yes, already we’re weeding through books for the Spinetingler Awards next year, and so many books seem to be flipping the bird to readers by breaking the rules and rubbing the reader’s nose in their unwillingness to play fair, while most of the remaining authors seem to have worked from a checklist, so much so that I can predict what will happen page to page, never mind the outcome of the story.

The challenge for us authors is to find original, fresh ways to tell our stories, without disrupting the rhythm for the readers. It’s a delicate balancing act, but part of entertaining readers is satisfying them. I know I can’t please everyone with everything I write, but part of being an author is communicating with readers, and that won’t happen if I show the reader I don’t respect their intelligence, or their expectations.