The last weeks have been packed full of surprises.  Unexpected knee surgery.  Selling our house to builders who will tear it down and build two where it used to stand, a not uncommon occurrence in Northern Virginia. Our offer accepted on a house in Florida, which, after making  plans and finding movers, had to be withdrawn because major problems were uncovered during the inspection.

So now we have a limping author scrambling to finish a book while her husband–just completing a forty year career–madly scrambles to find movers who can store most of our worldly possessions for some undetermined number of months while we search for another home.

Okay, are we having fun yet?

Of course, through all this, I was and am aware how lucky we really are. We have health insurance. Our house sold quickly. We have an unheated cottage in NY where we can stay until cold weather. And we learned about the leaky roof in the house we had planned to buy BEFORE we bought it.

Luckiest of all, we can decide where we want to live next. The world is open to us–at least the portions of it that we can afford. We’ll be near our grandchildren all summer to watch them grow. Wherever we move we’ll see our children frequently, but for the first time we don’t have to consider school systems, distance to work, job opportunities.

Yikes!

I realized years ago how important setting is in my novels.  I’ve had as much fun designing places to live as I’ve had creating characters.  Emerald Springs, Ohio, home of Aggie Sloan Wilcox, my minister’s wife sleuth, was a particular joy, but would I want to live in Emerald Springs–with its abysmally high murder rate, nosy neighbors and snowy winters?

Or how about Toms Brook, VA, home of the Shenandoah Album series and a real town?  As much as I love Virginia and the Valley, I’m ready for something a bit warmer in winter, a place I won’t regret leaving in summer when I head to Western New York.  That goes for the very real Asheville, North Carolina, too, home of my newest series, Goddesses Anonymous.

Of course that leads me straight to Happiness Key. . . But wait, I think Happiness Key is, ahem, no longer habitable.

Creating all these wonderful places and researching those that exist, has taught me a lot about what’s important. It’s not (all) about weather. It’s not (all) about roots. It’s not even (all) about being down the street from family. It’s about settling in, making any house a home, turning neighbors into friends and finding out what we can contribute.

The next months will be an adventure, but I’m glad I have my imagination to help me. After all, if I can create a home for my characters, I’m confident I can do the same thing in real life.  I’m looking forward to it.

In the meantime, in the next weeks you may find fewer posts here.  Just bear with me until we’re temporarily settled again.

Welcome to Sunday Poetry. If this is your first visit you can read about the purpose and inspiration of my Sunday poetry blogs here.

Today’s poem, Memorial Day, by Dennis Caraher needs no explanation or introduction. Read it several times. Not only does the poem deserve that, it changes each time I read it and I feel something new. I was particularly drawn to this one today, living close to Arlington Cemetery now, but moving soon. The monuments that are mentioned and the memorials never fail to inspire me, or, at the very least, make me think about those who’ve gone before and what they accomplished or suffered.

Remember, we read poetry together here for the pure pleasure of the experience. There are no quizzes, no right ways to read or contemplate the poem we share. Absolutely no dissecting allowed. Just come along for the “read.” What line, word or thought will you carry with you this week? If you’d like to tell us where the poem took you? We’ll listen.

Just a reminder that the bidding’s going to end next week at Brenda Novak’s Annual Auction for the Cure of Diabetes.  I’m delighted to say my offering of all five of my quilt pattern books (autographed, of course), plus a copy of Sister’s Choice, and a $25 gift certificate for fabric at Connecting Threads, an online quilt shop, has nine bids, but the prize is still worth a bit more than the latest one.  So now’s your chance to get something fun for yourself AND help raise funds for diabetes research. Quilters, wouldn’t these pattern books make great Christmas gifts for quilting buddies?

Plus, if the winner of my auction offering emails to tell me they saw this post and bid because they did, there will be a little something extra in the package.

Finally, remember The Ride to Beat Hunger?  Scott arrived back in Vero Beach yesterday after thirty long days riding his bike across country.  He set out to raise $50,000, and by all accounts he even raised more.  Now the money will be put to good use feeding children and assisting families.  I call that a good month’s work, don’t you?

Thank you, Brenda and Scott, for seeing a need and saying, “I can do something about that.”  You’re both inspirations to me.

If you read my blog regularly you’ll have noted by now that titles are crucial to me.  They are crucial to my publisher, too.  Unfortunately we don’t always agree about what’s crucial to sell a book and keep an author happy.

I’ll confess that in hindsight I can see that some of my ideas have been less than stellar.  I remember titling one of my first romances The Soul’s Seduction, which Harlequin Superromance put a stop to immediately.  Of course their selection, Something So Right, has never felt like, well, something so right. But in all fairness, neither does The Soul’s Seduction, which now sounds like it should be a sequel to The Exorcist.

We’re having problems with my latest title, too, months after I proposed it and thought it was safe.  That’s particularly difficult for me since I’ve worked it into the story in numerous ways already.  This is something authors get and publishers don’t.  I’ve heard on good authority that Adam wanted to call the first book of the New Testament Eve and the Magic Apple, and we all know how that turned out.

I have friends who are far more objective about this process, believing that publisher input is vital.  I have others who are so thoroughly disenchanted they call every novel Untitled because they know marketing will change it no matter what, so why waste time?  A mega-bestselling author once told me a true story about a meeting in which she was told  what the title of her new book would be.  Marketing’s pick was two words, a heroine’s name and something the heroine possessed.  Neither word had any correlation to the story, but somebody thought it was a great title.  She wrote the book to match it.

I am not nearly as accommodating.  You will note that I am also not a mega-bestselling author.

Today, though, I’m most interested in what YOU think.  What makes a book title memorable and attractive enough that you pull it off the bookshelf to check out the story?  I’m truly interested in your opinion, so please feel free to also give examples if they occur to you.  I’ll start with  three that matter to me, just to get things rolling. Remember, this is your chance to be heard.  Share at least one thought in a comment on this post. If everything you want to say has been covered, just tell us a book title you’ve particularly liked and why.  You will still be entered.

Random.org will choose a winner in June from all commenters on both list posts in May.  The prize is an autographed novel, my choice since it will depend on what is not yet packed.  You still have time to comment on the first one, too.

Elements of a Great Book Title:

1: The title fits the genre so that the reader isn’t fooled

2: The title is short enough to remember AND long enough to remember

3:  The title captures my imagination

Now it’s your turn. Have fun.

And in another giveaway.  Congratulations to Janet Bowlin, whose comment on my interview with Diane Chamberlain was chosen by random.org to win a copy of Diane’s Keeper of the Light.

Welcome to Sunday Poetry. If this is your first visit you can read about the purpose and inspiration of my Sunday poetry blogs here.

We’ll be moving mid-June.  First to our little cottage at Chautauqua Institution for the summer, then to. . . somewhere. The house hunting hasn’t gone well, but we’re strangely upbeat. Our material life will go into storage for a while as we contemplate the possibilities and travel from one of them to another. (more…)

Watch Sherlock Season 2: Making a Modern Hound on PBS. See more from Masterpiece.

Last night I watched the newest Sherlock Holmes on P’BS Masterpiece Mystery, an updated version of  The Hound of the Baskervilles.  I love this series.  Sherlock and Watson are a fabulously dysfunctional pair, Sherlock clearly suffering from Aspergers and Watson recovering from PTSD.  The chemistry is terrific, both men sympathetic in their own ways. And the stories are multi-layered and scrumptious. (more…)

As my husband delivered yet another bag of books to the Arlington Library, the librarian came forward to thank him personally.  After all, even if nobody else gives the library gently read books for the next book sale, it will still be a success.  Singlehandedly we have donated hundreds of volumes, about nine out of ten that were formerly on our shelves.  Unless we finally call a halt, Michael will need ice packs and Advil for his sore back.

From the moment we decided to move, I dreaded the day the culling would begin.  How could I get rid of these precious memories, this invaluable information, this journey into the hearts and minds of my fellow authors? (more…)

Welcome to Sunday Poetry. If this is your first visit you can read about the purpose and inspiration of my Sunday poetry blogs here.

It’s Mother’s Day in the US, but today’s poem highlights romantic love.  We’ve heard so much talk about love and marriage this week, but not the way we usually do in spring. Instead we’ve heard arguments for and against marriage between two people who love each other, much as we did a generation ago.  Then the taboo was interracial marriage, and today it’s same sex marriage, but from my vantage point, the arguments remain the the same.

I went in search of a poem about love to share with you and found this one. Read A Ditty below, and tell me, is the narrator a woman talking about the man she loves?  Or is the narrator a man?  The sex of the narrator is never mentioned, although the object of affection is male.  Does that make the poem less powerful for you, less romantic? (more…)

Nothing beats the internet when you’re recuperating.  I discovered this during the past week when I was largely immobile after surgery on my knee.  The iPad I’d  wondered if I’d ever really need proved to be a godsend.  I did mail, surfed and played Word with my family and my former assistant friend now living across the pond.  Since our time zones are hours apart, I could always count on her to have a word waiting for me when I woke up. That brightened my morning.

I also discovered the real joys of illustration.  There were moments I didn’t want to read.  I just wanted to look at beautiful things, and Pinterest fit the bill perfectly. I had time to scroll through the gorgeous choices of people I “follow,” and wallow in the beauty of rooms, quilts, seaside abodes, desserts, and Asheville, North Carolina, scene of my next book.  It was a welcome diversion.  It was healing. (more…)

The Ride to Beat Hunger, from Costa Mesa, CA to Vero Beach, FL

Right this very moment, my long-time friend the Reverend Scott Alexander, is bicycling through the range lands of Oklahoma on a trip from Pacific to Atlantic that has, so far, included grueling temperatures–both hot and cold–long ascents and descents over majestic mountains, raging thunderstorms, and distances of over a hundred miles a day.

Who does this, right?  Well, Scott, for one.  It’s not the first time he’s made the trip, but this time he decided that while he was cycling, he could also do something wonderful for the world, and The Ride to Beat Hunger was born. Along the way Scott hopes to raise tens of thousands of dollars to help the 925 million people in the world (yes, you read that correctly) who are hungry. TRTBH operates under the direction of the Indian River Community Foundation, and the two charitable beneficiaries will be Harvest Food and Outreach Center in Vero Beach, which distributes food to those in need of it, and the international charity Stop Hunger Now, which assembles meal packets to be delivered, primarily, to schools in regions stricken by hunger. On June 9, after Scott’s “splashy” arrival back in Vero Beach, Stop Hunger Now will arrive with a truckload of food supplies for the community to help assemble into meals for international distribution. Talk about bringing hunger home. (more…)