Author Archives: shannon

Well read

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Ask any historical fiction author, and 99.5% will tell you that doing the research is the best part of writing a book. The other point-5 percent? They likely didn’t understand the question.

The vast majority of that research involves reading. I bet if you surveyed all writers, 99.5% of them, when asked to list their favorite hobbies on their resume, would put reading first. And the other point-5? Well, you know.

You can count me in that number. The 99.5 one. Reading is my passion, and I’ve always had it bad. Back in ye olde college days, I was once asked, “If money was no object and you could do anything you wanted as a job, what would you do? Too easy. Without giving it a second thought, I said, “Lying on a beach reading.” Think big, right?

I can see now that I had nothing in there about writing a book, just reading them. And read them I did. I’ve got bookshelves filled with nothing but Irish books, each of them with a piece of notepaper sticking out the top doing double duty as bookmark and cryptic research notes like “p.46 Clarendon institutes curfew; p.122 typhus outbreak; p.87-94 potato rot; p.12 total deaths in 1848.” Cheery stuff, but it’s my own fault for setting my book in Ireland during the Great Famine.

Besides books, there are newspapers. Lucky for me, the subject of my novel, the revolutionary group Young Ireland, published their own weekly national newspapers – 1848’s version of the alternative media – and those papers handed me a treasure trove of goodies. Thank heavens for newspapers. I’m not sure I would have had a book if not for the newspapers.

Nowadays, we peg a newspaper’s editorial stance and journalistic bent as leftwing or rightwing, liberal or conservative. The Young Ireland newspapers were a different beast; they can’t be slotted into left or right. The Young Irelanders were rebels, anti-British rule, pro Ireland’s independence, so if anything, they were libertarians. A breath of fresh air compared with the contemporary establishment papers, those read by the gentry, the Anglos and Anglo Irish Protestants. Those papers skewed heavily conservative; not just the editorials but the articles, the facts manipulated to serve the establishment. We love to complain today about the untrustworthiness of the biased mainstream media. But that’s so old news, a yawn. Biased media has been the norm since 1848 at least, and my guess is it dates to the first newspaper to come off a press.

I just might have to research that one day.

Look what I dug up for today – the Zombies in a video straight out of the 60s …

Monday morning quarterback

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Actually, there will be none of that. No quarterbacking. Not here. Patrick Mahomes is not likely to come around here and tell me how to do my job, and I return the favor as I am even less qualified to tell him how to do his. So we’re even. No quarterbacking here.

Plus, I wouldn’t have anything to say that 12 million others haven’t said already. Football insight is not my bailiwick. But I do enjoy the game.

Football is excellent entertainment when a) your team is playing and b) they’re playing brilliantly. Otherwise, it’s agony. But you watch anyways because there’s always a chance, or if not always, just often enough.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the excitement when your guy catches the ball at his 10-yard line and dekes his way past everyone until he’s knocked out of bounds on the opposing 35-yard line. I’m hooting and hollering and high fiving just like everybody else. Uh oh. A flag on the play. Leaving us contrite and back in our seats as the ball goes back to the 10-yard line, still first down. Ah, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. By some miracle, though, four plays later and we’re first and goal and I’m back on my feet, delirious. They score a touchdown, and kick the extra point, and the next thing you know, my team is off to the Super Bowl. Or again, in any given year, maybe not.

So what about all those “not this year” years when two teams you don’t know and don’t care about make it to the Super Bowl? What do you do then? I don’t know about you, but I tune in to watch the commercials. Not quite the drama, but, on balance, funnier.

The other thing I do to keep up my interest is place a bet. This year, I went big – $1 on the Eagles to win. That dollar had me on the edge of my seat all night. Maybe not so much for the game, but for the ads.

For those whose team wasn’t on the field last night, take heart, there’s always next year. Or if you’re a Saints (we was robbed!) fan, maybe the year after that.

This morning, a little bit of Franki Valli and The Four Seasons …

A bit of the blarney

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Last week, we discovered that what I wanted to do when I grew up was write a novel. The Great American Novel, no less. And by Great, I mean Big. Big like “Atlas Shrugged” or “Gone With the Wind” or “Anna Karenina.” (This bigness, it turns out, was my first big mistake. But we’ll save that for another day.)

So, I now had “Great” and “Novel” covered. All that was left to figure out was “American.”

Seemingly apropos of nothing … The year before my “I’ll write it!” eureka moment occurred (see last week’s post for eureka #1), I visited Ireland for the first time, and, boy, did I ever fall hard for its charms, hook, line and sinker. Ireland made me feel like I had been wandering all my life and had now come home.

Which is very poetic and all, until some years later someone told me that’s what happens to everybody when they visit Ireland. All of a sudden, I felt like tchotchke in a souvenir shop. With the air blown out of it.

Nonetheless, we soldier on.

My love of all things Ireland included their emigres. And there was my answer. I would write about an Irish immigrant who comes to America. The Great American Novel. Perfect. Except, 15 years and two children later, I still hadn’t written word one. Any notion of writing a book had completely disappeared. Children have a way of getting in the way. By then I was living in Massachusetts, and I found time to think about the book again. The Irish were a big part of Massachusetts history — Lowell especially, and of course Boston. The only thing was, everything I read about the Irish in Boston or the Irish in Lowell depressed the heck out of me, the antithesis of freedom and liberty. The politics were the worst. This was not the Irish in America story I wanted to tell. Massachusetts was a dead end, and once again, the book went on hold.

One of the things I loved most in Ireland was traipsing through the ruins of castles and churches and old abbeys, and that led me to start reading up on Irish history. Several books into my new hobby, I came to one in which the author devoted a couple of paragraphs to a rebel group called Young Ireland, who in 1848 led a rebellion hell bent on Ireland ridding itself of and attaining its independence from England.

My first reaction was who were these guys and why had I never heard of them before? And that was my second eureka moment: By golly, if no one else is telling the story of Young Ireland, then I’ll do it. It has all the elements I needed: freedom, liberty, heroes. Perfect.

And that, my friends, is how the journey of the Great Big Good Irish Novel began. It’s been quite the trip so far.

This morning’s sing-a-long comes from John Hiatt with the very talented Ry Cooder on slide guitar …

Delusions of grandeur …

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… or how I came to write my first novel.

The idea to write a novel came to me right out of the blue. This was back in 1986 if you can believe it. Thirty-eight years ago. (I just have to take a minute to get my head around how long ago that was. On the bright side, though, wouldn’t “All good things come to those who wait” apply in this situation? You’re all nodding, right?)

I say 1986 because that’s the year Barbara Brandon’s “The Passion of Ayn Rand” was published, and so it must have been that year she was the keynote speaker at the National Libertarian Party convention and autographing her book.

Late each afternoon of the convention, the speakers that day held salons, and as a convention attendee, I could choose whom I wanted to salon with. I chose Barbara Brandon. Not surprisingly, 38 years later, I don’t remember much of the discussion, except for this one question. Someone in the back asked Ms. Brandon why she thought no one since Ayn Rand had written a novel, like “Atlas Shrugged,” about freedom.

I don’t remember her answer, but to my ears it sounded weak. I shot up my hand.

It’s safe to say the tenor in the room was devotion to Ayn Rand. A lot of libertarians at the time came to that philosophy after reading Rand and had great respect for her writing. As for the person, Rand had a high regard for herself and did not suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. She was not to be challenged.

So there went up my hand, certain I had a better answer: that likely everyone (or at least every libertarian) was too afraid to challenge Ayn in her domain.

Ms. Brandon did not agree with me, probably thinking I was a bit cheeky if not sacrilegious, and I sat down. And that’s when it came to me. My eureka moment: “If no one else is going to do it, then I’ll do it,” I said, although not out loud. “I’ll write the Great American Novel about freedom.” Like I was daring myself. I wonder, if I’d known then that it would take me 38 years to get it done, would I have been so eager to take the dare?

Funny. In the intervening 38 years, there hasn’t been a novel written with the major themes of freedom and liberty, so if nothing else, it looks like I have that niche pretty well sewn up.

A Monday morning treat – the angelic voice of Laura Smith …

You can call me Bobby

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Unaccustomed as I am to writing movie reviews, let’s give it a shot and see where it lands.

I’ve been wanting to see “the Bob movie” since it opened in theaters on Christmas Day. We had every intention of seeing it the minute it came out – forget about Christmas dinner and all the razzamatazz and go see the Bob movie instead.

What seemed so easy in the planning failed in the execution. For reasons having to do with life getting in the way, no Bob movie materialized for us on December 25th, and there was no Bob movie for the next three weeks. But on the twenty-first day of Christmas (my true love gave to me…) the stars aligned, and last Tuesday, my friend and I stood in line to get our tickets. Not much of a line really, only eight of us in the theater for the 5 o’clock showing.

In any event, when I reached the front of the line, I asked of the concession stand person, “One for the Bob movie.” I’ve been calling it that for three weeks, and it just slipped out. She was quick to correct me: “A Complete Unknown.”

And that’s right where the movie starts, with Bob Dylan arriving in New York City for the first time, a complete unknown. Soon after, Bob visits an ailing Woody Guthrie in the hospital and, prompted for a song, sings Song for Woody. Pete Seeger is also there, and the two veterans both shed a tear, or if they didn’t, I sure did. Both recognized talent when they saw it, and welcomed him with open arms as the newest member of the flock, that flock of folk singers/activists hanging out in Greenwich Village. Bob fit right in, writing a new civil rights anthem seemingly every ten minutes (that would be movie minutes). Everything was working out fine for everyone right up until the folkies claimed him as their own when all he ever wanted to do was fly free. And we all know how that ended in 1965 when Bob went electric at the Newport Folk Festival.

From the day the 19-year-old Dylan arrived in New York until the day he plugged in in the summer of ’65 fills the screen for 141 minutes. Big kudos to director James Mangold (who directed Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic) for allowing Bob’s songs to be sung in their entirety instead of the snippets we usually get that leave us begging for more. No begging necessary here. And kudos to Timothée Chalamet for capturing Bob’s voice in spot-on fashion. The ensemble cast all sang their own songs – including Ed Norton as Pete Seeger and the talented Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez. But it’s Bob we’ve come to hear, and Chalamet makes it seem so easy. Any fan of Bob’s would know it isn’t.

The cast of characters who spun in Bob’s orbit during those early years pop in and out of the movie – Albert Grossman, Alan Lomax, John Hammond, Brownie McGee, Bobby Neuwirth – but it’s Johnny Cash who steals the best scene in the movie. Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo gets my Oscar nod for her performance as the waiflike, naive, delightfully charming Suze Rotolo, Bob’s girlfriend. She sees him for what he is, and we understand her pain when she leaves Bob far more than we understand his. The movie never attempts to dig deep into what makes Bob Bob, what makes him tick. For those who see Bob as an enigma, “A Complete Unknown” will not dispel you of that notion.

The movie features plenty of scenes with Bob roaring down the road on his Triumph Bonneville T100, so much so that I anticipated the accident that was yet to come. But it wasn’t meant to happen in this movie. Maybe a sequel? Some music from Big Pink?

It’s hard to pick just one when it comes to Bob Dylan …

Let the work begin

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The calendar doesn’t lie, does it? Any way I look at it, my vacation is officially over, and that means it’s high time I got back to work. And by work, I mean working on my book. Editing.

When I finished writing my novel back in November, I followed those who know these things, their suggestion to put it aside for a while, to give me and it a rest. Six months is what “they” typically suggested. Really? What was I supposed to do for six months? Write another book? I settled on six weeks. Another broken rule to add to the pile of rules I’ve broken so far.

More than once it’s occurred to me that if I habitually ignore the rules promulgated in these “how to write a bestseller” books, one of two things is going to happen: Either my book will a) get published (despite breaking all the rules) or b) it won’t (because I broke all the rules). I suppose if it doesn’t get published, I could always write another book and follow all the rules and see if that works. But if it does get published, then it really comes down to what are rules but to be broken?

Rules or no rules, the six weeks were up last night. Today I start editing. Once again, those in the know say this is the stage where the real writing happens. I have to ask, what was it I was doing for the past seven years – fake writing? It seemed like real writing to me.

Time will tell.

Writing is fun. Editing is not. Writing is also hard work, but it’s fun. Editing is hard work and not fun. Although I’m a proofreader by trade, I am not an editor. I can do it, but it takes both sides of my brain in full gear, and that’s work. But regardless of how much I like or don’t like to edit, it’s got to be done. And quickly. I want the editing round done by the end of June, when I will be attending a historical novel conference and get to hob nob with agents and editors and fellow authors. One of the rules, and this one I do intend to follow: Don’t talk to agents unless your book is ready.

That means that while you are out solving the mysteries of the world this week, I will be hunting down all -ing verbs and –ly adverbs and trashing them all. No more “Bella looked longingly into his eyes.” No, now Bella gets to hold his gaze in hers. It’s going to be a tough week.

For your Monday morning listening pleasure, Steely Dan …

Live free or die

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Each time I return to New Hampshire, I fall in love with it all over again. Sadly, however, my time here is coming to an end for this visit. Tomorrow I fly back to Washington and return to my non-holiday life. It had to happen sometime.

In last week’s post, I was all over the natural beauty of New Hampshire. There’s no doubt about it, the place is gorgeous. And while its pretty face is its best feature, it is simply the gateway to everything else that the state has on offer. At the top of that list is freedom. The state’s motto, Live Free or Die, is as meaningful to today’s residents as it was for those who lived here when New Hampshire became a state in search of a motto.

Don’t quote me on this, but I believe I read that New Hampshire was voted the #1 state for freedom on a recent quality-of-life survey. If true, it couldn’t happen to a nicer state. In addition to the live-free-or-diers who populate New Hampshire, there’s a whole group of liberty lovers moving here, if not in hordes, in a steady stream, to be among other freedom lovers. All of that movement is thanks to the Free State Project. You can read all about when the group formed and why, but in essence, a bunch of libertarians decided that New Hampshire would be a great place to create a liberty community. I was one of those libertarians and an early mover. We were a trickle at first, but 20 years later, the trickle is now a steady stream, except in summer, when the banks threaten to overflow.

It’s been good this week to mingle among free minds and spirits, if only for a wee pick me up. Sometimes it’s just nice to talk about Ron Paul.

You might be wondering if I love New Hampshire so much, then why did I leave?

It’s the cold. The kind of cold that goes right to the bone, which I find unbearable. It drove me away. I was reminded of such a couple of days ago, when the temperature dropped below freezing and hasn’t budged since. So cold that now, on my daily walk, I can see the ponds* have frozen over, like little skating rinks. While stopped to enjoy this little piece of nature, a stiff, frigid breeze blows through my coat and down my neck and goes right to my bones. Brrr.

That’s why I left. But no matter where my physical bones lead me, my heart always remains in New Hampshire.

*In the South, we call them swamps. In New Orleans, ponds are what form in the potholes when it rains.

For your listening pleasure today, Amos Lee …

Christmas in New Hampshire

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I expect the question on your mind ever since my post last week is how did the six-person, one-bathroom thing work out?

Honestly, far better than I expected. At one point before post-Christmas Christmas arrived, I thought the situation might call for a chamber pot under every bed. Seriously, I did. As it turns out, we haven’t needed any, and just as well, because where in all of creation was I going to find a chamber pot or two or six on Christmas Eve?

One of the coolest things about New Hampshire is it is full to the brim with picture postcard scenes all year – but perhaps winter is best of all when a shimmering moon glistens on a blanket of newly fallen snow. Quintessential New England – my home for 25 years, eight of them in New Hampshire. But there’s no quintessential falling from the sky this week, so you will have to imagine white where it is green.

What we lose in snow we gain in not having to shovel. Which gave us plenty of time to spend on other kinds of holiday exercise, namely getting the Christmas tree to stand up, decorating it without knocking it over, wrapping presents, hunting for bedsheets, and an assortment of other housewifely duties. In a cause for great joy, it all got done in time for the arrival of our son and his family from Akita, Japan. It’s been two long years since I’ve seen them, so this time together is ever so special. Precious time.

No question, the gathering of family over the holidays is by far the best part of Christmas. Second best: the lights. All the rest – the food, the presents, the music, the snow – it’s all filler. As for the lights, I get my fill every year, randomly driving around streets in town oohing and aaahing to my heart’s content. Top of my list this year is the humungous display put on by Tulalip Casino in Washington. Acre upon acre of lights. Tons of wattage, and simply a feast for the eyes. Here in our neck of the New Hampshire woods, a little less ostentatious.

I wish you all a splendiferous new year. Keep the joy forever in your heart, and peace, and love, and all that good stuff.

And for our musical interlude this week, Lloyd George …

The joy of it all

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I am going bi this Christmas. Bi-coastal, that is. Grandma is on the move.

We celebrated our pre-Christmas Christmas yesterday with my daughter and family out here on the West Coast. As far as pre-Christmas Christmases go, this one was perfect – no calories involved, just simply the exchange of gifts – no fuss, no muss. Which isn’t my motto, but I’m working on it.

Tonight I fly off to the East Coast on the redeye, landing in Boston tomorrow morning before sunrise, then watching the sun come up on the bus trip up to New Hampshire.

It’s hit the ground running for Grandma: three days until our post-Christmas Christmas, this one with my son and his family who will arrive in very post-Christmas fashion late on the 26th, in time for post-Christmas Christmas on the 27th. And we’re all bunking in at Grandpa’s for the hols. Six people, one bathroom, how great is this going to be?

Here’s where things stand. Our production team, which consists of Grandma and Grandpa, and our collective Done list and To-Do list:

Done: 1) Turkey is thawing in the fridge. 2) Christmas tree is on the porch waiting to come inside. 3) Presents ordered from Amazon sitting there waiting for me to …

To-Do: 1) Wrap them. 2) Put up the tree and decorate it and the house. 3) Reconfigure furniture so it all fits. It can be done. 4) Make grocery shopping list for everything but the turkey. 5) Go shopping. 6) Baking – don’t even mention it. 7) See the Bob Dylan movie. 8) Sleep, preferably before or after the movie.

If I sound a bit stressed, really I’m not. I’ve got three 24-hour days to get it all done, and look at you, if your eyes are on this on Monday morning, you’ve only got two days left. I’ve got it easy.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah everyone!

It wouldn’t be the holidays without Darlene Love …

Confessions of a social mis-fit

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For those of you who have followed me over here from Facebook, welcome to my little corner of the internet. A few weeks ago, finally freed from the time-hog of writing a book, one of the first things I wanted to do was get social. Writing a book is a solitary endeavor, no getting around it. There is absolutely no time for socializing. Seven years, and I purposefully made no new friends. Because if you have a friend, you inevitably will spend time with that friend. And if you’re spending time with that friend, who’s writing the book?

“They,” those know-it-all “theys,” say that it’s good to take a break now and then, refresh, reinvigorate; but I write slower than molasses, and I need every minute I can get. My social life for seven years consisted of hanging out with my characters, living my life vicariously through them. So when the book was done (well, draft one, at least), it was time to broaden my horizons, at least socially. And so for the first time since joining Facebook way back when, I now read my Newsfeed. Boy, people are busy, aren’t they? I’ve posted in the past – trip to here, trip to there, grandbabies, concert this and sunset that, and that was it. I joined Facebook to be where my kids were (how socially aware is that, I ask). They have both long moved on to the next thing and then the thing after that, while I remain, taking my sunset photos.

But now, in addition to posting photos of this and that, I am very socially active and hearting this and liking that and hugging the other.

That’s all well and good, but it’s not fulfilling my social needs. I like to talk and I like to write, which is so not Facebook. But I can do that here. And while writing a blog is a lot like talking to oneself, if you, dear reader, sign up to follow me and later find a reason to comment now and again, I’ll talk to you too.

Every Monday morning, I’ll be in your inbox, being sociable. Bonus: Each blog features a song from my Top 100. This week, Joan Armatrading …