I loved many things about my years in New Orleans, not the least of which was the local custom of giving ”lagniappe” which simply means something extra and unexpected. Just having a word to express the idea made it easier for me to appreciate lagniappe when it was offered to me.

Several weeks ago I received writer lagniappe. When we sell our books, we sometimes also sell the rights attached to them.  Audio rights.  Film rights, and others too numerous to mention here.  Back in the 1980 and 90s when I was writing romance novels for Silhouette Books, my publisher always kept the film and audio rights as part of my contract.  Since I doubted any of my romances would make their way to the big screen, this was fine with me.  I knew my publisher would do whatever they could to make that happen, and in the meantime, I just left the worrying to them.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I received an email two weeks ago telling me that two of my novels were going to be made into television movies.  In Germany! 

Lagniappe.  Most decidedly.

From Glowing Embers and Smoke Screen were the first two books of a four part series we called the Tales of the Pacific.  From Glowing Embers begins on an airplane to Hawaii.  I won’t tell the whole tale, but six people are brought together on that flight by an impending hurricane.  The rest of the story follows them into their own novels. 

Smoke Screen was the most complex of the four.  Set in New Zealand on the North Island, it follows the story of a woman with secrets who begins to find answers in “Waimauri” in the Island’s thermal area.

I don’t know how true to my books the screenplays will be, and I don’t know how these particular novels were chosen.  I do know I loved writing them both, that having a four book series set in exotic (for me) places that also included Coober Pedy, South Australia, and Kangaroo Island, South Australia, made them special.  I’d just been everywhere I wrote about, dragging four small children behind me, and I was delighted to find a series in the midst of wonderful times, as well.

Right now I’m waiting to hear what, if anything, I’ll be asked to do.  There was talk of flying to New Zealand, and talk of going to Germany.  I’m up for any adventure, so stay tuned.  But really, how much lagniappe can any one person expect?

Here’s a little for you.  If you click on German cast list
 you’ll see the cast of Smoke Screen, which is being filmed now.  These are gorgeous folks, aren’t they?  I can see them in the roles. 

Now, if I only spoke German! 

My pre-Inauguration trip to Florida was not all sand sculpture and walks on the beach.  A lot of it involved eating. . .  no, that’s not what I meant to say.  There certainly was plenty of that, too, but grouper tacos were not the real reason I flew back into the scenes of my childhood.  After a brief vacation in Sanibel, and an even briefer visit with my family in St. Pete, I moved on to Sarasota for a week of brainstorming with four of my favorite writer friends.  Left to right below, Diane Mott Davidson, moi with curly Florida hair, Casey Daniels and Karen Young.  Jasmine Cresswell was the photographer and shows up in the next photo. 

We began brainstorming together several years ago and grew to five members, which is as many writers in one room as we can manage and maintain at least a smidgen of ego.  Each of us brings a different sensibility, different skills, and different places in our careers.  What we have in common is imagination, the desire to listen to other points of view, the ability to embrace ideas that appeal to us, the ability to forget those that don’t, the desire to share our own ideas, and gratitude for this valuable time together.

A week in Florida sounds like a vacation, doesn’t it?  Especially with five women who are anxious to share gossip of the past year.  But as lovely as it is to bask in the sun in January, we are always amazed at how tired we are at the end of the day and how ready to fall into bed early.

Exactly what do we do that requires so much energy? (And food, but that may be a separate question.)  Here’s our format. 

Each participant comes prepared to brainstorm for two 1 1/2 hour sessions on her own upcoming projects.  The two sessions might involve the same book, or they might involve two different books, as mine did this time.  We each have one morning and one afternoon session on different days and we only do two sessions total a day.  We print up the basics for our fellow “BSers” (Brainstormers, please!), so we have a starting point.  Then the person whose book is being discussed presents whatever she has and tells us what she wants from us. 

We tape each session, with two tape recorders running, to be safe.  Once we’re home and transcribing we’re always surprised to find that some throwaway line early in a session might take us in yet a new and exciting direction.  We don’t want to miss a thing. 

What do we cover?  That depends on what the individual author needs.  Sometimes we concentrate on whatever element the group feels is missing from the project.  Sometimes we talk about characters; sometimes we outline chapters or do timelines; sometimes we argue the viability of plot points.

These sessions are not for the faint-hearted, nor for those whose egos can’t take it.  Nor will they work for writers who feel that each budding idea is precious and must be slowly nurtured and preserved. This is a positive group, helpful and supportive, but ideas that seemed wonderful in the shower are often discarded around the discussion table.  By the same token, by arguing to keep an idea we love, we change the parts of it that don’t work and 
find new ways to keep it alive.

As an aside, we do something else that’s great fun, too.  Casey brings her Tarot cards, and we each do a reading for one of our characters.  For more about THAT, read my blog at redroom.com where once a month I’ll be discussing writing how-tos for those budding authors among you.

This year I was lucky enough to discuss my next mystery A Truth for a Truth, which will be out sometime in 2010.  I had lots of thoughts on that one, but the gang helped me with some of the places where I was stuck.  Ideas for the sequel to Happiness Key which we titled Treasure of Happiness Key (we’ll see if my publisher keeps it) were tentative and new, but by the time my session ended, I had many more possibilities to explore–and a mysterious new man, but you’ll only find out about that at Red Room.

When all is said and done, every book is an individual project.  Ideas are everywhere, and no author knows what will actually work until he or she is in the midst of the novel.  But the energy and excitement that brainstorming provides, and the feedback from writers we trust can be invaluable.  It certainly is for me.

Especially in Florida.  In January.   

When you live just outside Washington DC, and your candidate wins the presidency, you go to the Inauguration?  Right?  Oh, wait.  Millions of other people are planning to go.  The temperatures will be below freezing.  There is no hope of getting transportation into the city that morning because the Metros will be mobbed and the roads closed, which means walking from Virginia. 

Thanks, but we’ll watch it with friends, share pizza and memories and cry our happy tears together.

Then the invitation arrives!
 Are we really going to miss a chance to see the Inauguration up close?  Are we going to let the temperatures and miles stop us?  Are we going to waste the generosity of our Congressman, who tracked down my husband to be sure he knew we had been invited?

So the plans begin.  Friends offer a place in their driveway.  Now we will only have to walk four and a half miles each way.  Leave early.  Bring all our own food and water.  Plan to use the gazillion portable toilets on our route. 

Yes, this we can do!

Then a new plan emerges.  Our oldest son gets an invitation, too, to the same standing room area.  Now we’re all going and going together.  He’s a lawyer.  We can sleep on the floor at his firm.  Then we can head over early and get our place to stand.  Yes, this we can do!

So after a “nap” on the only couch and a wonderful dinner at DC Coast with our son,  we set up camping mattresses and sleeping bags on the floor and prepare for a long night.  It’s longer than we could have imagined.  There’s a nightclub three floors below.  And the thrumming of bass and the staccato rapping of a male vocalist keep us up until 2AM.  The sirens, sounds of celebration and erecting of vendor stands keep us up the rest of the night.  Who needs sleep?   This we can do!

Morning finally arrives and with it, breakfast next door.  We get to see the vendors up close.  The American entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well.  We buy Obama Inauguration hats.  They will sell well.  With wind chill, it’s 8 degrees outside. But we came prepared.  This we can do!

We begin our walk.  We see lines.  Not our lines, as it turns out.  Parade route lines.  And the parade begins at 2:30.  That’s six hours away.  Wow, these people are serious.  They woke up this morning and said, what’s a little wait in the freezing cold?  This we can do!

We are channeled farther and farther from the area where we need to be.  The crowd grows thicker, and thicker. 
Everyone is polite.  Everyone seems elated.  No one pushes, no one complains.  People pass information back and forth.  Bundled against the weather we all look alike.  No race, no age, no rich or poor.  We’re in this together.  This we can do!

Along the way we see the massive security efforts. Police out in force, along with Secret Service and the Army.  Snipers pace on the roofs of stately buildings. Wrapped in every conceivable layer, I pose with the mobile crime lab van.  Don’t I wish I could go inside and look it over?

Then our journey comes to a halt.  We reach 14th Street, just seconds after the Secret Service closes the crossing.  Information is as scarce as warm hands.  Will they reopen?  Is there another way across and on to the mall and the silver section where we’re to stand?  Our problem seems minor compared to the mom who left her family on the other side to race back for food and now can’t reach them.  We wait an hour.  The crowd’s getting thicker.  We are hemmed in tight.  Still, people are polite.  We share information.  We find out where people are from and why they have come. 

We are told, at last, that the road will not open until 6PM tonight.  We have no place to go except back.  The crowds behind us are now huge.
  Viewing the Jumbotrons is impossible. I am forced to take off my gloves for photos, fish my camera out from under my coat, hold it high and hope for the best.  All those tiny dots between the trees?  People.  Thousands of them who woke up this morning and said: “This we can do.”

And they did.  No one seems to care very much if they can or can’t move forward.  They’re here to make history.  They will content themselves with whatever they can see on the Jumbotrons and hugs and shouts of joy.  It’s far too exciting to worry about temperatures or proximity.  They are receiving exactly what they’ve come for.  Hope.

We start back to the law offices where we will be able to see the swearing-in ceremony.  On the way we pass a Metro, look at each other and descend to see if we can get home, instead.  No one is there, because, after all, they’re all behind us now.  We catch a train in three minutes, a cab when we arrive back in Virginia and we’re home from the station in less than ten.  We walk inside and turn on the heater and the television set.  And in ten minutes we are watching Barack Hussein Obama sworn in as our next president.  Both of us weep.

All those years ago, when I researched Iron Lace and Rising Tides, my two part series about civil rights and an interracial love affair in turn of the century Louisiana, I would not have believed that someday in my lifetime, I would witness such a moment as the one I witnessed today.

One morning Barack Obama woke up and said: “This I can do.”  And today, he did.  One morning our nation woke up and said: “This we can do, and it’s past time that we did.”

I have never been prouder of my country.

So yes, I disappeared for longer than expected this month, leaving “Resolutions or Revolutions?” to hold my place here in case new readers happened to stumble on Southern Exposure while I was farther south than usual in Florida.  And no, I wasn’t fomenting revolution, although I was working on my personal version, spending more time with my husband and with friends as part of the promises I made to myself in 2010.

I had the great pleasure of spending four days on Sanibel Island as my first stop. 
Sanibel is not the setting for Happiness Key, which comes out next July, but it’s close enough that I saw scenes from the book everywhere we went. This was one of those “0″ anniversaries we as a culture love to make so much of.  In addition to reconnecting, without all the ephemera of our usual life, walking for hours on the beach and eating glorious seafood dinners, we also enjoyed the sand art creations of anonymous sculptors who brightened our evening walks with their creativity. 
One of the photos had a sign that accompanied it and a website.  You can find the artist here. 

The sculptures were reminders of the myriad ways we express ourselves.  Give these artists a stretch of white sand beach, a collection of free shells, seaweed and water, the opportunity to mix it all together, and the people who followed behind them were dazzled by their creativity.  I know, because I was a definite dazzlee.  Their creativity enriched my lovely holiday.

Enjoy my photos, and imagine the sound of waves and the warmth of sunshine. With the east coast locked in single digits this week, we need as much warmth as possible.  Next blog, I’ll tell you about the rest of my trip and my own forays into creativity with some of my favorite writing buddies.  They may be some of yours, as well. 

I’ll confess, I’m not a huge fan of resolutions.  The word itself lacks punch.  “I resolve to. . .” just sounds lame to me, like something I might decide on my way to the kitchen and forget once I’m there.  “I resolve to eat less, eat more vegetables, drink more water, only eat whole grains, stop eating meat, make all my own yogurt/bread/muesli.”  And by the time I’ve finished the resolution, I’m chowing down on leftover brownies and spareribs so they won’t go to waste.  (Wasn’t that last year’s resolution, not wasting food?)  By the next day I’ve forgotten a resolution ever passed through my head.  Safe until 2010.

Ah, but revolutions?  Those begin with earth shaking revelations, crystal clear moments when we know beyond the shadow of any doubt that things can not continue the way they are and change must occur.

I’ve had a few in my own life.  The moment I knew I wanted to marry my husband and share his life.  The moment I realized that children weren’t just an intellectual construct but a bone deep desire I was going to act upon and soon.  The moment I realized that spending hours each day living in my imagination was as close to bliss as I could possibly come for a career. 

So far my plans for 2009 fall more into the “resolution” category.  Spend more time with friends and family.  Lose that pesky 10 pounds I really don’t need.  Quilt an hour every day no matter what.  Learn Spanish.  Double the steps I take each day.

Here’s the good part.  If I take all those little resolutions, and pay attention to them, they might turn into a revolution, after all.  I might call this the “Today is the First Day of the Rest of My Life” revolution, when I begin to treat each moment as if it really is a gift, as my holiday blog entry claimed. 

So here’s my resolution, or revolution.  Paying more attention to the little things that make my life better, and paying less attention to the stuff that doesn’t matter.   

How will I know if this is a resolution or a revolution?  As far as I know there’s only one way.  By how well I stick to it.  

Now, how about you?  Are we in this together?  Let me know.  Revolutions are so much more fun in good company.