TO DO

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Those pesky To-Do lists—

I have them everywhere. There is a notebook on my phone and a file on my computer. There are multiple written lists in diaries and spiral binders, on notepads with kitty themes, and we can’t forget those little scraps of paper. I have a list titled Old Stuff To Do that I never look at; another To Do Eventually; yet another To Do Sooner; and a current list with no title which is the one I work from most often. Then there’s the list of things to do TODAY! It’s usually an improvised jot meant only for those imminent things I really must do, though it often grows out of all proportion, getting longer instead of shorter the way it’s supposed to.

Needless to say, I have a list specifically for writing tasks such as blog ideas, interviews, and deadlines. Since it’s summer, there’s a gardening list as well, though some of it—the big stuff like digging out the peony bed—carries over from year to year. “Fix the deck” had been on that list for a decade until just recently when my husband finally put in a patio. Next: the Catio!

Sometimes when I don’t look at a list for a while, the items go away of their own accord. Other times, I can’t remember what they mean, as with this one:

Multi Pass random (or radon?) rewrite X 5 (S?) passes

incinerate

If you have any idea what I was trying to tell myself, please let me know. Otherwise, this scrap is going into the recycle.

 

But at the end of the day, 

does all this list-making improve my quality of life? In a way, it’s necessary. I’m a bit obsessive and have a less than perfect memory, so unless I write things down, I’m either a) constantly going over them in my head, or b) trying to remember what they were so I can go over them in my head.

What would it be like to let go, to have no need of lists? To be free from obligation and chores? To live in the moment? I do that when I’m writing, though I suppose that’s not exactly living. 

I wrote a poem…

A WRITER'S CHRISTMAS LIST, by Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer

  

Aside from the usual things—peace on Earth, a lottery win, a pony (that’s a hold-out from when I was a little girl)—all I want for Christmas are:

 

AUTHOR EVENTS.

I used to get so nervous before a book event that I’d swear I’d never do one again. Now I miss them like crazy.

BOOKSTORES.

Remember back when we could go to a real live bookstore? See our books placed lovingly on the shelves?

CONFERENCES.

From Pop Cats to the Cat Writers Association Conference to the Las Vegas Star Trek convention, 2020 was cancelled and it looks like 2021 may not be much better. I can’t wait until it’s safe to go out again. Besides the joy and vivacity of the various events, I love staying in hotels and ordering room service.

EXERCISE.

OMC! Did I say the E-word? I’ve never been the one to go to the gym or play sports, but BC (before Covid) I got a certain amount of exercise in my daily life. Now my biggest exertion is moving from screen to screen—laptop, computer, TV, phone. I don’t have the desire or discipline to do pushups with Richard Simmons, but if I don’t get going, I fear I’ll turn into Jaba the Hut.

FELLOWSHIPS.

Zoom is great! I don’t have to dress or brush my teeth. I can even set a background so my associates think I’m in Hawaii or the Louvre instead of my messy office. But online chats will never replace in person events, no matter how hard everyone tries.

MEETINGS.

I belong to several writers’ and other groups that hold regular meetings, at least they did BC. Some have moved to Zoom, but others have fallen by the wayside. Hopefully when this is all over, those groups can move forward again. We’ve lost so much during this pandemic, but I have high hopes for people’s enthusiasm about what comes next.

NEW IDEAS.

You’d think working on four books would be enough to keep me busy, and it is, but all four are in various stages of editing. I have nothing new to wrap my head around, which may be for the best since my head isn’t working all that well these days.

PRESENTATIONS.

Another in-person event put on hold, presentations, both mine and other people’s, were one of my favorite pastimes. I’ve done a couple of them on Zoom but felt such distance from my little audience of squares, I preformed poorly. Sorry about that.

REVIEWS.

I know people are reading. What else do we have to do (besides Netflix and Amazon shopping?) so why aren’t I seeing a rise in book reviews? Maybe everyone’s stunned into silence by the current events. I know I am.

SLEEP.

I don’t know about you, but my sleep cycle is all messed up. I’m awake half the night, then dog-tired after lunch. What I wouldn’t give for a good night’s sleep where not a creature is stirring not even a cat—I mean, mouse.

What’s on you Writer’s Christmas List this year?

RESEARCH and YOUR TV, by Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer

Television- the seductive mind-suck that most of us find ourselves indulging in on a daily basis. Couch potato? Not me. 

I'm a writer, so for me, watching TV is a form of research. I write fiction, so when I view Midsomer Murders, Miss Marple, or Murder She Wrote, it stokes the fires of my cozy imagination. Doctor Who, Star Trek, Angels and Demons, and Gormenghast serve as flights of fancy to inspire my sci- fantasy series. Though I don't write police procedurals or thrillers, a well-composed series like True Detective, Bosch, or Unforgotten is useful. Even the old standbys like NCIS have something to offer. 

For an added bonus, turn on closed captioning as an insight into how to write realistic conversation and dialog. 

But... 

There is a bit if translation necessary to make these inspirations my own. Though Perry Mason may be the go-to lawyer show, a lot has changed since 1970. Unless I'm writing a retro thriller, I'll need to get more information from other sources. And though Agatha Christie may be the queen of mystery, her solutions might not work in today's society. 

Yes, television is a righteous research tool, but I must not get so wrapped up in their story as to lose sight of mine. 

Here's a little exercise: Pause whatever you're watching, and write a paragraph about the scene. Use colors, patterns, sound and sense as well as conversation. Read it back to yourself. Could a reader envision the scenario? Have you made it your own? 

Besides the shows I mentioned, here are some others that have inspired me: 

Torchwood

Stargate 

The Orville 

The Hobbit (not lotr) 

Blade  Runner 

Laura 

Gotham 

Father Brown 

Murdoch Mysteries 

Brokenwood Mysteries 

The Bridge/Bron 

Inspector Morse/Inspector Lewis/Endeavor

Shetland

Conan the Barbarian (original Arnie version)

Mystery Road

Glitch season 1

The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes/Sherlock

Anything with David Tennant except the ones about serial killers 

One last comment: I am writing this on my phone. I do not recommend it.

Expanding Creativity

The self-isolation requirements brought on by COVID-19 began wearing on me a few months ago. As an introvert, parties, etc. are not my thing but my husband and I still went out to dinner with friends, attended a weekly Bible study, went grocery shopping, etc. Now, we haven't been to a restaurant or grocery store since early March and our Bible study group has been cancelled. It didn't take long before restlessness set in with a vengeance. I decided that I needed to find a creative outlet outside of writing. As much as I love to write, it's a marathon, not a sprint, and I needed to find something sprint-worthy.

 

All I have to do is make these parts look like the picture...

 

Facebook ads to the rescue! I signed up for a monthly kit club. Each month, I'll receive a kit for a different project. The variety of projects will let me try my hand at different things without making a long-time commitment to any of them. The first kit was for a decorative birdhouse. I'm fairly handy and can use a hammer with the best of them, but most of my projects are large. Working on something so small was going to be a bit of a challenge, but that's what this is all about - trying new things.

 

Making progress!

When I'm trying something new I have a tendency to follow the directions to the letter and would have done the same this time if it weren't for my husband. He looked at the picture of the completed birdhouse and said "That's a lot of white. Why don't you change the color for some of it?" This was an excellent suggestion and we have quite a few sample-sized paints left from hubby's various projects. I decided to change the base and the trim for the roof to a light gray. Not much different from the original but I've always loved a pop of red against a gray or white.

The project is now complete and I have to say that I'm pretty pleased with it. 👍 My perfectionist tendencies mean that I see all all of the flaws but as my husband says, the flaws are what makes it unique. (He balances me well. 💕)

Ta-da!

Next month: Inspirational magnets.

What are your hobbies?

 

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TALES FROM THE REWRITE, by Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer

Last week when I was at the beach, I worked on reading (aloud) the proof copy of Cat Winter, one of my latest WIPs and the 2^nd book of the Cat Seasons Tetralogy. The manuscript has been through several edits, a beta reader, and a trip to my editor, so I went into it thinking, with a few tweaks here and there, the book would be ready to publish. The first pages came off without a hitch; then the red lines began. The way I proof is to mark directly in the proof book with a red pen—soon there were more pages with red lines, circles, and arrows that not.

Okay, that's pretty normal—for both Cat Café and Cosmic Cat, I slogged through two full proofs before I was happy. But then I ran into a bigger conundrum: you see, Cat Winter, like all the Cat Seasons Tetralogy, is in two parts. The first part is relatively tame violence-wise, but part two, when my heroes travel back in time to antediluvian South America, things begin to get ugly. I suppose like many of us, I had been traumatized at a young age by stories of atrocities committed by people of that era. I'm not sure if it was a catharsis to write about such horrors, but none the less, I got down and dirty. That would be fine since this isn’t by any means a “cozy” story, except that part 1 of the book flows in a completely different vein. The ultra-violence doesn’t fit. I need to tone it down. This means a huge rewrite. Not what I had planned.

How much violence do you tolerate in your fiction? How much do you enjoy? Where does violence fit into your taste in books? 

With the pandemic, as well as the Black Lives Matter protests, our penchant for reading violent stories is changing. We no longer want to hear about the rogue cop who does it all his way, no matter what laws he breaks or who gets hurt. But we don’t want a tiptoe through the tulips either. 

Cat Winter, being a sci-fantasy about cats saving the world, doesn’t have any cops, but it’s not all tulips either. Rewriting is hard, sometimes harder than the original draft; still, it’s the right thing to do. Be warned, however, I won’t be throwing out all the carnage. It’s way too much fun! 

Note: Cat Summer, the first book in the Cat Seasons Tetralogy, published by Fire Star Press last year, just won the Cat Writers’ Association Muse Medallion for best sci-fi/fantasy book 2019! This prestigious award is an exciting badge of honor for my debut sci-fantasy.

COVID-BRAIN, by Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer

Are you feeling strange? A slump in energy? A change in writing habits? An excess of anxiety? Do you spend an inordinate amount of time on the couch watching movies? Maybe even old television series you would not have bothered with before this grand isolation came about? Do you eat at odd hours, wake during the night, sleep later than usual, take a nap (or two) during the day?

For a while, many eons ago last March and April, many of us went crazy cleaning, gardening, cooking, playing with pets. But that burst of savage energy wound down at some point, and here we are, dead in the water. A friend of mine calls it Covid-brain. It's not that we have the virus, but our lives are impacted by it just the same.

Some of us are sick with headaches, body aches, fatigue, stomach and gut issues. Do you wonder at times, Is this it? Do I have it? Am I going to die? Or has the situation induced an anxiety episode or brought on depression? Those of us who live with mental health issues are always on the brink of a fall. Since depression and anxiety can be triggered by nothing whatsoever, the fact life as we know it has changed, that a deadly virus threatens our lives and the lives of our loved ones, that leadership is lacking and the country is divided, the fact that we are not the only country to be falling apart, the fact that some people think it’s okay to threaten others... oh, God, need I go on? Yeah, if we don’t have anxiety by now, we’re not paying attention.

I am an optimist. I believe everything that’s happening is moving us on a path that needs to be taken if we are to find peace. But lately it’s been hard to see past the symptoms of upheaval to the better things to come.

I am writing 3 books. One is a sci-fantasy about cats changing the world. (Oh, how I wish those kitties could jump in and save us now!); one is the first of a new cozy series; and one is the seventh in another set of cozies. I can still do that, though for the first time, I find myself wondering why I bother. My sales aren’t great and I have no heart for advertising. I finally recognized the feeling I’d been carrying around for the past month as, “I give up.”

I give up.

But I’ll still keep on writing and taking care of cats.
I will be a good person.
I will not hate.
I will not ridicule.
I will try to empathize with every single person.
If that’s not enough in the face of global bedlam, tough.

The Character I Hated

One guess who forgot her post last month? Yes, it was me. Sigh. My posts are due the first Friday of each month. Last month I suddenly realized late on the first day of May "Wait a minute. Today is the first Friday of the month." So, to make sure I don't do that again, I'm writing this post well in advance of the due date.

I'm super excited that Dances with Werewolves, the newest entry in my Kudzu Korners sweet paranormal romance series is now live! You can see the details HERE.

Livia did a wonderful job on the cover!

Sydney Hall is the heroine of Dances with Werewolves and readers and I both met her for the first time in Dial V for Vampire, the first book in the series. I worked on the first draft of Dial V one year during NaNoWriMo. My husband made it a point to check in with me every day and ask what was going on in my story. One of our conversations went something like this:

Hubby: "So, what's going on in your story?"

Me: "I really hate my main character's best friend."

Hubby: *blinks* "What do you mean you hate her? You created her!"

Me: "Yes, but that doesn't mean I like her." (Writer brain completely baffles my husband.)

Not only did I not like Sydney upon our first meeting, I pretty much detested her. This was a problem because I knew she was supposed to be the heroine in Dances with Werewolves. How could I expect the hero to fall in love with her if I couldn't even like her? Fortunately it turned out that once I got to know Sydney a little bit better and understood why she was the way she was, I liked her just fine. Crisis averted!

I guess even in the world of fiction it pays to get to know someone before judging their actions. Who knew? #lessonlearned

Until next month, take care and keep reading!

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WHAT’S IN A NAME? by Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer

Ever wonder where writers find the names for their characters? With billions of names floating around, how does one go about choosing the right one for each person in a book?

For me, most of my characters’ names just appear out of nowhere. The tall, elderly man is most certainly Ellery. The slightly dotty collectibles dealer is Dovey, as in lovey-dovey. The dead man is Jonathan Chambers, I don’t know why. He’s dead. I don’t even know what he looks like. But I know his name.

Then there are some characters that defy this sort of cosmic inspiration. The hero of my new mystery series eluded me for quite some time. A septuagenarian who solves crimes with the aid of a ghost cat seemed like a perfect Agatha, but there are far too many of those sleuthing around cozy mysteries as it is. Same with Amelia. Clarissa wasn’t quite right, and neither was Camella. I finally lit upon Camelia, like the flower, and this one stuck. Stay tuned for Camelia Collins and her ghost cat Soji, coming next year.

Back when I was a reader, before I was a writer, I wondered what would make one author choose odd or unusual names and another pick the most common. Now that I find myself in their place, I realize every writer has their own system. I personally try to choose unique names for the sake of creating a memorable character.

As I said, most names come to me, but what if they don’t? There is always the internet, but I find those long, alphabetical name lists to be two-dimensional; it’s hard to connect first name with surname and be sure they fit. When I worked in filing, I’d write down names that caught my eye on a Post-it. (One name only so as not to break any HIPPA rules.) I’ve checked my FB friends and the phone book. Sometimes I pick something in the room. My character Guinness MacAngus from Cosmic Cat began in the kitchen of a house where I was live-in cat-sitting. The owners had a wooden Guinness Stout crate on top their fridge.

Covid-19 had changed how we do things in ways we could never have imagined. My sisters-in-laws get together with my husband and me to take walks in a cemetery. I know that may sound strange, but many of our loved ones reside on that peaceful hilltop. We can stroll around, a safe six feet apart, and enjoy the fresh air in relative isolation. As you can imagine, we look at the beautiful old gravestones, many dating back to the 1800s. On our last trek, I realized that here was a wealth of names, just waiting to become a character in a book!

So look ahead for first names Thana, Owen, Angeline, Ward, and Gabriel. Last names Christner, Service, Brichard, Noble, and Flutz. These, and more, are all ready to come to life in my stories. And next time you take a walk, see what character names might be right before your eyes.

How do you find your character names?

 You can read more from Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer on her blogsite, www.lecatts.wordpress.com.

WHEN A MYSTERY WRITER CAN’T FACE MURDER, by Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer

Bank Robber Aiming at Security Camera, Cleveland, Ohio, March 8, 1975, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition “Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play,”

Whether you write cozies, thrillers, police procedurals, or suspense, the plot of a mystery most often revolves around murder. Suspicious death is endlessly fascinating to our readers, and therefore to us as well. Grisly and graphic or gentle and off-stage, it’s people killing people that makes a good story. Right?

But what if murder suddenly comes too close to home? A while back I was working on a cozy mystery in which someone was murdered in a small, coastal town. Then it happened— a friend was killed near our beach house in Ocean Park Washington. Suddenly I couldn’t face the words I’d so callously scribbled on the page. Suddenly murder wasn’t fun anymore.

Thankfully I came out of it after some time and went on to write many more stories involving violent crime. But that experience taught me to be gentle. I will never know how my writing affects my readers. They may be suffering in ways I cannot guess. 

When my last mystery was published, I requested a review from a well-known reviewer. She was happy to comply, but she asked first if there were any references to suicide in my book. Her son had killed himself, and this was someplace she didn’t want to go, even in fiction. I was thankful she could be so candid about her trigger.

Recently more and more bloggers are posting “trigger warnings” at the top of their posts so people with various issues know before they read that the content may be disturbing. I love this. I’m reasonably tough when it comes to reading material, but I appreciate knowing if the post will contain anxiety, rape, violence, harming of animals, or such so I can make the choice whether I’m up to it or not.

I write both cozy mysteries and sci-fantasy. Either way, I want my stories to make people happy in spite of their morbid theme. In a cozy mystery, the crime is a puzzle for the reader to solve while enjoying interesting characters, attractive scenery, and a few mild chills along the way. In my cat sci-fantasy, I shake it up a bit, but I still wish to leave the reader with a sense of hope. Other writers write other stories for other readers. For example, Stephen King made his millions pushing the horror envelope. But no matter what you write, be thoughtful. I still see no excuse for killing the pet.

HOW I SPENT MY WINTER VACATION, by Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer

How do you picture your dream vacation? Fun in the sun? A writing retreat? Lots of great food? Maid service? No worries?

My recent trip to Cabo San Lucas was all those and more. Staying at an all-inclusive resort a ways out of Cabo, my husband and I had a suite right on the beach. From our room we could watch both the sunrise and the sunset. As an extra bonus, the Super Snow Moon made a showing during our stay as well.

Though Jim and I go to his timeshare in Mazatlán just about every year, this was my first experience with the all-inclusive plan. In Mazatlán, one of our favorite things to do is shop at the central market for fresh foods, then cook them in our room. Jim fishes on the beach and buys langoustines and shrimp from the fishermen. But the Cabo place was new to us, and a ways from town and shopping, so we decided to try something different.

It was fun not having to think about cooking (or cleaning up after) and one of the only times in my life I didn’t look at the prices. We enjoyed the many resort eateries. There was a bistro, a buffet, a Chinese and a Japanese restaurant. The Japanese outdoor place was my favorite, not only because of the great food, but it also had cats! A few friendly ferals popped in for a share of the bounty, and I was happy to give it to them. I didn’t see the sign saying not to feed the animals until after the deed was done.

We also enjoyed a fair share of room service, my guilty pleasure.  Getting breakfast delivered to our room facilitated the other favorite part of my holiday— working on my books. Ironically my story on takes place at the beach, but hundreds of miles north in the cold and rain of Washington state. Sitting on the warm, sunny balcony, it was sometimes difficult to put myself in the chill of those northern climes.

Writing, walking, smelling the flowers, eating way too much, sleeping in without having to feed and medicate cats— all those things made the past week a wonderful vacation. I’m glad to be back though. My cats missed me.

You can find more blogposts by Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer on her blogsite: www.lecatts.wordpress.com

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@MollieHuntCats

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