Celebrating Gigi

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  As some of you here on the blog may know, my dear friend, and a regular member of our Jungle Red community, Gigi Norwood, died unexpectedly on September 3rd. 

Gigi and I had been friends for thirty years. Her late husband, Warren Norwood, was my writing teacher when I was struggling with those early drafts of what would become A SHARE IN DEATH.  I met Gigi through Warren, but she was a writer as well. For quite a few years we were part of the same writer's group. We met up in Fort Worth in those days, as it was the midway point between where I lived and where Gigi and Warren lived, west of Fort Worth. After Warren passed away in 2005, Gigi decided she needed to be closer to her new job in Dallas, and that she needed a nearby support system. Eventually, she found a house only two blocks from us in McKinney. I can only hope I provided the support system--she was certainly mine.

She got me hooked on fountain pens and leather journals. I got her hooked on the British ballroom dancing show Strictly Come Dancing, and the local bakery, where we had a standing date every Sunday morning. (We called it our "church.") Along with the addiction to pens and journals, Gigi gave me a number of books on "how to improve your handwriting," but I'm afraid the advice didn't take!

Gigi was passionate about music, and she loved her job as Operations Manager for the Dallas Winds. Nothing delighted her more than introducing someone to an artist she admired--just this time last year she took me to my first Keb' Mo' concert. She loved cars, too, especially her Ford Mustang, and I was always her car-shopping ridealong (and enabler.) This was the day she bought her first Mustang, encouraged by me! (Another would follow.)

Last year she added a Bronco Sport (keeping the current Mustang!) and was doing her best to convince me to follow suit. 

But more than anything, she loved her dogs and cats, especially her beloved border collies, and gave much time and energy to our local border collie rescue groups. She fostered dogs, and I couldn't begin to count the number of dogs that passed through her care and went on to find loving homes with adopters.

We talked every day, trading book chat and gossip, writing critiques and political opinions, but also the sort of boring everyday stuff that forms the backbone of a friendship. 

You may remember that Gigi was not only a regular commenter here on Jungle Red but was also a guest several times on the blog. She was a talented writer (as G. S. Norwood) in many genres, but it was her Deep Ellum novellas that I loved the most. After she died, it was a few days before I realized to my dismay that there would be no more Ms. Eddy stories.

She had so many plans for her recent retirement. Quilting, house projects, gardening (we shared the love of antique roses and native plants), but top of her list was spending more time on her stories and novels, and working with her sister Jan Gephardt on the publishing company they started together, Weird Sisters Publishing. 

She loved art and tea and handmade pottery--oh, so much pottery! If there was an award for number of mugs owned, Gigi would have won it! I did manage to sneak in one piece of English porcelain, the Emma Bridgewater Bonfire Night mug I gave her for her birthday last year. (She shared her birthday with Guy Fawkes night.) And if you knew her, you'll have an idea how delighted she was that her birthday was going to fall on election day this year!

Gigi was such a big part of my life that it will be a long time before a day goes by that I don't think of her dozens of times. She will be missed on so many days, in so many ways, not just by me and by her family, but by all the many, many people whose lives she touched with her warmth, wit, and generousity. 

I count us lucky, here on Jungle Red, to have shared in a bit of it.

Gigi Sherrell Norwood--Scary Music!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Counting down the last ten days to the most frightening day of the year, we have just the thing to get you in the mood! Here's our Jungle Red friend and my very good pal, Gigi Norwood, with a rundown on the scariest of tunes!

GIGI NORWOOD: When Debs turned to me the other day, searching for blog post ideas for her week at bat on Jungle Red, we brainstormed our way through Halloween décor, pumpkin-centric agriculture, and spice cake recipes before I suggested she look at festive holiday music that is absolutely NOT for Christmas.

Like, say, that Crypt Kickers classic, Monster Mash. Or the ooky, spooky theme from The Addams Family. When I started dragging Camille Saint-Saëns and Edvard Grieg into the conversation, she said, “Why don’t you write it?” So here I am, guest blogging, and delighted to be back on Jungle Red.

When the conversation turns to Halloween music, there are a lot of popular options, from Ghost Riders in the Sky to Thriller. You want witches?  We have a whole coven, including Donovan’s Season of the Witch, Nina Simone’s I Put a Spell on You, and Bobby Bare’s Marie Laveau. Monsters? Check out Sheb Wooley’s Purple People-Eater. And ghosts? You need only dip into folk music’s murder ballads to find scores of those.  My personal favorite ghost ballad is Long Black Veil, which is eerie enough, even before you realize that the ghost is not the woman in black.  It’s the singer, watching her walk the hills.

But Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt Kickers must win some kind of prize for the most enduring goofball Halloween song of all time. A novelty song written to play off Bobby Pickett’s amusing imitation of Boris Karloff, it tells the story of the living dead, including Frankenstein’s monster and Count Dracula, dancing their Halloween away, doing some reanimated form of the Mashed Potato.  High art that combined satire, homage, and a catchy tune to become a number one hit and spend more than 60 years hanging out on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Pickett’s song might have had a lot of contemporary cultural references, but the idea of monsters, ghosts, witches and demons dancing the night away is very old. 

Folklore from many lands speaks of a witches’ sabbath, held around All Hallows or sometimes Midsummer eve, where women and men, intent on evil, met up with their demonic overlord at midnight to dance and celebrate with horrible rituals.  I should point out that there is no historical evidence that celebrations like this actually happened anywhere in Europe, Asia, or the Americas, although your friendly local pagan group will probably throw a fun party on Halloween night.

Facts don’t matter in folklore, though.  Imagination rules the night, illuminated only by bonfire light, and by the late 1800s classical composers were turning to their national folklore for inspiration. 

In January, 1875, two takes on the monster’s ball theme made their debut.  Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King was part of a suite of music he wrote for Henrik Ibsen’s play, Peer Gynt.  It underscores a scene where the legendary folk hero and trickster Peer Gynt sneaks into the throne room of the Troll King, deep inside a mountain. There he is surrounded by partying goblins, trolls, and monsters, none of whom are all that happy to see him.  He has to make a run for it if he ever hopes to survive.

That same month, French composer Camille Saint-Saëns debuted his take on the witches’ sabbath with Danse Macabre. In Saint-Saëns’ version, the clock strikes midnight, and the Devil lifts his bow to play a lovely violin solo which brings all the dead to life. They dance to the Devil’s music until the cock crows at dawn and they all go back to being dead again.  Not so far off from Monster Mash after all.

Maybe the scariest of classical takes on the all-night ghoulish dance party is Night on Bald Mountain.  Written in 1865 by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, it was stuck into a whole range of plays, operas, and chorales that didn’t work or never got staged.  Scholars believe Mussorgsky never heard it played in public.  But after his death in 1881, friends got together to sort through his papers, doing what they could to preserve his music.  Night on Bald Mountain fell into the hands of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who reworked it into the piece we know now, primarily as the scariest sequence in Walt Disney’s 1940 animated classic Fantasia. 

All of which is to say that, if you have the urge to dance your Halloween night away with ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, go for it!  The tradition is probably at least as old as Christmas and who knows?  It might turn out to be a graveyard smash.

DEBS: Reds and readers, have we missed any of your scary faves?

Gigi Norwood was more or less doomed to a life as an arts professional. She was listening to classical music in the womb and spent her summer vacations roaming art museums the way other kids went to Disneyland. 

As an adult she has alternated between writing jobs and music presentations.  She is a founding partner of the independent press Weird Sisters Publishing, LLC, and has a day job back on the production side of the desk as Director of Concert Operations for the Dallas Winds. 

Writing as G. S. Norwood, she is the author of Deep Ellum Pawn and Deep Ellum Blues and is currently at work on a third Deep Ellum story plus a novel. 

A Community of Writers

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  It is my great pleasure today to bring you my friend Gigi Sherrell Norwood. She is my multi-talented neighbor, my long-time writing buddy, and she has a terrific new novelette out this week, DEEP ELLUM BLUES.

 

 

If I have encouraged (enabled!) her to buy cars and houses, she's set me on the road to addiction to fountain pens, journals, pottery, and quilts. I call it a fair trade. And she's always there for a cup of tea, a chat, a story critique, or a bit of baking. I call that priceless.

GIGI SHERRELL NORWOOD: What would I ever have done without the members of my writing community? I get up every morning to savor my tea as I read Jungle Red Writers. I call my panel of experts with questions about medicine, police procedure, and sports. I turn to them for encouragement, or a swift kick in the pants whenever I need it. It seems like every day I learn something new and interesting from at least one of them.

 They are my beta readers, when I need to know if a new story has succeeded or failed.

They are my street team when I release a new story, as I did on Wednesday with my latest e-read novelette, Deep Ellum Blues.

They are my tribe. They understand me. Even if they don’t like the genre I’m writing in, they know what I’m going through as I struggle to bring a new story into the world.

Most importantly, they are my critique partners—those trusted friends I know I can turn to when I need good, sound advice about my writing, or my life.

 

(Gigi and Debs, dates for a gala.)

My critique partners—particularly Jungle Red Writers’ own Deborah Crombie—have been there with support at many critical turning points in my life. Picture these actual scenarios, and see if you can draw some critique partner wisdom and encouragement from them, too.

Writer: I’m thinking about reviving a novel I wrote 15 years ago. Things have changed so much. It probably won’t work. I dunno . . .

Critique Partner: I always loved that story. I’m glad you came back to it.

 

Writer: It’s crap! It’s all crap! It’s the crappiest book I’ve ever wasted paper and toner on. I know this to my bones. Will you please read it?

Critique partner: (15 minutes later, after reading it) It’s not crap.

 

Writer: I just finished my chapter. Do you want to read it?

Critique Partner: (15 minutes later, after reading it) You bitch! How could you leave me hanging like that? Where’s the next chapter? And, by the way, great hook!

 

Writer: I need help brainstorming my new story.

Critique Partner: I have wine.

 

(Gigi and Debs' joint effort Christmas trifle.)

A good critique partner can be equally helpful when the writer is facing a life crisis of the non-writing variety. Take these actual situations, for instance:

 

Writer: I need to drive 500 miles north on yet another frustrating quest to settle an elderly family member’s estate.

Critique Partner: Road Trip! I call shotgun!

 

Writer: Where will I go? What will I do? I can’t live in this god-forsaken backwater any longer!

Critique Partner: Come spend the weekend with me. You might like my town. (And she did.)

 

Writer: Where will I go? What will I do? I can’t go back home for the holidays this year!

Critique Partner: Come have holiday dinner with us! Bring pie. And tequila.

(Gigi's pie for Debs' Thanksgiving.)
 

Writer: I HATE my car! It doesn’t even fit me.

Critique Partner: Oh, go on. Try the Mustang GT. What can it hurt?

(NOTE: The Writer has now paid off her second Mustang GT.)

 Writer: Oh, my God, I’m such a neurotic mess! I’ll never find a house, and everybody will hate me for whining so much about it.

Critique Partner: Yes, I know you’re a neurotic mess, but I love you anyway.

 

Probably my favorite example of my critique partners coming through for me in a crisis happened on my 18^th wedding anniversary. It was the first wedding anniversary I faced without my husband, who had died eight months earlier. Anniversaries are hard on me—particularly those private ones that don’t mean much to anyone else, but were deeply meaningful to Warren and me. Without Warren, our wedding anniversary kicked me into a deep depression. The only reason I brushed my hair and crawled out of the house that day was to meet with my critique group. They didn’t know the day was significant to me until they asked me how I was doing, at which point I burst into tears and explained my situation. These are the responses I got:

Critique Partner 1: It will be okay.

Critique Partner 2: You’re strong.

Critique Partner 3: We all miss him.

Critique Partner 4: You’re taking notes, aren’t you, so you can use this in some future novel?

 

I loved them all, but Critique Partner 4 really saved the day, because she made me laugh for the first time in ages. I laughed because she was right. In some part of my brain, I was taking notes, even though I still haven’t written that novel yet.

If any of these situations sound familiar, tell your critique partner how much you cherish him or her. And tell us your own fun, funny, wonderful critique partner stories!

 

Gigi with Gift, her kitten adopted after last year's Bouchercon.

Gigi Norwood was more or less doomed to a life as an arts professional. Her mother was an art teacher and her father taught drafting and design. She was listening to classical music in the
womb, and spent her summer vacations roaming art museums the way other kids went to Disneyland. She took her first stab at storytelling when she was four, and turned pro when she was twenty-six. Since then she has written political speeches, press releases, brochure copy, radio commercials, and feature stories for a major regional newspaper. After a stint in corporate healthcare, she fled home to the arts. She is currently the Director of Concert Operations for the Dallas Winds. Her first published fiction, Deep Ellum Pawn, was released in 2019. The sequel, Deep Ellum Blues, was released this week. 

More about DEEP ELLUM BLUES: 

"People have the right to make their own hideous, life-altering mistakes.”

 As the genius loci of Deep Ellum, Ms. Eddy Weeks is a hands-off goddess who won’t micro-manage human affairs.  She’d rather sit on the sidelines and enjoy the show.

 But a young blues musician named Mudcat Randall is flirting with disaster.  Eddy’s old adversary wants Mudcat to sign a tempting management contract.  Eddy knows there are deadly strings attached.  Can she afford to stand back when a third force enters the fray, and everything Mudcat has ever prayed for is suddenly on the line?

 

G.S. Norwood--Everyday Magic

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Here on Jungle Red Writers we have few bigger thrills than introducing a friend to our readers. So it is my great pleasure today to bring you G.S. Norwood--or, as our regular readers know her, Gigi Norwood! Gigi and I have not only been writing buddies for many a year, we share a love of urban fantasy as well as mystery. And although she writes in both genres, DEEP ELLUM PAWN hits all my favorite urban fantasy notes. Here's Gigi to introduce you to Ms. Eddy Weekes and a bit of magic.

GIGI NORWOOD: I believe in magic.  Not the David Copperfield, big stage illusion kind.  Not the Harry Potter wave-a-wand-and-say-the-right-words kind.  I believe in the natural kind that arises from the energy shared by people who gather around a common belief.

You’ve probably felt that energy yourself, humming through a crowd of grandparents, parents, grand and great-grandchildren at the start of last movie in the Star Wars triple trilogy.  If you gasped along with the little ones as the snowflakes began to fall at the end of the first act of The Nutcracker, you have felt it.  It’s the energy that whispers amazing things are possible, and Tinkerbell will survive, if only we believe.

To write urban fantasy, as I do, you have to believe that kind of life-force energy hums just under the surface of even the grittiest city.  You have to peel back the layers of concrete and asphalt right down to the dirt, then call on the folklore and fairy tales, old songs and old wives’ tales that have grown up around a place. You weave in history and legend until the story has one foot in reality, and one foot in fantasy.

My novelette, Deep Ellum Pawn, began with that mix of practicality and possibility.  I had an old Charlie Daniels song stuck in my mind.  The Devil Went Down to Georgia is catchy, but I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would want a fiddle made of gold.  Gold is a dense metal, heavy to hold, and not very resonant.  A golden fiddle—particularly one from the Devil himself—would likely sound less than musical.  So, what do you do with it?  Melt it down? Take it to a pawn shop?

The moment that thought popped into my mind a character followed.  That’s how I met Ms. Eddy Weekes, owner of Deep Ellum Pawn.  It’s a dusty pawn shop in one of Dallas’ oldest neighborhoods, but there’s more going on behind the façade than anyone might suspect.

The story flowed quickly, and I began to wonder if I’d made it up, or if some force beyond my imagination was prompting me to write it all down the way it “really” happened.  Every time I paused to research a new plot point, I found not only the answer I was looking for, but reams of additional information that made the whole idea even richer and deeper.

For example, hellhounds make an appearance in the story.  And why not?  The dance halls and street corners of Deep Ellum gave many American blues legends an early career boost.  The district is only a few short blocks away from the building where bluesman Robert Johnson recorded his song, Hellhound on My Trail.  Johnson himself gave me my first clue about how to manage hellhounds when his lyrics mentioned hotfoot powder—a folk charm used to harden the threshold of a home against supernatural invaders.  A bit further down the hellhound trail I learned that to look one in the eye three times means death.  Great stuff for an urban fantasist.

When different ideas, drawn from history, folklore, and my own imagination, all fall together to make a coherent and entertaining whole, that feels like magic to me.

So what about you, Reds and Readers?  Have you ever had a project come together “as if by magic”?  Have you felt the energy that moves through a crowd to make magic seem real?  Do you believe?

 

Deep Ellum Pawn cover art © 2019 by Chaz Kemp

Amazon Kindle Edition Link: https://amzn.to/36Z8GNT

Dance of the Snowflakes credited to the Royal Ballet

Author photo: Marcy Weiske Jordan

G. S. Norwood is the younger of two sisters behind the independent publishing company, Weird Sisters Publishing.  She has spent the past thirty-seven years getting paid to put words on paper, including work as a reporter, feature writer, and composer of program and liner notes for the Dallas Winds.  Deep Ellum Pawn is her first published fiction.