Ami Maxine

A Love Letter to Scotland

I first fell in love with Scotland when I took a Scottish Lit course in college. Our professor, hands down, was the best prof I’ve ever had – I kid you not, when he taught History of the English Language, it was the first time in the university’s history that the course had a waiting list. His enthusiasm for whatever he was teaching was so infectious, it was hard not to get swept away. I took a course with him every single semester – whether it counted toward my degree or not.

In Scottish Lit, we learned all about William Wallace (and learned all the inaccuracies of the film Braveheart). We learned about Robert the Bruce. We learned about the poems of Henryson, Dunbar, and Douglas. I should also note that this prof is of Scottish descent and would share his own knowledge about the country and its history. He would share stories of his own adventures around Scotland, would wear his kilt on Scottish holidays, and break out the Scottish brogue whenever it was deemed necessary. (He could also speak old English and quote poetry in Latin.)

It was in this Scottish Lit course, though, that I learned about the magic that is Scotland, and I wanted to someday visit.

Cut to about five or six years later years later. I was working for a film company under my boss-turned-bestie. I was fresh out of grad school, and I missed talking about books, so we bonded over reading a couple series together and then coming to work and complaining in the morning about everything we disliked about them.

We also bonded over Scotland. Though my love of the country came through Literature, hers came through her ancestry. We joked for a bit that we should take a trip together someday, and about six years into our friendship, I finally asked – how serious are you? We started planning and saving.

We took the trip summer of 2018 – and I have to tell you, you cannot truly know the magic unless you’ve set foot on Scottish soil. I knew before we even left that I would be returning some day. (Was supposed to go this next summer, but obviously that is on hold.) I also knew I wanted to write something that involved Scotland.

Enter Lucy. My still untitled second novel. (Why are some titles so hard?? I’ve got a title and a backup for the new WIP – but Lucy? Nope.) Probably my first of many stories involving Scotland, Lucy visits places from my own 1200 mile road trip we took around the country (and a couple that are on my to do list for the next trip). The bulk of her trip centers around Isle of Skye. In the story, she describes a piece of scenery which I wrote side by side with this photograph. There was indeed a heart-shaped cloud that had formed in the sky above us.

And hard as I tried, as many as I took, I just could not take a photograph that captured Loch Ness – it is hands down the most incredible body of water I have ever seen in my life. As I write in the book, “It looked as though the loch were filled with black oil, a thin slick of water skimming along the surface.” The little doodle Lucy does is also something I took from the trip. (It was cloudy/foggy at the start of our cruise – the sky was bright blue and clear by the end of it.)

It was a lot of fun reliving the trip in this way, pulling up photographs to help me remember details. I feel so fortunate to have had the chance to see these places with my own eyes first, and I can’t wait to do it again.

Lucy is Now Luminous

I always require that my students title everything – and not just “Narrative Essay” or “Haiku”. I tell them, if the introductory paragraph or first few lines are like the first impression upon meeting someone, then the title is like catching eyes across the room – it is the thing that will get them to come across the room in the first place. And I’m not walking across the room to read “Narrative Essay.”

I also admit that I understand fully what it is that I am asking them to do because I hate writing titles – I would hire someone to write my titles for me if I could. In my own experience, I either have the title first, and the story or poem stems from that – or I finish what I’m writing and pull all my hair out trying to find something suitable to sit above it.

My nerdiest title is still PS129.I7646 2015. (I even have a version in case I ever published it under my pen name.) It’s the title of a poem that uses a book as a metaphor – the title is the Library of Congress classification for this metaphorical book. It took me four librarians to figure it out. 🙂 Librarians are magic rock stars. Seriously. One of them (Hi Carol!) even took the time to write out why she thought I should use PS129 (memoir) over CT25 (autobiography).

The title of my first book came about because I misread a billboard while driving. I can’t even tell you how I got from “All Feelings are Valid” to “All Falling Things,” but I’m grateful for it. 😛

My third book, the YA, I had the title for before I wrote it. My new work in progress I have title for that fits within the world it comes from – and I even have a backup.

But my second book? It has really been like pulling hair out of my head trying to figure out what to title it. I finished the first draft of this manuscript on Oct 31, 2020. I just called it “Lucy” after the main character knowing it would be a working title. Though there have been moments where I though, nope, it’s just gonna be the title ’cause I got nothin’ else, and I’ve written an entire other manuscript in the meantime…

I tried out a few phrases and words and tossed them around and sat with them. There was Looking for Lucy and Someday We Will and Wherever Would I Be. There was Catching Lucy. There was, for the briefest of minutes, The Girl with the Sun in Her Eyes (a lyric from The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”), but my beta readers thought it was a bit cumbersome for a title, and they were right. My beta readers even offered a few ideas of their own – Firefly’s Journey; Firefly’s Light; Path of the Firefly.

But still, nothing felt right.

I went down another rabbit hole of words yesterday, starting with a word and clicking through synonyms. Playing with sound. Looking up fireflies (I know more about them now than I ever thought I would). And somewhere along the line I stumbled upon Luminous. And I found I kept returning to it throughout the day, so I decided to sit with it overnight.

The next morning, it was still with me, so I passed it along to a couple folks, and they dug it. So that’s it – Lucy’s manuscript is officially named Luminous.

The hardest thing to know is that if this book ever finds its way into a traditional publisher’s catalog, that all this stress and worry could be for naught. Publisher’s have the last say on titles for a number of reasons, so there’s a chance they will come up with something else. BUT – one needs a title to catch their attention in the first place, so here we are.

Though now I’m back to thinking about Wherever Would I Be. [strained smile]

Research Rabbit Hole

I really love doing research for a project. I love learning random facts and exploring places and meeting people – even if it’s only via the internet. I definitely would not have been as productive with my writing during this quarantine if not for the internet. Well, the internet and my training on how to suss out credible sources.

I can’t even tell you how I landed on it, but in the midst of researching for a project yesterday, I ended up in an ancestry rabbit hole. I have a book for my mother’s side of the family (put together by her aunt). We’ve always known from where her family lines had descended – Germany, France, and Poland.

My dad’s side is a bit a more of a mystery, but we were always told Germany, Italy, and Norway. Well, it turns out, we can add Luxembourg, Austria, and Ireland to that list – and that’s just from my paternal grandfather’s line. I’m even more of a mutt than I originally thought!

The Irish ancestry caught my attention, and I did a little more directed digging. It seems we descend from Clan Ó Duibhgeannáin (anglicized to Dignan), which was a “family of professional historians in medieval and early modern Ireland.” Suddenly, my love of research and Irish Whiskey makes a lot more sense… (Looking at you, Writer’s Tears – which I had sought out because I loved the name, and now it’s one of my favorites!)

I realize fully what a privilege it is to know as much as I do about my ancestors, and there is still so much to learn. (My paternal grandmother’s line is a bit of a mystery beyond the Norwegian.) It is mind boggling to consider all of the people that had to line up for me to exist.

A Year Since…

It’s hard to believe it’s been an entire year since I completed All Falling Things, but Facebook reminded me of how I had posted this picture when I finished.

Life looks a lot different today than when I typed those two little words. For one, we’ve been in quarantine for almost ten months due to a world wide pandemic – I’ve forgotten what three dimensional people look like. And yesterday, a mob breached the U.S. Capitol while the House and Senate were attempting to confirm the electoral college votes. The H/S members were forced to evacuate, and the mob ransacked offices and hung confederate flags in place of American flags. (The Capitol was eventually cleared, and the certification did finish a bit before 3 a.m. CDT – and yes, I was still awake for it.) And so much chaos has happened in between. The mind boggles.

For me, life has been relatively small and quiet. I’ve been working remote since March 13, and we are slated to be remote again in the spring (*sobs with understanding and gratefulness for being able to stay safe and still work but also with the missing of my three dimensional students*). I spent the two weeks after finals to get spring up, and so I’ve been “off” since Dec 24, and it’s been lovely to not be glued to email and constantly grading and putting out figurative fires (I teach over summers, so this is my first true break since…well, last winter break). But I miss being in the classroom so so so much. It’s going to be so weird the first time I get to step back into one.

I’ve been able to spend extra time with my nephews. Starting over the summer when school ended, I’ve helped out watching them (both my sister and brother-in-law are essential workers). When my oldest nephew, my lima bean, was a baby, I watched him a bunch – we spent a lot of nephew/auntie time together for the first few years of his life before he started school. I was a bit sad that I didn’t get the same experience with the second, my mini muffin. And then voila – that all changed. (This is me trying to be all silver lining – when in reality, the reason behind this chance to spend time together is devastating.)

I’ve gone in fits and spurts with reading. Sometimes I just can’t get myself to sit still. Sometimes I get this insatiable thirst that can’t be quenched. Stress sure does interesting things to a person. (I’ve been stalled at starting the second chapter of Little Women for almost two months. I had to look it up – and I was shocked to realize it’s been that long…what is time?)

Probably the one truly consistent thing for me has been writing. Well, writing and my youngest cat’s demands for constant lap snuggles. It’s astonishing to me that it’s been a year since I finished the initial draft of All Falling Things. Partly because it took me two years to write it. Partly because it seems much longer than that. Since then, I wrote the initial draft of my second novel, still untitled (and I’m waiting on feedback from two of my beta readers), and I’m 3/5 of the way through my third. Amazing how much time one has to write when they aren’t driving eight or nine hours every week. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s also astonishing because that year also feels so short. In the eight months that followed me finishing it, I edited and revised it several times, got feedback from my beta readers, edited and revised some more, and then started querying agents. Eight months after I finished it, I was offered a contract to publish it. Eight months seems so very short considering I had been dreaming about this for almost thirty-eight years.

At the moment, I’m waiting on the editor (my book is in their queue) and to see the cover design. I know publication is a slow process, and I’m doing my best to be patient – especially since there are so many other things to be impatient about. Like the vaccine and the chance to teach in the classroom again. Or the package I ordered from Singer that has been making its way from Ohio to Wisconsin for *checks calendar* eleven days now. (Please know – I fully understand the issues COVID and the holidays and people not traveling and instead mailing their presents have causes. Just confused since three other things I’ve ordered since then have already made their way to me. Again, I say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

If someone had told me all of these things a year ago, I never would have believed them. And yet, here we are.

Goode Versus Melville

In 2015, I got an idea for a Young Adult superhero novel. It would be told in first person by the son of a super villain hellbent on revenge against the man who killed his wife, the mother of his child. Our narrator, though, both used and neglected by his father, would want nothing to do with the family business – and he would be gay – and in love with the son of his father’s nemesis. I think I wrote three or four pages – I even gave it to a couple friends to see if they would have any interest in reading more – which they did.

And then I didn’t touch it. I wrote two other novels instead and a screenplay instead.

I think part of the thing that scared me about writing this (I’m now admitting I was scared) was the technology I’d have to learn about and potentially create – which is not my forte. Before I started Lucy, though, I did write out a summarized plot for what I’d want this book to be.

Then came November – NaNoWriMo. I’ve never been able to commit to 50K words in November due to that being a busy time for grading papers. So instead, this year I decided to write a script. I’ve had another idea floating around since last summer, and I figured a script would be an easier/quicker way to at least get the story down. I did manage to do so, and while it’s short even for a script, the idea is on paper. And I was left with thirteen days in the month.

So, I opened up and reread those three pages I had written five years before – and then kept the story going. Goode Versus Melville is sitting at a little over 20K words – not to mention countless hours into researching things like how a ray gun might work and how to put together an IED. (Pretty sure I’m on a government list, now.) It’s been fun, and in the midst of the final weeks of the hell that is COVID-teaching and grading, it’s been fun that I have definitely needed.

Now to finish grading final papers so that I can dive back into this world and figure out how to create a freeze ray.

80K for Lucy

My first draft for Lucy’s story was about 60K, and I was panicked. I love the idea of this story, and I was heartbroken that I felt I had reached the end but missed the genre’s minimum by 20K. I knew, of course, that I had rushed things and that there were subplots that needed to be added, so I went through another round, and little by little, word by word, I reached 76K.

I was spent, though, and I was afraid to do anything else with the story because I didn’t want just to add word count – it had to be substance and story. So, I sent her off to three beta readers – and one has already returned her to me. (Thanks, Cody!)

I had intended to do a line edit when I went through each of the readers’ feedback, but it’s finals week, and there is an avalanche of papers coming in, so yesterday I simply sat and read through his feedback. He had some great points of places that felt rushed (partly in my effort just to get the story down – but also partly because I wasn’t sure a reader would care about those particular moments) and noted where he’d like more “showing”.

And little by little, the word count crept up – and she hit 80K. It was a relief – more so because it wasn’t just me aiming for the word count – it was adding in needed details and story. So thank you to Cody for getting me and Lucy over that hurdle.

Now to figure out a title while I wait for the others. 🙂

Sounds Like Me

The first time I heard Sara B perform, it was at an in-store signing/meet & greet at a Borders in MN. My significant other at the time had been a fan of Sara’s music ever since seeing her playing a song in the background of a movie called Girl Play. They had looked her up (a much more difficult thing to do in those days) and found a copy of her first album, Careful Confessions. At the time, I was in graduate school in Mankato, MN, and my SO was in town for a visit. It was October of my second year, and I knew of but hadn’t yet heard any of Sara’s music. This day was a birthday present for my SO. Including me driving up to and around St. Paul in a time before GPS. For me at least. After the mini performance, we got to meet with Sara B and chatted with her and took pictures and got signatures, and we found ourselves outside and my SO was flying high and said – I’m good. We can go home now.

Which would have been fine – other than we had tickets for a concert that night, Oct 1, 2007, at the Xcel Center. Had I known about the signing prior to shelling out the money (which when combined with the gas money it took to get there and back, was a lot for me at the time), I wouldn’t have bought the tickets. But I had bought them – and we were going. And we were going for the sole purpose of seeing the opener for the opener of the headliner – Sara B. Again. This was time number two – Sara and her piano up on stage playing to a half empty arena singing her heart out.

The third time I saw Sara perform was at a small bar in Madison, WI, called the High Noon Saloon. This is also the night that, while we waited after the show for Sara to come out and do signatures, my SO leaned over and asked me to marry them. I said yes. And because of this, when Sara B finally did come out, and I walked up to her, my hands were shaking quite noticeably. She asked what was up – and when I told her what had just happened, she smiled brightly and hugged me. This is an anecdote we told for years to come as a part of the proposal story since upon my return to my SO’s side, they replied, “So, what was that hug all about?”

The fourth time I saw Sara B was a little over a year ago at the United Center in Chicago as she supported her album Amidst the Chaos. At this point, I was divorced several years and wanted a memory of this great singer in action that wasn’t tied to my now ex. It was yet another stellar night of music and storytelling.

There was one other encounter in between the third and fourth, though not a concert. Two days before my sister’s birthday in 2015, I sat in a small auditorium listening to Sara B, on her book tour, call herself a “salty angry woman” and give writers the advice to “make yourself sit the fuck down and write.” (The notes I took from this event five years ago are still in my phone.) I bought two copies of her book that night, and even though we were instructed by the folks running the event that she wouldn’t be personalizing them beyond our name (thankfully written down on a post-it so that it would be spelled correctly…if I had a nickel for every book I own inscribed to Amy…), I whisper-asked if she would add a Happy Birthday to my sister’s copy that I was buying to gift to her in a couple days – and she smiled that smile and said sure.

The thing I hate to admit is that even though I did start reading the book when I first got it, I maybe got ten pages in and then stopped. I have no idea why. But when I was telling a friend of mine about all the heavy books I had been reading lately (of the last four, two were historical fiction about Shoah/Holocaust, one about biases, and one a memoir about female incarceration and starting a movement to aid women recently released from prison), he suggested that maybe the next book I read be something light. When I scanned my bookshelf, I saw this title sitting there still waiting to be read.

It was exactly what I needed in this moment in so many ways – the break down of her songs were interesting, her honesty and openness were welcoming, and her vulnerability was much needed at this moment in my life.

Beta Readers for Lucy

I went into the post office today. Normally, that’s not a sentence that is worth writing down – but considering I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been inside any such establishment since *checks watch* March, this was a big deal. I donned a mask. I went inside. I tried my best to not clench my jaw.

So what brought me inside? Lucy. Three copies of my WIP printed and stuffed into manilla envelopes, addresses already written on the fronts in an effort to minimize the time spent indoors with other people. (I also had return envelopes that I needed to have weighed and stamps affixed to, and after I folded them and stuffed them inside with my manuscript, and despite the large piece of plexiglass between us, I still stepped back and turned to the side before I lowered my masked and licked the envelope shut. Life is strange.)

This is the roughest draft of anything I have ever shared with anyone. Even when I sent Jack pieces of Alice, I had already revised and edited them several times. I think part of the process is growing a thicker skin – being less afraid to be vulnerable by handing work over. The other part is I need eyes on it. The word count is still bit short – but I don’t want to add fluff for the sake of hitting 80K. I want to know what people want from Lucy. And then I want to add it. So, she is on her way. And she gets to travel farther than I do this year – to Illinois, to Oregon, and to Washington state.

And now I wait. I can’t wait to hear their thoughts.

COVID and Reading, Part Two

I hit another reading slump after my frenzy back in August. Part of this might have been because on top of everything else, the Fall semester began. It would be several months before I would read anything other than student papers – but once again, I suddenly became ravenous for it.

I opted to switch between fiction and non-fiction – all of these have bee on my bookshelf patiently waiting to be picked up. I can’t wait for the day I can wander around a bookstore. Until then, I have plenty of lonely books waiting for me here.

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn — Back before COVID, my friend Jack and I would meet up when he was in town and wander around bookstores and drink tea and eat chocolatey goodness. Three of these books came from the last time we did this. I do love historical fiction, and Quinn did a great job of putting me into the shoes of a spy in 1915 in enemy-occupied France and into the shoes of a young woman, pregnant and unmarried, in search of her missing cousin in 1947. There’s even a charming Scotsman – so how was I to resist? I will definitely be rereading this sometime.

Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer Eberhardt, Ph.D. — This book should be required reading for everyone. Everyone. Eberhardt does an incredible job of explaining bias and bringing the receipts. I’ve done a lot of reading and work in the realm of bias, and still, I was blown away. This was a book I found through Eberhardt’s Armchair Expert interview – if you don’t have time to commit to the full book (though you should find the time), then at the very least give her episode a listen.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris — Ok, so this book, it’s noted, started out as a movie script that Morris wrote after interviewing Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew who was imprisoned in Auschwitz in 1942. During his time there, he became the tattooist of the camp, having to permanently scar those imprisoned with him with the telltale numbers on their arms. It was through this position that he met Gita, a woman he would fall in love with. Lale also risks his life, along with the help of some of the women he befriends, by smuggling jewels and money to workers who come and go – trading these for food and other supplies. The story itself is an account of Shoah/Holocaust that I have never experienced before – but I do have to note that the novel still reads very much like a script, which makes sense since that was its first iteration. It’s a lot of telling when I ached for showing.

Becoming Ms. Burton by Susan Burton & Cari Lynn — This was another Armchair Expert interview find, an interview with Susan Burton. Burton tells the story of her journey through sexual abuse at a young age and her subsequent battle with addiction and incarceration – and how one small thing changed the trajectory of her life – something that she has replicated with over 1200 incarcerated women. I gobbled this book up in one day – the entire thing. I couldn’t put it down. It’s heartbreaking and devastating and so full of hope. This is another MUST READ – a true testament to the difference one person can set into motion.

The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antono Iturbe (translated by Lilit Žekulin Thwaites) — This book was a thing of beauty. Devastating, as it is also about Shoah/Holocaust – but beautifully written. It’s based on a true story about the family camp set up at Auschwitz and the brave people who created a school right under the Nazi’s noses – risking their own lives to educate the children kept there. Within the school are eight smuggled books – anyone caught with these will be punished by death. Even so, Dita takes on the role of the librarian, taking care of the books, having to fix their covers and sew their pages back into place – risking her life to make sure the children have access to these books and the knowledge and stories contained within their pages. And this book – I lived and died within its pages.

The following excerpt comes from Iturbe’s afterward in the edition that I have:

~ Antonio Iturbe, translated by Lilit Žekulin Thwaites

Reaching the End…Again

Ok. NOW I have a full draft of Lucy’s story, and it’s sitting at just over 76k. I have more of that “accomplished” feeling that I had with Alice, which feels rather lovely to feel once more.

It’s a story of family, focused specifically on Lucy and her journey to discovering where it is she comes from. In it, she travels to Scotland, which was terribly fun to write because it meant reminiscing about my own road trip there, with all it’s “driving on the wrong side of the road” and breathtaking views. There are a couple places in this book that I didn’t visit on the first trip – I guess that means I have an excuse to return. 🙂