Let's Make Love

You laugh, but "make love" beats "have sex" any day.

I've recently discussed this with a young person I know.  I won't say why.  (Maybe Granny is getting some.)

Here's the deal.  I have a real issue with "having sex."

"Let's have sex."  "Should we have sex?" "Wow that sex was the best I ever had."

Like it's on the menu at a restaurant."

Hmm, this looks good.  Yes.  I'll have the sex, with a side of broccoli and dauphine potatoes.  And the pavlova after."

"Have sex" commodifies.  And makes it standardized.  It's the same "sex" for you to "have" as for me.  Standard order.  And if you don't want it, the next guy will, just the same, delivered without us cooking it.  Cooking is up to the chef, who always makes it the same and doesn't care whether it's me or you or Seth Rogen ordering it.  Until then, the sex waits there in the fluorescent kitchen, its dead fish eyes clouding and its long wet tail flopping sadly over the edge of the counter.

To "have," like, "I have a skin condition."  A bad cold, the flu.  A mortgage, an overdrawn bank account, hammertoe.

All states of being.  Conditions.  And weirdly not part of you.  There's you and what you "have," like halitosis, or a tax audit.

"Making love" on the other hand is something that's being created.  To "make love" is to conjure something right now that didn't exist twenty minutes ago over that second glass of wine.  "I made love" is an accomplishment.  Something you've "made."  It's a painting, a sand castle on sunny day, a great Indian meal prepared by a foodie.

It's a cake, a home -- you can even "make" whoopee.

"Making love" also means you're not alone.  In its usual form, it takes two.  The two of you come together to create a dance, a moment that's unforgettable.  It's art when it's very very good.  You've "made love" as a duo, which you can't do alone.  You lay there after in that glow from that mystical thing you've designed.  There's a magic in performing that coupling performance that "making love" so evocatively describes.

"Making love" is bespoke.  "Having sex" is something from the drive-through.

As a straight woman, I would also much rather say that a man made love with me than we "had sex."  Because one, I'm not going to mention it at all if it wasn't great, and "We had sex" sure sounds like it was underwhelming.  I mean, IMHO, maybe rethink the whole relationship thing if "We had sex" is the very best you can say about what happened.

Two, isn't that truly the glorious act itself, no matter the specific anatomical activity?  The two of you approaching, merging, and coming apart in a dance that has created something?  Something ancient.  Something primitive and yes sacred that stands apart from you, that's so huge it depletes you.

Afterwards, did I "have" it?  Nah.  Never.  I was not the passive receiver of a plate of fish, served just the same ten minutes later to the next table over.  Rather, I was an active participant.  My being there made it unique.  It was different for him, for me, than it would have been for anyone else.  Isn't that always true?  What we did was for us, and only in that moment.  Next time, even for the same two people, it will be different.  "Making love" is beautiful but ephemeral, and will never come again.

"So, madame, will you both be having the sex tonight?  There's a two-for-one special."

"No, thanks.  We'll have the bouillabaisse but we're going home to make love."  

A Country Safe To Grow Old In

We are one nation.  We are  comprised of those imagining their future contributions to our country, those now making them, and those whose contributions brought us forward.   We are made up of citizens who cannot yet walk, those who run and think they will run forever, and those who know the truth.

We need all of us.  Each of us is equally valuable.  Not one of us deserves to be pushed out on the ice floe.

While my American politics did not agree with hers, today I am mindful of the UK's Margaret Thatcher, who in 1979 described the collective voice of the "thoughtful people" of Britain.  Just before she was elected as its first female Prime Minister, she said:

"Today, if you listen, you can hear that voice again . . . Its message is quiet but insistent.  It says this: Let us make this a country safe to work in; let us make this a country safe to walk in; let us make it a country safe to grow up in; let us make it a country safe to grow old in.  And it says, above all:  May this land of ours, which we love so much, find dignity and greatness and peace again." 

How To Not Go Nuts While Writing

I'm often asked by other writers how I get my work done.

I ask them the same thing, looking for the same guidance.  For all of us, it's a constant challenge.  We need all the fairy dust we can find.

Because -- truth be told -- we each stare daily into a terrifying abyss.  Technique may supply the sticks for a rickety one-person suspension bridge swaying over a chasm two thousand feet down, but we writers know in the pits of our hungry stomachs that we must build every bridge all alone.  We also know that each span can start from only one side, from a single cliff face outward -- into mid-air.  Where that bridge will ultimately attach to the opposite wall -- if it ever does -- can't be known until our story's end, after we say in shock at least once, "Huh.  Not a romance after all.  A flipping tragedy.  I have to rip down this flowery wrought-iron I've spent six months on and rebuild this whole thing in Brutalist cement."

In my experience a novel is always a prerequisite for itself, forever circling back and beginning again, unable to support its full weight until it's all constructed and foot-tested.  At least for me, there are no incremental milestones of success, nothing before the final finish line because anything I do today I might decide to chuck wholesale tomorrow.  I live a life of deferred, delayed, and sometimes never-arriving gratification.  So what I'm really asking other writers is "How do you not go insane in the endless meantime?"  That's also the real, naked question I believe they are asking me.

FWIW, here's what I try to do:

• Choose an extra-curricular activity with a short-term payback.  For me it's art.  I'm a nature painter.  In a couple of weeks I can produce a canvas that's done done.  Hold it in my hands.  Pronounce it adequate and move on.

• Exercise.  Same point as above.  A workout is of finite duration and content.  Additionally, exercise flushes the over-thinking mind like water.  Which reminds me:

• Water.  Plus I find my exhausted, end-of-day sugar cravings evaporate as soon as I drink.

• Plot out loud.  To avoid mental cycling, I try to plot while walking.  (Aldous Huxley used to plot as he hiked Mulholland Highway beneath the Hollywood sign, where he lived in a house under the first "O.")  Also, starting a sentence out loud means I have to finish it, and hear it, and then say another.  Hellooo linearity, the blessed hobgoblin of cycling minds.

• Laugh.  It's something to pursue consciously, especially when it seems like forever will be spent on writing a dramatic novel.  I have learned from my elder daughter, who is a philosopher, purposefully to seek "the happy" every day.  To identify it and calendar it each morning.

• Daily reward.  Even if it's only a hot shower, choose your attagirl in the morning too so you can look forward to it during the day.  Setting a reward also obliges me to define the specific task that will earn it.  Et voila!  A quantifiable deliverable.  A thousand words, a morning of research -- which in turn solves the pesky revving-but-not-going-anywhere mental pretzeling.

• No internet surfing.  I love ya, CNN, but you can't get my work done.  Joyce Carol Oates observed that "constant interruptions are the destruction of the imagination."  You said it, sister.

• The same daily work schedule, enforced.  My mind yearns to know for sure when it must be "on," plus a schedule that's already set is a relief, lowering stress by eliminating choice.  Enforcing that schedule, whatever schedule works for you, then becomes an exercise in delicious self-respect.

• A full daily schedule.  I find that when I plan my whole day in advance, I don't have time for flailing.  I don't sit wondering what to do next.  I may not finish every task I breathlessly assign myself in the morning, but I tackle most of them and more than I would have if I had not pre-gamed.  (Oops, I think "pre-game" means something different.)

• Hemingway was right.  He famously recommended that a writer stop for the day only after he knows what he will write tomorrow.  This advice has done great things for the continuity of my flow.

Now, of course, the issue is following all this advice.  Now that I've written it, I can't act like I don't know.If anyone has any other good tips, I would be delighted to receive them via email and to update this post. Happy New Year!

A Boomer’s Apology

Okay so I admit it.  Before the other day, I had poohed-poohed the whole old-people-rag-on-millennials deal.  I had heard it happens but I had never seen it.

So you know, I am one of them.  Not a millennial. I’m 63.  I have two incredible daughters who are forty years younger, though.  One’s a millennial, the other’s a 19-year-old Gen-Z-er, apparently.  (I don’t keep track of such demarcations.)

I’m a novelist, as you know.  I was taking an online creative writing class at a very fancy place recently where all of us, including the teacher, were talking heads in thumbnails on a screen, stacked like the Brady Bunch in those opening credits.  (I said I was old.  You may have to look that one up.)  My fellow students were mostly millennials with a couple of older people. I was the oldest, but not by much.  We were discussing Cat Person, that excellent viral 2017 short story from the New Yorker, the one about a young woman’s growing dread of an odd young man she liked initially and her sexual sort-of consent.  

Despite the high-techery, it’s a universal story.  Every woman of every age can relate to it, I think.  The only difference between now and, say, 1975, is the means of communication.  Texting versus letters in a mailbox. The story’s point though was its knife-edge of indecision, rendered by a skilled author able to conjure not the presence of something but the lack, which is very difficult to do.  Yet it was done with no mechanics showing. Seamless.  Easy.  Nothing but growing creep in our protagonist.

So we’re in class online.  Cat Person has been assigned as required reading in advance of class that day, so we’ve all read it.  But about five minutes in, this other older woman in a row above me on the tic-tac-toe grid starts shaking her head.  Side-to-side, visibly.  She’s annoyed.  Then she suddenly pipes up.  

She spits out, “Spoiled millennial.”   Then sits back, arms crossed.

Not “spoiled woman,” or “I don’t get this protagonist,” but a sweeping “spoiled millennial”.  I couldn’t see it, the thumbnails were too small and my eyesight’s not great, but I could hear the lip curled.  She hated the story, found it ridiculous because of the self-indulgence of the main character, the self-absorption, she said.  The prolonged navel-gazing.

But what this 50-something classmate had done was dismiss an entire generation.  With the back of her hand, she had rejected the experience of a young woman simply because of her age and the smartphone in her hand.  And this classmate did it publicly. She didn’t hesitate.  She spoke loudly, too, as if there were nothing to be ashamed of.

I felt I had to protest and followed her with a short speech about universality, but the woman just peered into the screen with her mouth pursed.  Then we all went on.

What struck me hard after class was that no one called her out but me.  I’m not the point here.  The rest of the class is, including the teacher.  What she said would never have been tolerated if she had dismissed the character because of the protagonist’s race or her orientation.

As I thought more about it, I realized one, that this silent class was mostly young people -- her targets, which meant two, they must have all heard this before.  And three, heard it so often from oldsters that they are now tolerating it the way they have to listen to Drunk Uncle at Thanksgiving (a SNL reference there).  Which meant four, to my great shame, that these young people were being polite while they were being vilified, because they have been taught by us to be polite.  My classmates were showing grace while this woman spit on them. She got away with it because they were raised to be respectful of their elders.

So I want to say I’m sorry.  I have been blind.  I had not believed until that class that such breezy pronouncements were being made -- publicly, freely, with entitlement and without accountability -- about a group that constitutes a quarter of our population.

Discrimination is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.  See that?  Age.  And not just old age.  What this woman said was discriminatory.  Full stop.  

To the young people I encounter in the future, I say -- I commit that, if this ever happens again, I will call it out for what it is.  I will call the statement and the aged speaker discriminatory.  Prejudiced against an entire group of people.  And I ask every other oldster to do the same, for our children and grandchildren might not, for we have taught them to respect us.  In so doing we have muzzled them.  They are giving us grace.  So it’s possible -- and I believe -- that only we old folks can correct ourselves.

We must do so.  We owe them to treat them as individuals, the individuals we have ourselves created.  They are a part of us, from us, the result of us.  They are both good and bad, tall, short, but all grappling with life.  Just like the rest of us.  No matter what age we are.

People.  We are all people.

Paying It Forward -- Free Book Offer

I am deeply grateful for the continuing heartfelt response from the dyslexia community to my debut novel, Farmer's Son. Copies have sold around the world.

I would like to humbly give back.

So, if you are a public or private school with teenage students who are reading-challenged, or a tutoring outfit, or a camp, after-school organization, church, library, charity or other group that serves these very deserving but underserved young people, write to me on my contact page and I will supply free copies of Farmer's Son at my cost, including postage.

And, if you are a teenager with reading challenges, write me 100 words on why you would like a copy.

Why am I doing this? Because in Indiana a dyslexic teenager told me that Farmer's Son had changed his life. He suddenly stood up in English class when he learned who I was on my visit, and he put his hand on his heart to tell me with tears in his eyes that he didn't read, he never reads, but he had read my book, the first one he had ever read all the way through. He said it was about him. He told me he was Bobby.

So many men and boys have told me that they are Bobby McAllister. Each of you is an inspiration.

Just please pass the book along once you've finished it.  Give it to someone you think would also be encouraged by reading it.

Merlin Trotter

The man in the hat is my friend Merlin Trotter, who works in Leicester Square.  He learned tarot as a boy, at the feet of the mystical women in his family, as fathers and uncles harvested the hops that are made into beer.  Merlin was too young to go into the fields with the men in those Septembers, so he learned from their wives how to hear what the talking cards said. They have been speaking to him now for more than fifty years.

Merlin is knowing, warm, scrupulously honest and -- gifted.  He predicted a coming medical issue for me that turned out to be true, while taking care to assure me I would be all right.  I was.  Some of the people who consult him, he has said, have terminal illnesses.  Off-duty police also ask him to read for them.  He does hundreds of readings every day, in all the versions of London's weather.  In exchange for his truth, gently delivered, he charges no price.  You are free to donate nothing, or many quid.  It's up to you.

My novel-in-progress is about Seven Dials in London.  From the beginning, there has been a tarot card reader at the heart of my story, but in several trips to that beautiful city, I had not found a single one.  Musicians, yes, and Yodas, but no one who reads tarot.

But then, one night, there Merlin was.  Straight in from Cornwall, he told me.  Born in East London, barely understandable to this American, voice gravelly from a lifetime of smoking.

"But where are all the others like you?" I asked him.

"They're dead," he answered.  "There were a lot of us thirty years ago, but now I'm it."

Since then, Merlin has generously given me of his time, even answering my many questions away from his post in Leicester Square, missing out on making money.  He has introduced me to his friends and he has told me stories about how he has made a lifetime's living from the kindness of strangers, for whom he genuinely cares.

Merlin Trotter is a surprise, and a gift.  He represents for me the very finest of London. 

It's All Talent

I recently visited Stephen King.  Not the man himself but his black, wrought-iron, bat-studded fence outside his red home in Bangor, Maine.  That day his front driveway gate was open, yawning, daring, but I didn't trespass.  I stood and stared, then walked the wide sidewalk up and down the block in both directions, nonchalantly.  Exactly like all the other nonchalant walkers there every day, I'm sure.

To this lovely, manicured home I had the same reaction I had in Edinburgh at The Elephant House, the cozy cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote, which sells a postcard of her scribbling Harry Potter longhand at "her" table, her blonde hair aglow from the yellow light of the wall sconces.

My reaction there and in Bangor was the same.  That it's all talent.  The home and the cafe are great, but they aren't magical. It's only a wooden table; it's merely a Victorian house.  The magic resides in the fine minds of these writers -- minds muscled with imagination, driven by hard work, resilient in rejection, committed to getting it done.

I realized once again, in Bangor on a stunning day in June, that the best writers create their own magic.  And it's earned. Few things are more difficult than writing well.

I've had my moments of "if only."  If only I had somewhere to write that wasn't the dining room table.  Another writer I know assures me that he really needs a second house to which he can decamp without distraction.  He's looked for one but can't afford two.  He says the want of that nail is the reason he's not creating.

As I pulled out from the curb last month on my way back to the highway, I thought of that man and realized again that there are no excuses.  My dining room table is fine.  All a writer really needs is her mind.

Oh, and a bat-studded fence.  Gotta have that bat-studded fence.     

Alternate Endings Wins STARRED BlueInk Review

ALTERNATE ENDINGS just won this STARRED review from BlueInk Review --

N.E. Lasater’s insightful novel Alternate Endings revolves around a middle-aged woman facing personal and professional challenges.

Calyce Tate, divorced and in her 50s, struggles with meeting family demands while working as a high school English teacher in Washington, D.C. At home, she cleans up for her adult son whom she still subsidizes and allows to live with her. Lacking supportive siblings, she alone tends to her aging mother, who moves in despite their strained relationship. At work, she insists on the primacy of grammar over content in her student’s writing, to the consternation of her class and colleagues.

This strict adherence to rules echoes her own discipline of putting others’ needs first. Although she once dreamed of becoming a writer, she now finds that daily life has vanquished her creativity and concedes, “Grammar I know but imagination eludes me.” When her promotion to department chair appears stymied, she reaches a point amidst increasing demands from her son and mother that tests her limits.

Lasater writes observantly (“1974 fluorescent kitchens whose arched-faced cabinets held crock-pots they still used”) and peppers the text with literary allusions that enrich the story. “There’s no book where I’m the female Odysseus,” Calyce laments. Calyce’s own name references Greek mythology, as Lasater later explains. Although generous in spirit, Calyce is flawed by her own hubris, which makes her more relatable; she’s every woman, not an immortal hero.

Lasater underscores this point by cleverly interspersing a parallel story throughout the book whose protagonist confronts similar dilemmas. As the central plot builds to an exciting climax, this structural device adds another dimension to the narrative and encourages reflection on societal norms and one’s own life choices.

Of particular interest to women, Alternate Endings will appeal to fans of literary fiction and resonate with those familiar with issues facing the “Sandwich Generation.” Such readers will savor this ambitious, highly engaging account of a strong older woman on a journey of self- discovery and empowerment.

Alternate Endings Wins Five Stars

BOOK REVIEW

Reviewed by Gisela Dixon for Readers’ Favorite  -- FIVE STARS

Alternate Endings by N.E. Lasater is a fiction novel set around an average woman’s life. The beauty of Alternate Endings lies in the fact that, although it is the story of an ordinary woman set in contemporary times, it is at the same time the story of women from time immemorial who, when faced with choices, are conditioned to put others first. Alternate Endings starts off with an introduction to Calyce, a woman trying to juggle life with multiple responsibilities. We also meet Catherine in bits and pieces throughout the book, who is a woman in similar circumstances in life. Both of these women have elderly mothers who need to be cared for and are their responsibility in a certain sense. At the same time, we also learn about Calyce’s son who is in need of support from her too. How Calyce and Catherine cope with their lives with the daily round of chores, responsibilities, caring for others, and how and if they make time for themselves form the plot of the novel.

Alternate Endings is a very thought-provoking book. The idea of women being meant to exist first and foremost to nurture and take care of others is the state of society throughout the world even today. This is true, even in the most socially so-called progressive or developed nations of the world. It is almost unthinkable to think of a woman pursuing her own dreams and ambitions unapologetically and without judgement from others in the same way men have enjoyed this privilege. Women who follow their own off-beat path are still condemned and judged, unlike men. Calyce’s life path and decisions show women that it is their right to live life as they see fit and, hopefully, a book like this helps to create awareness in society to be non-judgmental. Good writing and a great plot make this a very worthwhile read.

Writing A Sex Scene Isn’t Sexy

There is much to think about when considering a sex scene as a novelist.  How graphic?  Should I include clinical detail or cut to the waxing moon?  I’m from the generation that had sex but didn’t talk much about it, so the recent change in, huh, transparency has shifted the meter on what’s acceptable. Mainstream novels today include descriptions that thirty years ago would have been considered pornography.

When should a novelist include a sex scene, or three?   I had to grapple with that when writing Alternate Endings. A chacun son goût, but to me, it’s when the storytelling goal of the scene cannot be achieved another way. The sex advances the plot or illuminates a character with a light that only this sexual encounter can provide.

For me, sex in a novel isn’t about the sex, anyway, but everything else that’s happening: the characters’ relationship, how each person processes the moment internally, whether the sex changes them, precisely how the scene throws our protagonist into her next actions. Whether it’s done standing up or sitting down or on a camel is rarely revealing in itself, honestly, except when the method actually shows something else – love, loneliness, perhaps a fixation on sriracha.

In Alternate Endings, the sex scenes reveal character. They show us, and they show our protagonist, truths nakedly, which then propel her towards change. I think those scenes are compulsory in my story.

When the book comes out, as it will in a few weeks, I will be interested in whether you agree.

Inspiration

At Brasenose College at the University of Oxford there is a famous chapel with an unknown secret door. It’s in the high wooden wall that separates the entrance narthex from the chapel proper, to the right of the stairs that lead up to the massive organ that rises to the gorgeous fan-vault ceiling.

You can’t see the hidden door. It’s seamless within the rest of the panels, but if you look really closely there’s a tiny latch.

Inside, you see that it’s a small closet, also made of wood. Nothing special -- storage for cleaning supplies. You see a broom, a mop and spray bottles.

But look through to the back of it. The closet is surprisingly shallow.

See the light coming through? See the thin line that runs up, and across, and down? It’s another door. A second one, that leads to the outside. It accesses a narrow alley that runs alongside the south side of the chapel to a street called St. Mary’s Passage.

I was told that the closet was installed long ago for a certain principal of the college who was chronically late for Sunday chapel. The hidden passageway allowed him to slip in during services unseen.

And you know what else that closet is? Let me give you a clue. C.S. Lewis spent years at Oxford. He was a teaching fellow at Magdalen College, and I was told he knew all about this secret passageway.

So, on that day last summer, I found myself standing at THE closet. The one that inspired C.S. Lewis to write The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

And I was looking at exactly what he saw.

The tourists don’t know it, but this closet is located just steps away from that other famous door -- the heavy, carved one with the lion’s head on it, the one that’s on every tour of Oxford. There are pictures of it everywhere, the inspiration for the “lion” part of the story. But this hidden closet is only whispered about within Brasenose College, and I had been given the gift of it by someone there who had just learned that I am a novelist.

That summer day, as I stood with goosebumps scampering up my arms, the same goosebumps I had felt at Thomas Riddell’s double grave in Edinburgh’s Greyfriars Kirkyard, I realized that inspiration comes from anywhere, and it can be some one, single, small thing. It can have the lightest footprint in our tactile world, but from such little things a great writer can conjure a universe whose blood pulses as if it really existed. That is, if the writer has an imagination that soars.

All the research for a story is great, but there comes a moment at last when it’s nothing but blank paper and pencils and the unreasonable hope that some small talisman will ignite an alternate world. It’s sometimes -- if you’re lucky -- just barely doable if there’s also enough windless mental space for take off.

Oh, and a good pencil sharpener. Maybe a couple of them.

Thank you, Brasenose College.

Everywoman

So I was writing in a library when Calyce Tate appeared.  She stood on my right, a foot from my shoulder with her arms crossed, staring down at me with her head cocked like a parrot.  You know the look.  That one-eyed thing your mom did when she knew you were lying to her when you said you were studying but you weren’t.

Her foot was tapping.  I couldn’t see it but I felt it somehow.  Maybe the rhythm made that one beady eye dance.  Calyce (“pronounced like Alice with a C,” she told me that first day) was impatient for me to begin telling her story.

Instantly I had two thoughts:  one, so this is how it happens.  Your lead character materializes out of nowhere fully formed and attitudinal and you’re reduced to being an amanuensis unforgivably delaying.

And two, she’s black, and I’m not.  How will I do this?

“Me?” I asked her, pointing to myself like a kid being called on in class.

“You,” her parrot face told me.

But then it became the story of Alternate Endings and as it arrived, I realized that it was a tale about women, all women of a certain age.  It's universal.  Calyce was an Everywoman.  Not "a black Everywoman," not some subcategory.  And I realized that I was an Everywriter, just as Shonda Rhimes is an Everywriter. Calyce Tate is my Meredith Grey.  Respect for the character and her story is all it takes.

By appearing to me that day in the library, Calyce took me to a place I had never been and gave me a pen and told me to get it all down.  That was all that mattered. 

Building Structure in Farmer’s Son

I’ve been asked how I structure plot.  Not so much how I make characters cause the effects that advance the drama but how I choose the framework to tell the story.

In Farmer’s Son, I announce it.  Each section begins with a page that tells the reader the season, the year, and the point of view character.  Every scene then occurs within those narrow months of that given year, with each being driven by that particular POV character.  Bobby, our lead, appears in every scene of the first section, to establish his voice and stakes and motivation.  His father Garrett drives each scene of the third because by then we need to hear from a character so hated.  Not every reader notices this explicit structure, but that’s good (I tell myself), for that means the shifts aren’t clunky.

Why did I do it that way?  Because I wanted to dip into the subjectivity of each of the four leads, dwelling for a time within their unique personal lives distinct from each other.  And I didn’t want to spend a hundred pages doing it each time.  Rather, I wanted more of a drop-in, a capture of what mattered, and then a moving on, which I hoped would also mesh the individuals into a family.  I hoped with this structure that, when the climax came, the reader would intuitively understand where each of the four leads was coming from, why they each have to do what they do, and how their actions so tragically impact the others.  At the end, I wanted the reader to feel and see all the facets of a troubled, loving, fighting and eventually redeeming family.

I had no template for this, no model, no one to tell me that you just do not build a climax with four characters.  Actually five, if you count catalyst Cora.  That’s way, way too many people with conflicting stakes in the outcome.  But I’m told the climax works.

I built Alternate Endings differently because the story required an entirely different approach, which I’ll describe in my next post.

Thanks for reading!  

How Calyce Tate Found Me

“How did you come up with Calyce Tate?” people ask me about the protagonist in my new novel, Alternate Endings.  “Is she someone you know?"

The answer is that Calyce came to me at a pubic library near my home, where I was sitting alone at a small table one day.  I looked up and there was, standing next to me, her left hip to my right shoulder.  Then, when she knew she had my attention, she crossed her arms tightly, bringing them high on her chest, and made big eyes at me, staring down.  You know those eyes, the ones that mothers make to rebellious children.

I couldn’t see her foot or hear it but I knew it was tapping.  Calyce was waiting for me to begin, and she had run out of patience.

She arrived full-blown.  Corporeal, yet out of my imagination, breathing and opinionating silently, waiting for me to give her voice and timbre and words.  Calyce was so complete that her story had already been lived.  All I had to do was write it down.

I’ve heard about this happening to other novelists, where characters appear not as newborn ideas but as adults in flesh and bone.  I’ve thought these anecdotes were made up, but when Calyce Tate appeared to me for the first time, she was as real as my next door neighbor.  I also knew, without her telling me, that her name was pronounced Cal-lisse, like Alice with a hard C.  That’s how entire she already was.

The third installment of Alternate Endings is posted now, here.  I can’t wait to hear more of your comments.

Great Response To Alternate Endings

The second installment of Alternate Endings is available here. The whole book to date is also here in case you missed the first week's installment.

The response to Alternate Endings has been tremendous, with readers both in the United States and foreign countries. Thanks to everyone making comments. Writing is a solitary and whiskey-filled endeavor, and it’s always good to hear in detail from real, live people about how the work is being received. Please keep telling me.

I’m happy to say that I’ve been asked to make the whole book available immediately for purchase. Great idea! My mortgage thanks you. I will provide the links as soon as they’re up.

Happy reading.     

Read Alternate Endings Here

I asked and everyone told me -- no loving woman would ever choose herself, not when her adult son and her elderly mother both need her.  Every woman I talked with about Calyce Tate, the lead character in my new novel, told me adamantly that Calyce would sacrifice herself every time for her family.  They all said that good women are The Giving Tree until they are stumps.  Any story offering the possibility of an alternate ending for a loving wife and mother is not only wrong, and implausible, and selfish -- but treason.

Forget the story... even my question made women angry.

I invite you to read the first installment of Alternate Endings and tell me if you agree.  Here’s the link.

Reddit Made My Day

Two days ago, a reader posted Farmer’s Son on reddit for the first time.  http://reddit.com/r/dyslexia

Since then, people from all over the world have found the book and this website, and they have stayed to learn more. Farmer’s Son is being up-voted as I write this. It is the top-listed entry on the dyslexia subreddit right now. Wow.

I admit I’m a dinosaur. “Up-vote” is a new verb for me, as are nouns like “subreddit,” “analytics,” and “conversion flow.” I’m learning about this new landscape. What truly matters, though, is that through all the great technology people everywhere still seek out stories that touch their lives. If Farmer’s Son can encourage someone in Portugal (or Scotland or South Korea), I am very grateful.

The novel’s themes are universal.  How many of us took too long to grow up?  How many had colossally bad parents?  How many families have kept secrets for generations?  These are just some of the themes in Farmer’s Son.   

Alternate Endings Is Coming Soon

Later this month, I’ll post the first installment of Alternate Endings right here on my website.  It’s a story about a woman who makes a remarkable choice.  It may surprise you.  I can’t wait to hear what you think!  Please check back very soon.  

Why I Write

I spent an extraordinary morning at Fortune Academy last Friday. It is truly a remarkable place. I met amazing parents, teachers, and administrators devoting their lives to young people with learning differences. These committed adults are making bright futures for all the talented students at this remarkable school. It’s obvious why children apply from all over the world to Fortune Academy.

One young man, though, made me cry.  As I was touring the school with its marvelous founder, Janet George, we stopped in an English classroom at the high school. When Ms. George introduced me, saying I was the novelist who had written Farmer’s Son, a teenage boy suddenly stood to speak. The class fell silent as the surprised teacher looked on.

He addressed me, telling me he had something to say.  He said he didn’t read. Full stop.  But... he had read Farmer’s Son. It had taken him two weeks, but he had done it. He then went on to tell me how much the book meant to him, how much of a difference it made for his life. He put his hand on his heart as he spoke.

I realized that I was listening to a modern-day Bobby, just as challenged as the 1970s protagonist in my novel, and I realized that Bobby’s story in Farmer’s Son had reached out to help this young man.

I teared up as he kept speaking. I looked at his English teacher, who was crying too. We both looked at Ms. George, standing next to me, and she had puddled up as well. When the boy finished, the class all clamored to read the book. I offered to return to Indianapolis to discuss it when they were done.

Why do I write?  That boy is my answer.  If I can encourage one hard-working child, if I can support one loving parent in this daily fight, if I can provide one devoted teacher a new resource, then I have succeeded. If I can create work that reassures people they are not alone, that their stories are worth telling, that they count too, then I have achieved my dream as a writer.

Thank you Janet George and Fortune Academy and everyone I met for a morning I will never forget. Thanks to that earnest teenager for the rare gift of his words, which I will forever carry with me. He has encouraged me on this writing path more than he can ever know.

Fortune Academy Welcomes Farmer’s Son

Fortune Academy in Indianapolis is throwing a Coffee & Conversation about Farmer’s Son on Friday, November 18, at 9 a.m.

This marvelous school educates and empowers young people with language learning differences. Janet George, its visionary founder, has championed Farmer’s Son since before it was published. I’m so grateful to her for allowing the book to touch the lives of her extraordinary students.

I can’t wait!  The cost is free, but do RSVP to 317-377-0544.  I hope to see you there!-- N.E. Lasater