On stuff you can't make up

HALLIE: Reality sometimes trumps fiction. I remember one day I'm sitting in a coffee shop in New York, one with stools and a little counter across the front window. I'm sipping and gazing out when a man on the street walks by, his head buried in a newspaper. He walks smack into a metal pole. He rears back and punches the pole.

And then there's the time my husband and I were staying at one of those fancy hotels on a Caribbean island. A pair of newlyweds took the hotel's water taxi to nearby island and got stranded there. It grew dark and they became more and more desperate. The wife started digging in the sand and found...a flashlight. Really, she did. Not only that, it worked. They used it to signal until someone on the beach at the hotel noticed and they sent a boat over to rescue them.

I wish I could use either of those incidents in a book, but I don't think anyone would believe it happened, and I can't footnote it (*this really happened). In fiction, reality is no excuse.

Do you have any moments in real life that you couldn't put into a book because no one would believe it happened.

RHYS: Some amazing coincidences--hearing a familiar voice at the Berlin Wall and finding it was my next door neighbor's mother. Bumping into friends in the middle of Sri Lanka. I found a watch buried in the lake bed in six feet of water, dug it out and it was still ticking.

I've overheard some amazing things: I was once swimming laps and from the next lane I heard a woman say, "Of course, the gun belt weighs you down." Had to swim extra fast to try and keep up this conversation.

I was once locked into the gardens at Gramercy Park by mistake and was luckily rescued as it was getting dark. But I did use this in a Molly book.

But you're right--critics jump on any use of coincidence in a book when in real life there are coincidences every day.

ROBERTA: here's a funny true story that people have found hard to believe. In graduate school, I had walked out to the far parking lot when a woman accosted me with a dead battery problem. I told her that I did own jumper cables, but was not confident using them. She was quite scornful about my reluctance to take charge and my reliance on father/boyfriend/husbands in the past. She hooked the cables up, I started my car, and her engine began to spark and smoke. She grabbed a random male student in the next row of cars, all the while screaming: "We need a man! We need a man!"

RO: I love that!! We need a man!

HALLIE: I think I could put that in a book.

RO: I've had my copyeditor comment that one or two things I've written weren't plausible and of course they were things I'd lifted from newspaper articles...like the accountant who bought a horse and managed to turn it into a champion. I was in Costco today and overheard a 13-14 year old girl on the phone having an incredible conversation that involved babies, cops, and some rather extreme circumstances. I can only hope she was talking about a movie. That I might use in a book.

JAN: When I was working as a reporter in Rhode Island, I was listening to a radio talk show, when Raymond Patriarca, the head of the New England mob, actually called in. He wanted to tell everyone that he truly had a lot of respect for Arline Violet, the (then) state's attorney general (and a former nun), because she was the only honest (and presumably incorruptible) politician in Rhode Island. No one would believe THAT if you used it in a novel.

HANK: As a reporter, sometimes coincidences happen in another way. Like I'll be thinking--I wish I had a person who's been scammed by a (pick a bad thing) so I could use them as an example in a story. Then bing. I'll get an email from just that sort of person. How does that happen? And I mean, things like that occur so often that my producer and I just tell ourselves--If we need it, it will come. And SO CONSISTENTLY, when it's the right time, the universe provides.

But if you put that in a book, it's instantly ridiculous.

(I must say, Jan, I called the PR person for a certain government agency recently, and asked a question. She freaked out, and said, "Wait wait, I'm not allowed to answer that, you need to talk to a man." Truly.)

(Oh, wait. Here's one. We were in Nevis, in British West Indies, having a cocktail at an outdoor bar at our hotel. Suddenly we hear--Hello, Jonathan. It's Jonathan's law school pal, Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer. I didn't know Jonathan knew him. And that's weirder because Breyer was also my boss when I worked on Capitol Hill in 1973. Put THAT in a book.)

HALLIE: The most bizarre, most un-fiction-worthy things happen all the time. So, what's happened to you that no one would believe if you put it in a book.

"I didn't know what day it was...."

Alright, it's not Friday, it's Saturday. And Saturday night to boot, but I'm begging my blog sisters indulgence. (I feel a little like Bob Cratchit explaining to Ebenzer Scrooge
why he was late to work the day after Christmas. "I was making rather merry...")
This week has flown...six cities since Sunday..including layovers. My Friday/Saturday surprise is an entry from Joanna Slan who writes a scrapbooking series and blogs regularly on Killer Hobbies.

My Magnificent Obsession

Lately, I’ve been dreaming about marketing my book. Yesterday, I woke up and realized I was in my bed, not folding colorful brochures. I could have sworn I was putting creases in those tri-folds! After I rubbed my eyes I noticed the sheets were bunched in an odd fashion, the edges perfectly lined up in three sections.

When my non-author friends ask, “How’s the book coming?” I tell them Paper, Scissors, Death is in the hands of editors, and my “baby” will be born on September 13, 2008. They smile. “Aren’t you excited?”

Nah.

I’m terrified.

Here’s what it’s like: I’m a horse, and all my fellow authors are horses, too. We’re lined up at the track. The gun will go off. Only a few of us will make it to the finish line. A couple might stumble, break a leg and have to be shot. Those of us who finish “in the money” will win the opportunity to race again another day.

But we live to run. We live for this. Well, I do at least.

I’ve been writing my whole life. I grew up in an itsy-bitsy town in Indiana, a place that looks its best in your rearview mirror. We only got three channels on TV, and that was if I could talk my sister Jane into holding onto the rabbit ears and wearing tin foil. (Sorry, Janie. I know I shouldn’t have asked it of you. But you were the younger one, and that’s the breaks, kiddo.)

Without much to do, I read a lot. The public library was my favorite place. I would stand in front of the stacks and crane my head back. The books went on and on to the ceiling. Had anyone read all these books? Probably not. Did the librarian even know what was in all of them? Doubtful.

When I ran out of stuff to read, I told myself a lot of stories. That’s the beauty of life in the middle of a cornfield where the only constant is the pump, pump, pump of the oil rigs. You gotta lotta nuttin’ to do. Which translates into “thinking time.” Daydreaming. Imagining. Fertile soil for dreaming up characters for a story or a book.

I won my first writing award in high school. Majored in journalism and wrote a column for the Muncie Star while at Ball State University. Worked for newspapers, radio stations, and had a talk show on TV. Did public relations. Wrote speeches. Gave speeches. Freelanced for magazines and newspapers. Taught writing in college, and now online. So I've been working at this career most of my life. You'd think I'd have some grasp of the process and the business.

Here’s the weirdest part: This isn’t my first book. It’s not like I haven’t been through this before. I’m the author of ten books of non-fiction. All of them sold well. A few sold REALLY well.

So why am I worried?

Because this is fiction. This is me. My imagination. My heart, my soul, my special talent, my little stories, my creations come to life on paper pages. And golly, I want other people to like what I’ve done as much as I do.

It’s pathetic.
It’s true.
I guess I’ll just have to wait until September and see.

About Joanna Campbell Slan...

Yeah, she really did grow up in the middle of a cornfield. Today she lives in a suburb of St. Louis, near a soybean field. Catch her blog with other mystery writers at www.killerhobbies.blogspot.com or her ideas on promotion (other than folding sheets) at her blog in her website www.joannaslan.com Paper, Scissors, Death: A Scrapbooking Mystery will debut September 13, 2008 from Midnight Ink.

Fall 2008, Midnight Inkwww.joannacampbellslan.com