A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Saturday found me and my 23-year-old daughter at UCLA for the LA Times annual Festival of Books.

Four hundred authors, tent after tent of books, thousands of attendees. The smell of ink and pages was everywhere. It was heady. It was hot. Probably 90 in the shade.

But I loved it.

At first I thought it was because, hey I'm an author. I fit that niche. I'm not Tom Wolfe or Joanne Harris or Mary Higgins Clark but I write books just like they do. But after just an hour of roaming the north campus in a haze of heat and bookly wonder, I began to realize who walked the pavement and lawns with me. Not authors. This wasn't like the writers conventions and confereneces I'd been to. This place was teeming with strollers and trikes and dogs on leashes and red balloons. Families had descended upon the campus. Parents who like to read, who want their kids to grow up with that kind of adoration for books. This was a place for readers.

Very cool. Even on a hot day.

I have a little radio announcement to plug here, but after that, I've included a few photos of the Festival. Okay, so I don't have pictures of the stacks of books. But you can see that in any library or bookstore. Here are pictures of the reason any of us writers write anything at all.

First, the plug: I'll be joining Amy Hammond Hagberg on her radio show on Thursday and we'll be talking, among other things, about my latest release, Blue Heart Blessed. It's a call-in show, so if you want to chime in, here's what you need to know: The 60-minute show airs live every Thursday at 12 noon Central time (1 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Mountain, 10 a.m. Pacific). Callers are welcome to join the conversation and ask questions during the show by calling (347) 324-5425. You can also listen online by visiting http://www.blogtalkradio.com/godunplugged.
During the live show you can also participate in the chat room and ask questions that way. In order to join the conversation via chat, however, you'll need to register (but Amy says it's free and easy).

If you can't join us live, no prob! You can listen any time by visiting the archives. Read more about the host and the discussion on Amy's website, http://www.hesreal.com/.

Hope to "hear" you there.

And now, the photos!

Blow out the candle

Monumental milestones need to be celebrated or at least noted, so without further ado, Happy Birthday, Edgewise. You are still alive and kicking after a year. I am in awe.

When I began this little weblog, I worried that 1. I would starve the thing by failing to feed it words and 2. I would say something terribly important and would therefore miss the opportunity to say the same thing somewhere else and get paid for it.

I can honestly say that neither fear came to pass. I managed to post with nearly admirable finesse - okay, so I missed a few days - and I am quite sure I said nothing so deeply profound that it should be within the pages of my someday NY Times bestseller.

Feeding the blog wasn't always a piece of cake, pun intended, I guess. There were days when I knew I had nothing important to say and days when I knew I had no energy to say what was important to me. But I have to say I am glad I found a way, somehow, to keep getting a word in Edgewise (get my little joke?) because blogging is journaling and journaling is making sense of your world and making sense of your world keeps you from caving in when times get tough.

I read, reviewed and promoted a number of really good books this past year, my favorite is still "The Thirteenth Tale," which I yakked about on January 1.

My favorite pictures that I posted this year are of my little cactus garden, which sad to say came upon some bad luck last week when we had some siding removed from the back of the house. My husband told me it'd be best if I didn't go back there until he has a chance to see who's alive and who is not. I am thankful then, to have these baby photos, because, I fear it is all I have. There is comfort in knowing I didn't spend much and I can always buy more.

My favorite post of the year is August 3, not because I wrote such wonderful words but because I finally came to terms with myself and admitted I am not the happy sanguine I've always wanted to be. I'm a no-nonense choleric. That's just the way it is. It's about time I realized I am not like my yellow Lab. You can't be what you wish you were. You are who you are. I can be a redeemed choleric. I can even be a nice choleric. But I yam what I yam. And it's best that I just be as genteel a yam as I can be.

Thanks for sharing the year with me. You've made it worth every word.

Breathing . . .

When Alexander Pope penned the words "hope springs eternal. . ." I wonder what was running through his mind. I like to think he was thinking of heaven - that lovely, eternal place - that is hope's address.

Here is the snippet of text where these three words come from:
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come."

If we didn't have hope, it would be a sorry life indeed. Hope keeps us from folding in on ourselves when life demands too much of us, when it seems like it always will.

Yesterday, I took a walk with my husband through the Blue Sky Ecological Preserve - a woodsy track of land four miles from my house, ablaze just six months ago when it seemed all of San Diego County was on fire. It was only the second weekend the Preserve had been re-opened to visitors. After the fire was snuffed, Blue Sky looked alien, scarred, wounded. I looked away when I drove past it, which was nearly every day. Skeletal, blackened tree limbs reached out in supplication, and toast-colored boulders, now an ashy, charcoal gray, eerily dotted a scorched terrain that resembled acreage from another planet. The Preserve looked lifeless. Suffocated.

Its caretakers, though deeply saddened by the loss of so much foliage, told us not to lose hope. Wait until spring, they said. The Preserve is not dead. It has been dealt a hard blow, but it is still breathing. Wait until spring.

They were right of course. The oaks are still black, their branches still charred, but blossoms of oak leaf clusters are springing from what looks dead. The clusters look like bridal bouquets. There was still the evidence of a fierce assault at every turn in our walk, but also vividly colorful reminders that hope always trumps despair. Always.

Mirror, mirror

When I first had a book published a few years back, and I knew my name would actually generate a few hits on Google, I did the vain thing and Googled myself. It was pretty exciting. A heady experience, if you catch my drift. I still do it from time to time - when I'm bored, when I'm procrastinating, and when I'm feeling curious - okay, insecure.

I confess this only because I've learned that lots of authors Google themselves or put Google Alerts on the their names. We want to know when people have talked about us or mentioned us in a blog or read a book of ours and decided to say something to the vast Internet audience about it. Sometimes I'll catch a reader review I hadn't read before or I'll learn a bunch of librarians on the East Coast decided to buy some of my books for their shelves and I'm among the new acqusitions for that month.

But you know what? Everybody Googles themselves, not just authors. Everybody.

What is particularly interesting is that I am not the only Susan Meissner out there. There are more of me. There are some of you out there, too. Some of you know this. In fact, there is a popular website that tallies same names (very cleverly titled SameNameAsMe). In a recent article the New York Times said there is a name for people who skip about the Google universe looking for their twins: Googlegangers. A writer, Angela Shelton, found hope and healing while she searched for people who shared her name. She wrote a book about it.

The NY Times says there is a reason we are drawn to people who share our name. "It is because human beings are unconsciously drawn to people and things that remind us of ourselves." We are attracted to things that make us think of us! Yikes. Is it a quirky, narcissistic bent or deep insecurity that makes us seek out strangers who share the first layer of our identity? Studies show we even, by and large, like our own intitials better than other letters of the alphabet!

I read this and wanted to say, "That's just silly."

But the truth is, I love the curly shape of the letter S. I do. And my admiration for the 19th letter is only slightly less than the attraction I have to M. Remember the M Mary Richards had in her St. Paul apartment on the Mary Tyler Moore Show? As soon as I got married and had a last name that began with M, I began to want one of those. I still want one.

And McDonald's Golden Arches? When my kids were little, impressionable, and devotees of said restaurant, I used to tell them that the yellow M stood for Meissner.

They believed me.

Guess it's not so silly after all, eh?

Bravo to Sharon Hinck

My very talented friend and colleague, Sharon Hinck, has a wonderful new title to add to her growing list of novels. Her Symphony of Secrets , just released by Bethany House, is a lovely read, especially if you are a devotee of both music and motherhood.

Her cast of characters is fun and believable, and headlined by Amy Johnson, a single mom who isn't afraid to whisper to the reader that despite her spunkiness, she has loads of insecurities. Her teenage daughter, Clara, is likeable and transparent, and flips the roles sometimes, as our kids often do, teaching rather than being taught.

There's a crafty mystery thread, a blossoming romance, a tale of regrets, and the pervasive mother-love dynamic that sings on every page.

I don't play the flute, but I very nearly feel like I can after spending my most recent reading hours with Amy and her instrument. I can at least imagine that I can.

And that's a pretty good gauge of a writer's ability to transport you to their fictive world; if you can hear the story and its music with your eyes.

Bravo, Sharon.

Praise for the uncommon word

A recent article in a newspaper about the raw splendor of Death Valley caught my eye. It was written by a travel editor, consistently wonderful journalists who always seem to write sensationally (and I mean they appeal to the senses). I loved the many unconventional word choices the author used to describe the lowest, hottest, driest stretch of land in North America.

A caption for one of the photos was especially yummy and I yanked it out to show to the writers group I mentor. The writer had chosen an adjective to describe the heat of a summer day in Death Valley and I liked the choice so much I instructed the aspiring writers to guess what it was.

Probable choices began to fly around the table. Scorching. Sweltering. Roasting. I encouraged them to continue. Conventional words aren't usually yummy. Oppressive, said one. Rippling, one said another. Yes. Now we're getting somewhere. Why would we want to come to Death Valley now, in early spring, rather than July or August, when vacation time is more common? Because the heat is fierce. It is suffocating. It is blinding.

It is punishing.

That was the word in the article. Punishing. The punishing heat of a summer day in Death Valley is all the motivation you need to come see its stark beauty now instead of three months from now.

You know why that word works, I said? Because it's not a word one usually uses to describe heat. It's outside the common. That makes it different. Memorable. Yummy.

I encouraged them to find adjectives like that for their own writing or leave them out altogether. How do you find a word like that? they said. Well, you start with the obvious and work your way out and you keep going out until you nab it. "Sweltering" is only for describing heat. "Oppressive" on the other hand, is the first step toward a better adjective. Heat can be oppressive, but so can a dictator and poverty and a really bad parent.

Think outside the box. Or better yet, just consider that the box is actually much larger than you thought it was. . . Plunge your hand in deep.