I Heart Flagstaff

This last Friday, I met a friend for lunch and when heading home, I tuned into NPR's show “Talk of the Nation – Science Friday.” When I heard that they were broadcasting from Flagstaff, Arizona I actually yelled out in joy.

Ah, Flagstaff, home to NAU, my Alma mater. I love it there. And the reason Science Friday's Ira Flatow was there doing a show was because the “Flagstaff Festival of Science” (http://www.scifest.org/) had just started. It will run till October 2^nd, and if you are anywhere near northern Arizona, please check it out!

Why do I love Flagstaff so much? I spent seven of the best years of my life there for an education. I am not saying that they were the happiest years of my life, getting an education can be emotionally difficult, but in the end rewarding. Northern Arizona University (Go Lumberjacks!) gave my family its monies worth. It is a teaching University which emphasizes learning, while also having great research facilities. Now, please don't think it took me seven years just to get my degree. Sometimes it may seem that I am that lazy, but in reality I loved Flagstaff and NAU so much that I stayed for a masters degree.

The smell of the Ponderosa pines still makes me smile and I had to include Flagstaff in my book. It seems to me that a lot of people don't think much of Flagstaff or NAU. They are much more into the large Arizona Universities of ASU and UA. While those universities have done much for my family (my parents and brother went to ASU and my hubby works at UA), I love NAU and Flagstaff because it is different. How is it different? Well, Flagstaff is a smaller university town instead of Phoenix and Tucson which are large cities. Flagstaff is at 7,000 feet elevation, so they get snow in the winter. Luckily, it is only usually a 'once a month' type of snowy weather. A once a week/everyday type rain and snow would be not enough sun for this Phoenix-born girl.

At 7,000 feet, you get to see the milky way on every clear night if you drive 10 minutes out of town. You cannot say that in Tucson, but the Astronomers, and there are quite a few of them down here at UA, build telescopes on the various mountains down here in southern Arizona. Those mountains are quite a lot like Flagstaff, but with even less light pollution.

I have many memories of great food and fun in Flagstaff. The fish tacos at Salsa Brava make me come back for more every time I am in town. There are also fun memories of meeting friends on a Friday night at Beaver Street Brewery, Mogollon Brewery, or Uptown Billiards to decompress from the week. The Black Bean is a hometown competitor to Chipotle, but with more variety. It was good enough to get a shout out in The Chronicles of IDIOT. Hiking near Flagstaff is one of my favorite all time activities, along with snow fights and building a snowman with my kids last winter.

“Now, Erin”, someone might say, “isn't it politically incorrect to have a lumberjack as a mascot?” Well, to that I say “I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK.” (THANK YOU Monty Python!) Lumberjacks bring us paper and I am an author, so I think I have to be OK with Lumberjacks. I am OK with recycling paper as well, by the way.

There is an irony here, as I am allergic to pine pollen. With medication it is manageable but there are times when I visit forested areas and am miserable. This would not stop me and my family if we had an opportunity to move to Flagstaff.

Every place has it's problems, in the Sonoran desert it is the 120 degree temperature highs during the summer. In places like Florida, it is the sweltering humidity and possibility of hurricanes. The central plain states are called Tornado Alley. On coastal California, it is the potential of devastating earthquakes. Actually, there is a potential of earthquakes and other geologic activity in Flagstaff, as the San Francisco Peaks, the beautiful mountain range outside of Flagstaff is a dormant volcano. But, the only earthquake that occurred when I lived there was registered 3 on the Richter scale and I slept right through it. Anything could happen, geologically speaking, but in our lifetime, I would place my bets on activity occurring in California than northern Arizona.

Lastly, I would like to say that while in many places (and during political debates) science is being degraded and criticized throughout our country, it is nice to see a town celebrate the wonders of science. Yes, Flagstaff is my kinda town.

Motivators in Writing

First some business and good news! The wonderful people of Smashwords have added The Chronicles of IDIOT to their premium catalog. Now it will be distributed to Barnes and Noble, Apple and Sony among others. Unfortunately, now is not exactly now. It may take a few weeks before it appears on those e-book provider websites. I will keep you updated and will be changing the blog to accommodate so many places where the book can be purchased. So Nookie owners – stay tuned! Your patience has been appreciated!

Motivators are funny things. Sorry, not ha ha funny. You can be motivated to write because you woke up in the middle of the night with an idea. I had that happen a few nights ago, but what I was thinking about would probably be better for an idea for a story to be written by my next protagonist. Yes, a story within the story. Don't worry, I'm not gonna go all Momento on you all, and make it really confusing. I am just making it confusing for myself, because I didn't know this person was going to be an author until I thought of the story she would write.

As you can tell, I am rather new to this writing business.

So, motivating myself to continue is difficult when there are many other things that I need to do. I remember the movie The Stepford Wives with Matthew Broderick and Bette Midler. The memorable thing for me was that Ms. Midler's character was an Author, and her house was a MESS. But, she was a successful Author (with a capitol A!). Should I try that route? No. My house is messy enough already. But it is tempting. After she gets “stepfordized” her house is spotless and her computer is off. Definitely cannot go that route either, although it has it's temptations as well.

Therefore, it is a compromise of time and cleanliness.

There are other ways to organize your time to write. I hear of Authors (there is that capitol A again, it means they got paid for their work!) that wake up really early to get things done before the rest of the family wakes up. Or they insist they have to finish at least a daily: 3 page/3000 words/insert whatever benchmark seems reasonable to you. There are no such benchmarks for me, not when my benchmarks are: have the kids eat breakfast, now gotta brush their teeth and get them to school. I may work on writing early in the morning, since I seem to get up at 5AM no matter what. I was using that time to walk my dog since we live in Arizona and would melt any time after 9AM. But with the fall upon us and temperatures coming down, I can have some more flexibility. When the kids were younger, I worried they would get up, and be upset that I was gone, even though their dad was there. Not as much now. Now, I have to worry they won't get up at all before school starts. I do prefer it this way, it is hard when your 1 or 2 year old start crying because they see you are leaving – even if it is only for an hour.

I would like to think that success would be a great motivator. And many Authors love nothing more than to keep their successful stories going. But, with others, I can tell that they seem to be “phoning it in”. I still read their work, I am a sucker that way. It would be wonderful to be successful, it would sure motivate me. But, that is not happening right now and I just have to accept it. One thing that is helpful is that I have heard that being an a/Author is one of the top ten jobs that make people happy. For a/Authors, it is because you get to say what is on your mind, whether you get paid for it or not. So thanks to e-books and changes in the industry, anyone can cheaply publish a book. That is a wonderful thing.

In the past, to get published, you needed a literary agent. You can still go that traditional route, but they are a tough nut to crack. Rejection of writing is the name of their game. Since they know that your work will be a tough sell to the publisher, they don't take chances. So, most authors are rejected out of hand unless their name is Obama or Kardashian, or they write about a hot topic with juicy details such as the new bio on Sarah Palin. Rejection can be a big motivator if you are an eternal optimist, or a big de-motivator if you are a regular human being. I know I just made up a word there but English is a constantly evolving language and I think you see my point. Rejection and lack of interest from others are what keep us from keeping on with what we want to do. The hard part is to say “forget their opinion,” just keep going, and try to become that eternal optimist. Many of the most successful people had many failures along the way, they just did not allow those set backs to slow them down.

Now, I am just trying to keep motivated, and write this next book. Since my life is all about parenting, I have started working on a satire (yes, a satire again) on “superior” parenting. There was a certain book that came out last year that touted a certain kind of superior parenting. I am working on a different viewpoint (not so superior) of that kind of parenting style. I am not sure whether it will be a novella or a full fledged novel. Some of my writing friends are more mindful of word count, I am trying just to stay motivated.

Not My Cup Of Tea...

First some business. The Chronicles of IDIOT is now on Smashwords.com! Therefore, it should be available for the Barnes and Noble Nook, along with many other e-book providers soon. I will keep you updated as to when it is available! Also, since the book will be available in so many places, I will be redesigning the website to make it all more user friendly, and hopefully not confusing. Please let me know at Chronicles.of.IDIOT@gmail.com if you have any suggestions for improvement.

I have noticed that I get a few Tea Party members who try to follow me on Twitter. I think after a few posts they notice I am not in line with their views. And in the interest of full disclosure let me tell you all: I am not against government spending.

This may seem as a surprise, my profile says I am an Independent, who wrote a satire (The Chronicles of IDIOT) about a secret government organization. It would seem that I am one large tax bill away from joining the “Tea Party Patriots”. Except for one thing, like I said, I am not against government spending. In fact my family is supported by government spending. My husband is a research biochemist who works at a University for a professor who gets her research funding from the NSF and NIH. Our livelihood is funded by the government agencies of The National Science Foundation and The National Institutes for Health. Science is a wonderful thing for the government to invest in, it is an investment in the future, like education.

So why did write this satire? Well, cause I am against a certain kind of government spending: secret spending. It is inevitable that (supposedly) for our own good, the government sets up secret (and semi-secret) agencies to protect us. Such an example is the National Security Agency. Supposedly (but secretly) the NSA has set up servers all over the country and is keeping all e-mails sent in and from this country. This is an important privacy issue that the government thinks is too important for us to know about. The only reason I found out about it is there was a story about a NSA employee, Thomas Drake, who was set up on espionage charges because he was a whistle-blower about secret budgetary overspending. That is the thing, how can the spending be accountable if it is secret? If you are more interested in Mr. Drake's story, google him, the findings will scare you.

But that does not make me a Tea Party member. I agree that we need to reduce spending and get the government's budget under control. But the Tea Party seems to want it done yesterday, and whines even when they get a compromise. I remember hearing an interview with a Tea Party Member who was PLEADING for her representative to insist that we balance the government budget THIS YEAR. That logic is tantamount to sending our country into a depression that would make the 1930's look like a very nice dream. The budget is going to have to be fixed in a lifetime, not a year, or we will regret it.

There is a song by David Bowie called “I'm Afraid of Americans”. Well Mr. Bowie, I too am afraid of some of Americans. I am afraid of the ones who see compromise as a dirty word. The ones who say “if you are not with us, you are against us”. We have to work together and compromise to fix this problem, or things could get a lot worse. And you know when we need to do that? When the recession is totally over (there is still some debate about that) and more people are at work. It is during the good times that we need to buckle down and work on the debt and deficit. The only problem is during the good times (as with the bad times) everyone wants a tax cut and no one wants to sacrifice. We can start the process now, but we need to keep it up for our lifetime, then maybe our kids (and their kids) won't have to pay for it all.

The Joy Of Satire 2 – Books Can Be Funny!

Quite a while ago, I did a blog on The Joy of Satire. My beloved and chosen literary style. I read all kinds of books: spy novels (such as Frederick Forsyth), chick lit (such as Jennifer Weiner), historical fiction (such as Wilbur Smith and James Michener), science fiction (Such as Arthur C. Clark), fantasy (such as JRR Tolkien), medical thrillers (such as Patricia Cornwell), psychological detective thrillers (such as Jonathan Kellerman) and lots of Comedy (such as Janet Evanovich).

Sometimes finding comedy in other genres can be great, sometimes it seems out of place and disappointing. It seems that if you are going to write comedy, just admit it, and try it out.

So satire in Literature: it is found easily and often. Also, like other media, it is found in places you may not be looking. Charlaine Harris is basically an fantasy author, but she is also very funny, and her Sookie Stackhouse books are subtle satire, with vampires and other scary creatures of the night.

But that does not mean you can't find satire only in “adult” type books. Two of my favorite stories from my youth are also satiric in nature: The Emperor's New Clothes (by Hans Christian Andersen) and Animal Farm by George Orwell, are stories for children and young adults.

I thought the earliest written satire would be from those wacky Greeks. But actually (according to Wikipedia) the first evidence of satire is found in Egyptian writing starting at 2000 B.C. I guess it goes to show you that snarky humor has been around quite a while. This is despite many teenagers who feel they are inventors of sarcasm and the like. Ah, to be young and think you are original.

One of my favorite American authors, though in all honesty, I need to read more of his work, is Mark Twain. Or the author formally known as Samuel Clemens. His book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, truly influenced me as young person and inspires my writing now. Another cool thing about Mr. Twain, he was a contemporary and friend of Nikola Tesla. They would often hang out in Tesla's lab. That friendship would make one hell of a story – to me.

A more recent author has taken satire, as well as many other literary styles and has made it his own, then he left our planet, making it a poorer place. David Foster Wallace was a challenging writer, when you delve into his work, you have to be read for his “juggernaut of words”. In reading his essays, you find yourself lost in a sea of commas but not much other punctuation. This stream-of-consciousness type writing genuinely brings you into the characters thoughts, which adds so much more satire. No one wants others to know what they think, that would be embarrassing. I bought Infinite Jest a little while ago, but I am not in the right frame of mind to read it yet.

The author I will end this blog on is kind of like the one I started it with. Terry Pratchett took fantasy characters, magic, a whole lot of humor, and created the Discworld series. On this flat world there are wizards, witches, dwarfs, dragons, fairies, giants, but there are also ordinary human characters who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. His fanciful play on characters and situations have given me insights into our world, including making you think about very human issues like prejudice, greed and love. My husband and I especially love his books about the Watch (sort-of mid-evil police) and the Tiffany Aching series about a young witch finding her place in her world. It is very sad that Mr. Pratchett may have to put down his pen soon, as he has early onset Alzheimer's Disease. His work is quite famous in the United Kingdom, but he is not very well known in the United States. It is thanks to my husband and his family that I found this author. I hope many others in the US will give his work a look, it is well worth it.

What I am reading right now is a satire called A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. It won the Pulitzer Prize and I am finding it quite goofy. The anti-hero, Ignatius Reilly, is sort of a Comic Book Guy (if your a fan of the Simpsons) but even more lazy, opinionated and willing to argue the most absurd viewpoint just to hear himself talk. This book also gives a much different view of New Orleans, a city that other authors view as scary, mystical and troubled. Mr. Toole shows New Orleans to be troubled, but a rather silly place, mind you I am only one quarter into reading this book.

It also seems that I have a lot of other reading I should do, from Twain and Wallace to reading Game of Thrones. One of the nice things about being an author is checking out other people's work. The key is not to be intimidated, just to be inspired.