...To Make Sure the Ink Has Not Faded

For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded. ---James M. Barrie

 Notice my trend in Christmas themes this month? Wondering what The Polar Express and Santa Claus have to do with my writing blog? Well, I'll tell you.

I have received a contract offer for my first novel.

James M. Barrie’s comment perfectly sums up the gigantic thrill of an author’s first book. Even more, in my case at least, it expresses the giddy surrealism of the experience—the disbelief, the dizzy, hazy, wonderful fog of am I only dreaming and, if I close my eyes and open them, will the contract still be there? Like Barrie, I check the contract to, as it were, make sure the ink has not faded.

It’s a child-like wonder. It’s like the kid in Polar Express who meets and shakes the hand of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, his heart swelling clean out of his chest with awe. It’s his knowing, at that moment, there really IS a Santa Claus, and he’s looking right at him. The kid could come face-to-face with Santa Claus every night for the rest of his life, but he can discover the jolly old man is real only once.

And a writer can have that first book contract experience only once. Sure, they can have subsequent books published, hopefully many more. But there will be only one first time.

And I know I’ll never forget the experience.

Every author I’ve spoken to confirms that the feeling is the same for all writers. And they add that the feeling cannot be duplicated, no matter how many contracts follow. Oh, sure, there will always be a thrill to have a book accepted by a publisher, but nothing will ever compare to that first huge rush of adrenaline that comes from looking at that FIRST contract that says YOUR name is AUTHOR.

I mean, you know you’re an author. You write stuff, don’t you? Sure. But there’s just something about seeing your own name and the title author in the same sentence on an official document.

My signed contract is on its way to Dreamspinner Press, and I’m so happy and honored to be among their authors.

The book is titled Candy G. It’s the first contemporary story I’ve ever written, and it’s set in San Antonio in a community much like the area in which this Texas girl grew up.

Another wonderful side effect of the contract is that it’s fanned the creative spark in me, fueled me with a renewed drive to keep writing. I’ve begun a prequel to Candy G., and the acceptance of my first novel has helped me to wriggle out of the procrastination cobwebs and get busy on this new WIP.
And, honestly, childishly honestly—oh, I’m so ashamed of this confession—I enjoyed that confusing blend of ‘high’ and lowly dread of waiting to hear if my story would be rejected or accepted. In some odd way, that angst has become addictive. I want to write and write and write. I want to finish another book. I want to experience the exhilaration of finishing, submitting, waiting again. Who knows? The next work may meet with rejection. But I don’t care. I still want to write. I still want to run the race again.

The contract offer was many things to me, but—most importantly and most purely—it was simply the validation that being published offers to a writer. The assurance that maybe, just maybe, this writing dream really can come true.

Maybe, just maybe, like the kid in Polar Express, you really can meet the dream face to face.

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out, Kid...

Water can support a boat or overturn it.--William Shakespeare

Actually, Shakespeare was referring to leaders being overturned by people in this passage. But, on its own, this part of the verse is profound, and it applies to the thought on my mind today. Powerfully so.

Support. Mentoring. Sharing wisdom. Teaching the ropes. Paying it forward.

I have to start by saying that I’ve been blessed with exposure to some of the most supportive people imaginable in the writing community. A list of who they are and what they’ve done would is too long to ever itemize.

The list includes some who’ve been unselfish enough to beta read for me, to offer valuable feedback—some of this feedback in the form of detailed critiques and edits.

I’ve been blessed with the offerings of others and their artistic skills.

A talented woman with a beautiful, artistic soul designed my blog and my website. Somehow, without any particulars from me, she homed in on ME and crafted these gorgeous sites. She GOT me, and managed to create ME in these designs. I didn’t ask her to do this. She just gave of herself. To support me. She believes in me.

Once, when I needed motivation, another fellow writer who is a cover artist designed a mock cover for the book I was writing. To this day, I swell with pride when I look at that cover, and I still show it off. To this person, that cover was probably easy as pie, no biggie. But, to ME, it was equal to honoring me with a gold medal, a trophy—a symbol that said someone BELIEVED in me and my talent. A medallion to carry with me at all times so that I would believe in myself as well. A carrot dangled in front of me to push me to finish the damn book.

As I said, I’ve been uncommonly blessed with support.

So what’s with the you’ll shoot your eye out, kid? I’ll tell you what.

I came across that picture of Ralphie from A Christmas Story—that scene where he struggled, clawed his way back up the slide to tell Santa that he wanted a Red Ryder BB gun. And the caustic Santa nudged a boot toe to Ralphie’s forehead and sent him spiraling back to the bottom, smirking to the dazed child, You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.

Well, it hit me that if I offer support, even if it’s just a cheer or a congratulations on finishing a chapter, of a pat on the shoulder, a moment to read a manuscript for someone, anything—I’m helping a beginning fellow writer who’s just like myself to realize THEIR dream. I have that in my power, no matter how far along in the writing experience I am.
On the other hand, I could use that power to do just the opposite. To say one word—one carefully crafted word—of discouragement, to be the pin that pricks a hopeful writer’s bubble. It only takes one word. One word can put hope in a heart or be the boot—the you’ll shoot your eye out, kid—that sends the writer zooming to the bottom in a big pile of discouragement.

I have the power to be the water that supports the boat or the water that overturns it. And the beauty of that is that it takes no time at all, doesn’t interrupt me from anything. I’d be willing to bet every successful writer can remember back to their beginnings and recall some other writer who reached out to them, offered support, an encouraging word, a kind gesture. And, like me, grinned from ear to ear that somebody who was so successful took a moment to remember their own past.

My dream? Sure, to be a successful writer. But, oh, I can just see myself in some mountain cabin, surrounded by art and pottery and glass wind chimes, with my cute little straw hat on. And young writers would come to have tea with me and we could talk about writing, and I could encourage them and lift them up. And those kids could tell other kids, Hey, that C. Zampa is cool. She’s just a regular guy.

Cringe...

The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to cringe.---Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Remember in school when you suffered through a test, fought with everything in your brain, and still couldn’t come up with some of the answers?

And then the bell rang. Time was up. You cringed.

You cursed yourself because THEN—once the bell rang—the answers came to you. You wanted to beg the teacher to let you take the test again, you knew you could get the answers correct this time. But it was too late. Your chances for a score of 100 vanished with the bell, gone down the tubes.

Recently I experienced that same feeling after I clicked ‘send’ and shot my WIP off into cyberspace and into the email box of a publisher. I submitted my story. My first submission ever.

At first, the moment my ‘masterpiece’ rocketed from my computer to the publisher’s computer, I felt pure, adrenaline-driven exhilaration. I’ll never again experience such a rush. And I’ll certainly never forget it. It was my lunch hour. A supportive co-worker stood over my shoulder, chanting, Hit send, hit send, hit send. And, when I DID hit send, we cheered.

Later, I opened my manuscript and looked over it. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t suddenly see the work through an editor’s eyes, sans my rose-colored glasses. Now it didn’t seem so perfect. Doubts flooded my mind—should the character have done that? Should I have explained this more? Will the reader know what I meant by this? Was that duplicate word in there before? His name is spelled wrong! The damn name is spelled wrong! But this document was perfect when I subbed it!

I cringed.

All of the sudden I saw holes, huge gaping holes in the story. Oh, no. This character’s feelings are not validated! I should have expanded more on this line or that line. Why didn’t I explain certain things better? Why? Why? Why not? All those things I should have changed, would have changed if…well, you know. The old shoulda-woulda-coulda.

More cringing.

Could I unsub? Could I take the manuscript back and re-do it? Add a thing or two here, a tidbit there? No. Too late.
After a spell of heartsick doubt, the next—and quite unexpected—wave of emotion swept over me.

Elation. Yes, elation.

Why? Because I SAW the flaws. I saw them and I DID cringe.

The fact that I spotted these gaps on my own was proof that somehow, someway, those lovely seeds had sprouted in my mind and I’d begun to understand some of the dynamics of writing.

Don’t you see the beauty in that? Think about it. That ability to see my work through another’s eyes was another beautiful step in learning. A revelation, a new grain of knowledge that could be used in my next work, and my next, and my next. I'd love to have had this 'through-the-editor-looking-glass' vision sooner, before I submitted. But I didn't. Maybe for beginning writers, that's just meant to be. Part of the growing process.

Wonderful fellow writers have generously helped me with so many issues in my work and have provided priceless knowledge in my writing journey; and I’ve absorbed every morsel that came my way, corrected many mistakes with their guidance. Repeated mistakes, yes. And, when these are pointed out to me, I cringe—over and over, seeming to make the same errors regularly. But when a writer actually SEES their own mistakes and they finally begin to ‘get’ it—sure, sometimes AFTER the work has been submitted—it’s a glorious thing.

We all make mistakes in our writing. And don't think I don't know that we're ALWAYS going to make them. But when WE can see the mistakes, when we can learn from them, then maybe we can then manage to do most of our cringing BEFORE we hit ‘send.’

Just Daddy...

It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one that unreservedly approves of him. ---Mark Twain, More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927


This has been the hardest thing for me to write--ever. No, no. Not because grief consumed me and I couldn’t bring myself to think about it. Oh, sure. I’ve grieved. I still grieve. But the obstacles in the path of my thought process haven’t been emotional. Really.

 My problem with writing about my Daddy? I just couldn’t think what to say. That’s all. In the big scheme of things, he was just…Daddy. My Daddy. Just because he was the leading man at the house I grew up in wouldn’t really make him a figure of interest to anybody who didn’t know him.

We buried my father on February 2, 2009. When the lid to the casket closed, panic swooped over me. I would never, ever see him again on this earth. Never. And with the closing of that lid, everything I could have, would have, should have asked him about himself was sealed forever. No more chances to “get to know him better.” I had my chance and all I could do was hope I had learned enough.


I grew up in an era when so many dads were---well---just dads. They married our mothers which made them husbands and then they became fathers. Simple. Having kids was just part of being married for so many men in this era. Part of the job---just went with the territory. Well, that’s how it seemed to me. So, to me as a kid growing up, he was just plain ol’ Daddy. Nothing special. Just a guy doing his job.


Oh, sure. There were the other fathers, the exceptions. And sometimes, as a little girl, I seethed with jealousy toward my friends whose fathers were the exceptions. The dads who called their daughters “Princess”. I honestly convinced myself that my dad would have been a better dad if he would have only called me “Princess.” But my father, plain ol’ Daddy, didn’t anoint me with that coveted name. Oh, well, I survived the beastly abuse of not being the little princess of my daddy’s eye. I somehow managed to shoot to adulthood as a fully functional, well adjusted woman in spite of this atrocity.

 The beauty of it all? I learned he couldn’t have been a better father. Even considering the fact that he never had a pet name for me, that he didn’t take me fishing, that he didn’t play games with me---he still couldn’t have been a better father.

 He supported his family on $2.15 an hour with his Post Office job (before it was union and before it was called Postal Union) and pushed a broom at a junior high school (in the days before they were called ‘middle school’) after work to make extra money.
 Times were hard, money was short. Suppers consisted often of pinto beans and cornbread or, on Sundays we ate scrambled eggs (never knew the Sunday egg connection---have made a mental note to find out from my mother). But we ate. We didn’t want. We were happy. We were a family and our house was a warm sanctuary.

 I thought I knew my daddy as well as I needed to. He wasn’t my best friend. He was my father. The man who raised me. In the world I lived in (this is the world before time-outs replaced spankings), your daddy was just your daddy, and that was all he was supposed to be. What more did you need to know?

Well, I had a startling revelation that he might be a little more than that when I got married. The morning I was scheduled to leave my girlhood home to move to Alabama as a married woman, I got up early to say ‘good-bye’ to my daddy before he left for work. He hugged me so tight that I couldn’t break his hold. When he finally let go, he’d been crying. Tears were in his eyes. How dare he? This man who was supposed to be as indifferent as I was? Crying? Yes.

From then on I realized he was more than just my father, but was a man with feelings and a personality I hadn’t gotten to know. He was a man who had a whole life before I came along, a man I never knew.

Thank God for revealing this to me while he was still alive. For letting me learn about my father---the man who served his country in World War II in the Eleventh Airborne and earned a Purple Heart. The man who did double duty and served in the Navy on The U.S.S. Wasp. The man who sort of looked like a combination of William Holden and Paul Newman when he was young. The good looking man who married my mother and conceived me and my siblings.

The man who, as it turns out, actually had a fascinating life, but who to me was still just Daddy.

Adios, Mi Querido...

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done. ---Steven Wright


Boy, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear the comedian who penned that phrase sat beside me last weekend while I stared at the blank document on my computer screen. I’d bet he watched as I set the formatting to Page One, Chapter One for my new book which was to be a prequel to the story I just completed.


No, the title of my new book isn’t Page One, Chapter One. The page and chapter number were just as far as I’d gotten in the writing of it.


I was stuck. Those first words, that first scene for the new venture wouldn’t materialize. And I didn’t like that. Here I was, with this imagination which usually runs rampant, and I stared at an empty horizon. Nothing for miles. Blank.


I think my muse—or whatever you want to call it—still hung out with the characters of my recently finished book. My muse really loves those guys. I love those guys. Separation anxiety? Had I become too attached to them? Hey, don’t laugh. To a certain extent, I think that’s what it was.


Nicholas Sparks said, Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It's one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period.


But Truman Capote said, Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.


For me, it was somewhere in between—giddy excitement, but a painful grip of the gut, saying goodbye to my heroes. Not only did I shoot my ‘children’, but dared to think about walking away from them to embrace other children. Who knew I would get so personally involved with the damn story?


Are you laughing at me again? What? You mean YOUR characters do NOT ride to work with you and discuss their plight with you? YOUR characters don’t dictate which CD to play in the car, jealously making sure your mind stays on them and their story? Mine do.


I think the whole purpose of doing a prequel was to keep these characters front and center, to hold them close by creating a new story around them. And I suppose, to do so, I just wanted to go on writing them forever. This way, they would never fade from my heart. I’d never really be abandoning them.


My character, Candelario, smiled smugly at me, sure he’d convinced me to stick around and make a new adventure for him. He even crooked a finger and winked, beckoning me back to his world, to dance to El Mexico de Rocio with him while I dreamed up more romance for him. He’d won. No new characters for me. You know you can’t resist me, mi linda senorita, he cooed.


But it happened. No sooner had I succumbed to his Latino charm—turning my back on the possibility of new heroes, new adventures—two new characters appeared on the scene. Out of the blue, stumbling into my brain, beautiful and strong, too potent to resist.


And who knew? They’re not even Latino.


So, my beloved Candelario, your spell has been broken. For now. I’m going to leave you for a bit and attend to these new guys.


But, Candy, you’ll always hold the distinction of being the hero in my first completed novel. And, yes, I’ll be back for a prequel. Hell, I may even do a sequel. IF you prove yourself and sell. You can’t get something for nothing, mi amigo, so you’ve got to prove you’re worthy of more of my time.


So, for now, Candelario: Adios, mi querido. De dejo pero regreso por ti. (Goodbye, my dear. I will leave you, but I will return for you).

The Angel in the Marble...

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

---Michelangelo

His name is Candelario, and he owns the lawn care maintenance company which tends to my employer’s property. When he comes into my office to be paid, he smiles and calls me Senora. I like that. I love being called Senora. Although it’s merely a common courtesy for him, the word conjures romance, lace mantillas, mariachis, and Spanish love songs for me.

Something about Candelario—I wasn’t sure exactly what at first—draws me to him. Not his looks, although he is a very handsome man for his age, which I’d guess to be about mid-seventies.

During our short chats, I listen to him, enraptured, and it dawned on me what intrigues me about him and—yes—even attracts me.

His elegant bearing. The flavor of romance that shines in his smile, the whisper of Hispanic charisma that seems to have vanished with past heroes like Ricardo Montalban and Gilbert Roland.

When I glimpse beyond the stooped shoulders, the weather-worn wrinkles, the gray hair, I think of Michelangelo’s angel in the marble, and I see the young Candelario—the man who at one time surely stood straight and tall—beneath the aged exterior.
His manners are very old-world, very gracious, very elegant and, according to him, he was raised in an atmosphere where such carriage and manners were common.

Candelario doesn’t know that, because of his impression on me, the character in my book was named after him, patterned after the man I’m sure he was in his youth, the man he still is.

I look into Candelario’s eyes when he tilts his handsome head a bit and calls me Senora, when he flirts in such a gentle way that my heart flutters, and I long for the romance that he symbolizes. The long-extinct concept of romance, the manner in which a gentleman could speak with that precise combination of teasing charm and respect. The way a man like Candelario could look at a woman, and through his eyes, she became a beautiful senorita, lace mantilla and all.

And, sure, maybe this gracious but spicy elderly Latino is thinking very saucy thoughts behind that cautiously coy smile. All the better, eh?

Seriously, though, I yearn for the lost art of gallantry in which a mere smile in a man’s eyes—tempered with dignity—warmed a woman’s heart in ways that simple lust could never touch. A beauty far, far beyond sex.

Do you see the effect Candelario’s proud bearing has on me? To think about him sends my mind off to a dreamland where a gallant man takes my hand and kisses it, a flash of admiration in his dark eyes. A world where heroes still honor women, where—even though they certainly might have naughty agendas—they still know how to campaign for her attention with respect.

Last week I talked about the hero of my book as he sat in a booth across from me and my friends at a restaurant. I told about my character as I’d already written him. Today, I’m just taking a step back to reflect on the same character, but to remember him before I wrote him—when he was the angel in the marble, yet to be carved. When I fell in love with  his time-worn smile, and recognized the beauty which still flickers in his dark eyes.

Both men, which are one and the same to me—the aged Candelario and the young, mysterious businessman in the restaurant—have that inexplicable something that sweeps me off my feet.

Candelario’s physical body may have aged, but such a beautiful spirit cannot be affected by time. And in his carefully respectful flirtatious smile, the sparkle in his eyes, that romantic spirit still shines bright.

The spirit that is SO powerful it made me write a book about him.

I'll Be Seeing You...

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.
--Richard Bach

Los Jocales is one of my favorite places to go for lunch.   Although far from fancy as restaurants go, its authentic, beautifully seasoned interior and vivid, unpretentious Mexican atmosphere  found its way in my story as a favorite hangout for my hero. I’m not sure why I chose it, other than the fact that it’s nondescript, an everyday place filled with everyday people. A place I know well and can feel it as I write it. It’s as though, when dining in one of Los Jocales’ well-worn booths, I’m living my story.

Last Friday, though, something wonderful happened that came to me as an assurance that my book needed—that it WOULD—be finished.  A sign, if you will.

The Tejano music from the juke box serenaded us as usual. The waitress who spoke very little English (how convenient that my friend Sylvia speaks fluent Spanish) had taken our orders. We relaxed, dug into the chips and salsa, and settled in for an hour of office gossip.

Then he walked in.

I knew him right away, sensed him before I ever even got a good look at him. It was his aura, his bearing, his elegance, his coloring, his attire, his…everything.

The hero of my book.

The moment he passed our table, my friends and I looked up simultaneously, and—struck by his appearance, his extraordinary presence—we stopped talking and traded appreciative glances.

Sinking into the next booth, he threw an elegant, cordial smile to the waitress and took a proffered menu. A wonderful chill rushed through me because even his quick, polite glance at the waitress was exactly as I described my character’s actions in one scene in the book.

Mesmerized, I attempted to eat, struggled not to stare at him, but managed to drink in every little nuance—the simple yet swank watch on his wrist, the scant dark hair on his knuckles, sleek jet hair, his black slacks, pinstripe-on-white long sleeved shirt, thick mustache, and deep-set onyx eyes. The way he touched the napkin to his lips between bites. Oh, and the lips. Ay-ay-ay. The way he intermittently talked very quietly on his cell phone. A businessman, possibly. Rugged, swarthy, yet very refined. Classy. My character.

Maybe, if you’re a writer, you understand how the stranger might not have looked like my character, yet he was the essence of him. Perhaps you’re a reader and you get what I mean about seeing people in your daily life who are the exact personifications of characters  you’ve read. Right down to the clothes on their backs.

To me, everyone is a character or a potential one. It’s a delicious plague so many writers suffer—the perpetual ‘casting’ for characters in everything we do, everywhere we go.

My friends know that I ‘see’ many, many of my characters in my everyday life. They may even secretly think I’m loco, but they tolerate me and my ‘gang’ of fictional beings. You know the kid in the movie who ‘sees dead people’? Well, I see fiction people. Alive and breathing.

But what a surreal experience to have your ‘creation’ walk right into your life, into the very atmosphere you wrote for him, and carry himself exactly as you painted him. What a wonderful rush. What an affirmation that your imagination is more right-on than you ever dreamed, to see that fantasy fleshed out.

And understand that I mean this type of happening for me goes far beyond looks or appearance, although that plays a huge part, too. But the spirit of the character is SO intense that I feel their aura, and recognize them—in this particular circumstance, before I even saw his face.

This consequently causes me to wonder just how much CHARACTER do we actually put in our characters? Writers talk all the time about the people in their heads who speak to them, urge to be put on paper. And I can vouch that DOES happen. But I think—no,  I KNOW—we pour something that cannot be explained into every character we write that transcends the mere fleshing out, some ingredient that really, truly brings them to life. Something so strong and beautiful that we recognize them when we pass them on the street.

I couldn’t help but consider this fabulous experience an extra push from my Latino-Italian-Continental-loving-fool-for-dark-haired-men muse to get my procrastinating ass in gear and finish my beautiful hero’s story.

And I’ll be damn if I didn’t finish my book this week. Something about this incident, this brush with the embodiment of my protagonist, filled me with such passion for my book, for my character, for his story, that my fingers could not type fast enough, and I feverishly plodded until the very last word was typed.

Damn, oh, damn, how I love this kind of thing. Like I said, I see characters in everyone, stories in every place I go. Most writers do. But how precious to have the actual character step out of my imagination and right into my real world. A reverse process of sorts: instead of from my brain to the paper, he steps from the paper to my real life.

Having seen this man in this restaurant still gives me chills, and I cherish the memory.

My only regret was that, when this man left, I wasn’t able to see if he—by some fantastic coincidence—drove away in the same black Mercedes my character drives. I’ll pretend he did.