When Buried Treasure Comes to You

Worse Things Waiting by Manly Wade Wellman.

Hold that thought. Because I'm starting this post with a prologue.

PROLOGUE

I'm a reader, and I read A LOT.

I read print books, eBooks, online articles, and of course, I read for work.

I love to do research (thrill of the hunt, perhaps?) for Herald-News stories, my fiction, and for the fun of learning something new.

 As a child, I read the back of cereal boxes when I ate breakfast.

I write the books I want to read because no one else wrote them. And I'd rather make readers than sales, just so I can discuss the book with you (I envision retirement as one long book club).

One post a day on my BryonySeries Facebook page extols the love of reading.

And one post on my BryonySeries Twitter page always asks the same question: What are you reading tonight?

Although many people associate me with writing, I like reading even more, and, fiction-wise, I especially like books with a supernatural tone.

But that's a pretty wide theme. And I obviously don't like every book with that theme. In fact, I have a hard time finding books in that genre that really grab me.

So when I do, it's like finding buried treasure.

Unfortunately, treasures aren't always easily obtained. And sometimes, the treasure comes to me.

That's the point of this blog post.

MAIN STORY

One night, night a Twitter follower recommended a book for me: Worse Things Waiting by Manly Wade Wellman. I found an except online and loved it. I had to read more.

I decided to purchase the book the "e" format, because I am cheap.

But no "e" format was available. And the print was out of my very narrow budget.

I checked Abe Books and Thrift Books and other secondhand bookstores like them. Nope.

So I checked with libraries. Nope.

I checked with Janet Staley at The Book Market in Crest Hill, because I have found some great rare books there. Nope.

Yesterday, the book came to me.

My WriteOn Joliet co-leader Tom Hernandez emailed me yesterday morning asking if I was still working from home because he had a surprise for me.

Like me, Tom is an avid reader. He started a blog for WriteOn Joliet this year called "Writers Are Readers," and he stresses at nearly every twice monthly meeting of our adult critique group that to be a writer, one must be a reader.

He has a reading list for each season of the year. He has bookcases full of books. And so forth.

Quite honestly, when Tom messaged me, I thought he was bringing me a cup of coffee from Book and Bean Cafe, since he passes it to and from work-related meetings and I live in the general direction, and we aren't stopping at the cafe before WriteOn Joliet meetings because those have been online, thank you, COVID-19.

Of course, you have already guessed where this blog was going.

But I didn't.

I was REALLY surprised when Tom gave me the book. And because I was on deadline, I set the book out of sight, so I wouldn't be tempted to take even a bitty peek.

OK, I did take a peek. I'm off work today, so I'll be taking more than a peek. I. Cannot. Wait.

Now, isn't the first time Tom has surprised me with a book.

I have a character in my BryonySeries that fictionalizes a fictionalized version of himself. He's the world's first Irish vampire, because Ireland doesn't have a vampire mythology.

But then I DID find a book online, a collection of Irish vampire stories called Bloody Irish. I put it on my wish list.

And right around the holidays one year, Tom surprised me with the book. I had a couple days off, and I savored it.

It had some great "mood phrasings," for lack of better words, that I want to revisit and incorporate into my own fiction scribblings.

Another time, he picked me up a copy of Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner forgetting I had bought an autographed version (with a bonus story, which my version from years ago did not have) from the author himself when he visited WriteOn Joliet last fall, back when the world was normal.

A few months ago, Tom surprised me with a copy of The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, which I haven't quite finished yet - only because it's a large volume, and I do most of my reading at bedtime - and I won't read scary stuff right before bed.

EPILOGUE

Yesterday, as Tom and I stood six-feet apart and masked, with me happily clutching my new book, I wondered aloud if maybe I have my wish list all wrong.

Instead of books, maybe I should be wishing for something more practical - like a Mercedes.

But a Mercedes won't take me where I really want to go.

And that's deep inside the imagination of the writer and his written word, where great stories are waiting.

Illustration by Kathleen Rose Van Pelt for "Bryony."

Readings

I don't understand when some people say they don't like reading.

I understand the words. I don't understand the concept.

The pleasure of reading is so woven into my life, I can't imagine life without it.

My father used to read to my sister and I when we were very little, and we sat on each side of him on the living room couch. I remember asking babysitters to read to us at night and falling asleep to one such reading, The Story of the Live Dolls by Josephine Scribner Gates, and waking up to the words of it still being read, truly magical.

I remember the joy at bringing home a book from the school library (St. Bernard's in Joliet, a building that is no longer standing), getting off the bus, hurrying down the long sidewalk of Belmont Avenue to show my mother. But she was in the neighbor's driveway talking to Mrs. Madden, and I had to wait. I remember my impatience, of holding the book, eager to share.

I later overheard my mother telling my father as they lingered at the dinner table how impressed my sister's kindergarten teacher was that I'd taught her to read. I don't remember teaching her how to read. But I remember reading books to her that I liked, even chapter books until she was old enough to read them herself. One of those books was Hotel for Dogs by Lois Duncan. My sister now has one room dedicated to books in her house. She majored in English,  worked in bookstores, and she's now a librarian. 

I read myself to sleep at night.

I had severe asthma as a child so I stayed inside and read. This included books from my mother's childhood (The Bobbsey Twins, The Campfire Girls, Honey Bunch, Little Women, An Old-Fashioned Girl).

I wrote short stories as a child and my first (and only) novella at age thirteen, one hundreds and forty-three pages of a handwritten story in a notebook. It was called The Inheritance. It was about a preteen girl living with abusive rich relatives who's taken away by a poor woman to live in the mountains. She's allowed to leave on the condition it doesn't affect the rich people from gaining a certain inheritance. Turns out, she's the inheritance, the real treasure, that the rich people let slip past them.

Pretty sophisticated story for a kid, now that I look back.  I had mentally worked on the story for at least a year, maybe two. When I was done, I left it "accidentally" lying around so family members might get curious and pick it up. My mother did. She verbally destroyed the story, and I physically destroyed it. And I never wrote another.

In early high school, I read a lot of books about witchcraft and vampires as research for a story I wanted to write. I didn't even have a topic, but I knew I wanted to write one in this genre.

Except for bedtime reading, other "fun" reading fell off in late high school and college. But as a young mom expecting her first baby at age twenty, I read scores of books about pregnancy, breastfeeding, and parenting.

In January of 1985, while lying on the couch reading from a book of vintage short vampire stories and trying to appease the severe "morning sickness" that accompanied each pregnancy, the urge to write a vampire book of my own returned. By the time my baby and toddler awakened from their naps, I had a mental skeleton of a story I wished to write.

I read to my babies and toddlers. I read to my children all through high school. When we homeschooled, we read literature together. I read whole books to them, a chapter at time, over lunch. We studied Bible, the saints, and theology over dinner. We read from their "reading" books together, lying down on the floor, alternating paragraphs, so I could hear my children's inflection and comprehension, and so they could understand how reading was supposed to "sound," and so we could enjoy the experience together. We'd even flip ahead to see who was "stuck" with an extra long paragraph. I hand-selected their science and history books so the content, as well as the reading experience, would be superb.

Those were great years, steeped in reading. And I still fall asleep reading.

Next year, I'm going to split my Saturdays, part writing fiction and part reading the books of WriteOn Joliet authors, as well as other titles I've been wanting to explore. I will probably read some of my own titles since my whole first goal in writing a book was to see if I could write one I'd want to read.

 When I wrote Bryony, I had no idea the story would take me on such an adventure; when I began Before the Blood, I had no idea of the complexity (and time suck, if you will) of writing a prequel to my vampire/supernatural/literary series. But now, I'm ready to return to more reading.

The best place to read is lying across a bed or couch. In fact, when I wrote Bryony, and I'd edited it the best I could on my own (first time, anyway), I printed it out, three-hole punched it into a binder, and spent a day on the couch reading it, to see if it held its own.

It did better than I thought. But I knew it wasn't perfect. That was the first time I'd read a book making marks with a red pen. But I'm glad I did.

Next year brings a new reading season. I'm excited!

Well, At Least They're Reading

How many times have you heard that phrase to defend kids reading subpar material?

As a mother, grandmother, reader, and writer, I have a few thoughts on that.

Mother/grandmother:

I have read a lot of amazing stories. I read them as a child, adolescent, and I read them for the decades I spent homeschooling my six children when we immersed ourselves into literature, and they played "hooky" because they couldn't put latest copy of Foxtrot down (We are huge Foxtrot fans here).

However, not every child enjoyed literature to the same degree (One child felt most of it was downright stupid). Others couldn't wait until the next day, the next story, the next epic poem.

We had our own style of reading: one-on-one with each child, reading aloud alternating paragraphs (The heard how reading aloud should sound; I could hear for pronunciation and comprehension, and we often skipped ahead to see who would get "stuck" with an extra long paragraph).

We also brought stacks of books to the dinner table (The Bible, church history, lives of the saints), and had two-hour long dinners and plenty of discussions. I read aloud, a chapter a day, from great novels over lunch.

These were amazing years.

We developed a series of in-house, one-liners from literature we still use today.

Still, my kids often defaulted to stuff that made me cringe. The Sweet Valley High series. Twilight. Goosebumps. Fear Street. (OK, I read a few of the last two, as well).

Which brings me to the next point.

Reader:

Society today bemoans our lessening passion for hunkering down with a good book. "Kids don't read anymore!" is the battle cry, which is true...and not.

We read for information. We read to learn. We read for pleasure. And people are still doing all three.

Email, texting, and social media, by their very natures, force people to read, perhaps more than they did in days past. All three contribute to the above three reasons why people read (to follow their favorite band on Twitter, why little Johnny needs a GoFund me account, and text messages from the new crush).

All right, all right. Kids, adults aren't reading good books anymore.

If by "good books," we mean literature, well, literature has always been a hard sell. But not reading? If anything, eBooks have promoted reading, and people who love certain genres (romance tends to sell well)  have seemingly endless selections a couple clicks away.

But those aren't GOOD books.

By whose standards?

Don't get me wrong. I can join the chorus of those who bash 50 Shades and other commercially successful books, while I shake my head (while forgetting I read Sarah Kernochan's Dry Hustle in high school, the book I literally picked up out of the gutter when walking to a friend's house because it looked that good, and absolutely loved the tight plot and layered characters, and my horror years later when I learned, due to the internet, the book is semi-autobiographical, that people could be that mean and coldhearted) at the ignorance of the masses.

When I do, I forget why most of us enjoy reading. We read for pleasure.

That can include titillating pleasure (the type that elicits scorn, perhaps even hypocritical scorn), but also pleasure at shivering in fear as we turn the page of a horror story; using all our deducing skills to solve the murder and figure out the culprit before the author tells us; enjoying characters  and scenes so three-dimensional, we can hardly believe we spent three hours in an easy chair and not in the lives of those people living in those places; and enjoy the pure awesomeness of a well-crafted line that tugs our hearts of makes us think.

And nothing matches the pleasure of falling asleep to a good book.

This is why different writing styles and genres will appeal to different people. Which leads me to...

Writer:

As a writer, I, of course, want my own words to elicit some (or all) of these reactions. But I only have partial control of it.

I can learn the mechanics of writing a good book, and then I can spend time crafting it.

I can learn target marketing and draft a profile of that type of reader and promote to that audience.

I can make connections on social media and in person, hoping that will persuade reluctant buyers.

But writers who are readers know, deep down, understand none of this comes with guarantees, which may or may not be a slam on their writing.

Certain combinations of words will leave some readers sighing and begging for more.

While the same words will leave others going, "meh."

Illustration by Kathleen Rose Van Pelt for "Bryony."

Two Benefits of Being Sick

I'm talking about sick with a fever, something I haven't had in years, but Daniel was sick, and so was Faith, so...

Benefit number one: I slept away Saturday afternoon. After I wrote a story for Monday, of course. I can't think of the last time I did that.

Benefit number two: Lying in bed and reading away a late Sunday afternoon. I can't think of the last time I did that, either.  Yed, I read, and I read quite a bit, but in such a leisurely way, probably not since childhood.

Now granted that was after getting some work done and covering an event (at an ice rink, no less, brrr...), but it felt heavenly to lie back and finally read one of those books I'd had for years and would get to "someday."

And Faith has cuddled into me most of the time, sweet and loyal kitty.

Today, I'm feeling a little better, but still running a fever, so I'm working from home. I'm keeping the pace slow and playing the odds tomorrow I'll feel better still.

At least I spared myself a couple mile walk to work in the rain!

Happy Monday. :)