Read, they said

Ok, so tomorrow I'm reading at the AWP which fills me with a mix of excitement, honor at the invitation, and, oh okay, a little terror. One on one I'm gregarious and happy, but put me in a big crowd and my heart starts to stutter. I love giving readings when I'm lost in the story and then I can use all my 9th grade drama club skills. I love making eye contact with people who are listening. LOVE hearing laughter (bliss!) or intakes of breath (double bliss!) and of course I am a slave to applause because who is more insecure than I am on this planet? To my surprise, I'm told I'm a great reader, too, and unless that is just people being lovely to me, (and thank you, if it is), that's really wonderful to know. But before I get up there, I am a quivering mass of stage fright? What if no one shows up? What if 600 people show up?

I should be better by now. I've done zillions of readings, some wonderful, and my all time worse, on a bright sunny Sunday afternoon where NO ONE showed up. No one! The staff was very kind and three of them, wearing bookstore nametags sat in the audience for my reading (I went ahead and read because I was too mortified not to), and they told me that the day before a local celeb had had a reading and no one came, but they were probably just being nice.

But truely, writers are a solitary bunch, yes? I mean, I used to tell the people at the horrible video club corp. where I once worked a thousand years ago, when they asked why I never went to the company picnics or parties or after work drinkifests, that if I had wanted to be a social butterfly, I wouldn't have been a writer. But getting out there and charming the pants off the world is now part of the writer's job description, and so, get out there I do, with radio, TV, print, and yup, readings.

All this leads to my favorite reading story of all time. Michael Dorris, who usually got 500 people at his standing room only readings all the time, told me that once (actually it was after the three person reading I gave on that sunny Sunday) that he gave a reading and only 4 people were there. He loved to read so he figured, well why not? But halfway through the reading, cops arrived and to his shock, arrested three of the audience members. Turns out they were bank robbers on the lam and they figured no one would look for them in a reading!

So tomorrow, armed with my mantra (thanks JL), and my favorite black velvet dress (it's lucky) and my lucky earrings, I'm going to read.

Hey. Wish me luck. And if anyone has any great tips, well here I am....

In Praise of Patry: Liar's Diary Blog

Writers are a solitary bunch. We live in our heads and in our work, and come out to do readings. But when one of our own is in trouble, we all band together as a community and help out. Case in point: Patry Francis.

Patry’s Francis’s debut THE LIAR’S DIARY came out in hardcover from Dutton last spring. The trade paper release is set for January 29th, but a few weeks ago, Patry was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. She’s had several surgeries, and her prognosis is good, but given that she won’t have much energy for promoting, ITW Debut Author members Laura Benedict and Karen Dionne, along with Susan Henderson and Jessica Keener, have banded together to do it for her with THE LIAR'S DIARY BLOG DAY.Brilliance Audio has also put together a special audio clip with excerpts from Patry’s novel, and Circle of Seven Productions is producing a promotional video.This is no ordinary blog day. Rallied by ITW members Laura Benedict and Karen Dionne, along with Susan Henderson and Jessica Keener, over 300 people from the publishing community have agreed to mention her book online on release day.

Liar's Diary has an irresistible premise. Suburban school secretary Jeanne Cross has a loveless marriage with a slickly creepy husband, and a secretive son. But when new teacher Ali Mather comes to the school, the two women begin to bond. But what are the secrets in Ali's diary and who is breaking into her house? and stalking her? And what secrets of her own is Jeanne harboring that could shatter them both?

Patry's book makes me want to use all the best adjectives: seductive, dark, thorny, mesmerizing. What I also loved was the way the novel twists, turns and comes to a razor sharp finale. Patry's psychological portraits of these two women are tense, acute and unforgettable. Nothing is what it seems (oh, how I love that) and the last chapter is truly shattering. So Patry, you wrote a gorgeous book that gets under your skin and stays there and I urge everyone to go on out and snap it up. Read Patry's blog. And when you're up at three in the morning because you can't stop reading the book, feel free to email me because I know the feeling.

Now get well fast, Patry, because we need you to write more books. And more importantly, because we need you.

More AWP news

OK, I am officially getting excited and nervous about reading at the AWP. They have so many writers there, and parties and all sorts of wonderful things, and that means I have to get out of my jeans and into some sort of dress! The good thing about the conference is that it's right here in NYC so I don't have to take a plane or a train and I can still get my work done (I'm starting writing a new novel ...) but the bad thing is that it's right here in NYC which means I still need to attend to the needs of my son, my students, my clients, my work so I won't get to see as much as I would really like to. (So everyone please forgive me if I whisk in and whisk out.)

Besides me, me, me, AWP is also host to my friend Susan Ito, so I'm putting her details here. She's a fantastic writer (and a fabulous person) so please go check out her reading, which looks fascinating.

Mercury Ballroom
Hilton, 3rd Floor
Friday, 10:30am, February 1st
F131. "Any Number of Old Ladies": Writers Revealing Family. (Joy Castro, Bich Minh Nguyen, Lorraine Lopez, Karen Salyer McElmurray, Susan Ito) Drawing on Faulkner's line about a real writer's being willing to rob his mother for good work ("the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies"), our panel investigates the impact that writing about family members has had upon writers's relationships with their own. Where and how do we draw boundaries? When and why have we chosen to write about family--and when have we refrained? How have we negotiated ethical dilemmas? What fallout and benefits have we experienced as a result?
Susan's blog is www.readingwritingliving.wordpress.com
and her column at Literary Mama is: http://www.literarymama.com/columns/sandwich/

The Best of Bellevue Literary Review

I am honored to announce that my story "Breathe", which won a literary prize, and which is also part of my just-finished novel Traveling Angels, is going to be part of The Best of Bellevue Literary Review, available now on Amazon.

I'm also honored, thrilled and exited to be reading from that piece at the AWP conference on Thursday, January 31. (Best of all, I get to read first, so I can relax sooner and enjoy the other readings instead of worrying.) So if anyone is going to be there, please come say hello to me. I'll be the one with the mop of hair wearing all black, except for my earrings which will probably be garish!

You can't have enough story structure

Everyone who knows me or who takes my classes know that I harp about story structure. It's the backbone, the lifeline, the thing you turn to when you feel like hurling your computer out the window or giving up a project. A friend of mine, Jeff Lyons, whose helps pull me out of my screenwriting abyss (and on one occasion, I wept via email for him to just tell me in a sentence what my novel was about because after four years, I hadn't a clue--and guess what: HE DID.) has started this uber-fantastic blog that I think everyone on the planet should check out. It's funny, smart, and really helpful and it has the great name of Storygeeks. Go take a look.

The Best Book you Haven't Read YET!

Being sick is no fun. I was up all last night and rather than feel sorry for myself, I picked up my friend Clea Simon's latest " just-completed-and-no-publishing-home-yet" manuscript, Shades of Grey.

I loved, loved loved the book. One of the things I always tell my UCLA students and clients is that in order for your novel to live, you've got to have great, living, breathing characters. Plot alone won't do it. So, with that in mind, let's talk about Dulcie.

Dulcie's the kind of character you want for your best friend. She's writing her literature thesis at Harvard and working at one of those corporate nightmare temp jobs we've all had (or at least, I've had. I reminded me so much of my stint at Columbia House that I was gleefully cringing. She wears overdyed black t-shirts and Indian skirts (we love her for that), yearns for her recently departed cat, and finds her roommate's body in the apartment. Who dun it and why? And why are subtly supernatural things going on, like possible warnings from her beloved cat, weird computer malfunctions, and in one of the most inspired moments, a very freaked-out fish? Is she going crazy?

What's so wonderful about this novel is that Clea gets ALL the details right--and rich. Cambridge is palpable. Office politics, school, and living on less money that you should have. All pitched perfectly. But the mystery, too, kept my flu at bay and kept me turning pages until four in the morning. Truly. I never had a clue who the culprit was and so I got that delicious intake of breath when I was surprised.

The book is funny and smart and so knowing about literature--really, really impressively wonderful. Wait for it to be snapped up. Then you'll see, too.

Flu and cranky politics

I have my son's stomach flu, and have already lost 3 pounds and all desire to eat chocolate but I am so cranky. The media seems to be running this election. Of course it's more interesting to pit the black man against the white woman, but Edwards is totally lost in the news--even though, to my mind, he has the best Democratic ideas, especially with the economy (Time is calling him today's version of the New Dealer). I admit I don't trust Hillary and I find Obama a thrilling speaker without any substance to back things up, plus I really am annoyed that he says he is going to solve the health crisis by "sitting down at the table with health care people." Uh huh. Even worse is his calling himself a Reagan Democrat.



I wish Gore would run.



I wish I felt better.

Victorious Girls! "Stepping out on What is Right!"

Come on, admit it. Don't you hate the Bratz dolls? (I admit a nostalgic fondness for Barbies, but that's another story.) My son's elementary school swarms with young girls and they are all beautiful without makeup, fancy hair and dress. Who wants their young daughters playing with dolls with half shirts, belly button rings, high heels and full face makeup? What kind of role model is this for a six-year-old, let alone a ten-year-old? Well my friend Cindy Bokman (She runs hellodollface and Conversations with famous writers and the author of Thousand Dollars for a Kiss) and her friend Christalyn (the founder!) decided that girls needed dolls that carried a more positive message. And so Victoriousgirls.com was born.

The website is chock-a-block full of ideas for young girls-there are stories, music, workbooks, trading cards and more. Cindy's writing a book to go along with the dolls and even some uber-cool t-shirts are in the work. A soundtrack is being put together by Tamara Billen.

These five Victorious girls don't need boyfriends or sexy clothes or makeup to bolster their self worth. That comes from within. These are girls who are actually interested in and inspired by school work and sports and doing creative things like sewing clothes, writing stories, dancing, singing and being friends and being a kid!

The first book is finished and it can be ordered as a packet with the workbook and music. There are postcards and book marks and we are writing the feature film along with a complete soundtrack. The message is clear about making good choices, following your heart, doing your best and being happy with ones self. Both creators are out to ignite young girl's self confidence and any smart production company (after the writers' strike ends, of course) would be really smart to snap up these books and this concept for a series of films. Girl power is real power, so go and check out the website, Victoriousgirls.com.

SUPPORT THIS CAUSE

Hey all, my birthdaybash weekend is still going on, but I just got this from Backspace, and I feel it's really important.

A Backspace member, Patry Francis, whose debut novel THE LIAR'S DIARY is due to come out in trade paper on January 29, was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. She's had several surgeries and her prognosis is good, but since she's home recuperating, she won't be able to do anything with regard to promotion.

A few of her author friends are arranging a THE LIAR'S DIARY Blog Day for her on January 29, and the idea has REALLY taken off. In just one week, 120 authors have already agreed to blog about Patry's book on the 29th, including a couple with amazingly huge readerships, like Neil Gaiman and Jennifer Weiner, as well as a few who blog in conjunction with online magazines like Writers Digest and SMITH Magazine.

Most of the bloggers, though, are ordinary folks whose blogs haven't yet attained that reach, but still want to help. Susan Henderson is keeping the list on her website, LitPark. It's growing by the minute, and no wonder; Patry is a lovely person, who is dealing with her situation unsentimentally, and with courage and grace. http://simplywait.blogspot.com/

We're asking folks who'd like to join this project to email me, so I can add them to the bloggers' list. Brilliance Audio is making a special clip available, and Circle of Seven Productions is putting together a short video, and I'll email these materials along with a press release from Patry's publisher and appropriate links to bloggers a few days before the event.

It's our hope that as the number of bloggers continues to grow, this event might expand beyond the Internet to radio and print. Individually, there's not a lot any one of us can do, but collectively, the impact will be significant!

If you could help spread the word by forwarding this email to those you think might want to get involved, or by blogging about her book on the 29th, that'd be great!

Thanks very much on Patry's behalf for your support and help -

All best,
Karen

Karen Dionne, Administrator, Backspace LLC www.bksp.org www.backspacewritersconference.comFREEZING POINT (coming October 2008 from Berkley) www.karendionne.net

Happy birthday to me!

Psst, tomorrow is my birthday and it's the start of a blitz of activity! Opera at the Met! Music at Joe's Pub! The Pirates of Penzance! My sister coming to visit and play! What do I want? Well, I already have a lot of what's important (love, friends, family, work I adore, health and no dental work that I know of that needs to be done) but who says you can't have more? I would like a democratic president, affordable health care, a movie deal (after the strike is over, of course), a huge book sale, more love, peace, understanding, chocolate, happiness, joy, enough money to paint the inside of our house and get new windows (and new blinds!), and I would like to discover the theory of everything.

Cheneycare

By the way, I urge everyone to go visit http://www.cheneycare.org and sign the petition for every American to get decent (i.e. the same health care Cheney gets) health care.

Please.

Why I hate health insurance companies, part twenty

I know, I know. My health insurance saga is not a pretty one.

My husband and I are both writers so we pay for our own health insurance. Because we live in NYC's unofficial 6th borough, Hoboken, we have to abide by NJ health insurance rules rather than NYC ones (even though all our doctors and our hospitals of choice are in NYC--best health care in the world.) From what I understand, and I could be absolutely wrong, so correct me if I am, NJ is so expensive because of medical underwriting. Get sick in a NY hospital and need a kidney transplant and insurance can deny it. Do it in a NJ hospital and they have to proceed. That's why it's so much more expensive.

This means our insurance in extraordinarily expensive because we have to pay for it ourselves. It also means a high deductible and fighting the insurance company on just about every issue. I've gotten used to using the phrase, "well, my attorney says..." and I now am armed with this fantastic woman whose job is to fight these companies for the coverage they categorically deny.

This means that The Writers Union won't insure us because it's too expensive for them to insure anyone in NJ, plus they've had far too many insurance companies cancel coverage for their members in midyear, so now they are only insuring NY.


This means the Author's Guild won't insure us because it's too expensive--well they will if we want to pay $2550 a month for insurance. Isn't the Author's Guild job to HELP writers who are not exactly rich?

This means that TEIGIT (the entertainment industry insurance) will ensure us for a mere $1600 a month.

Our insurance now is only 80 percent hospitalization. Think that sounds good? Last year I had a high fever and went into the hospital for one day. The bill was ten thousand dollars, and it would have been more but most of the tests they did were done in the Er which was fully covered. Turned out the fever was nothing and I had to get a pay plan from the hospital.

But wait, there might be hope on the horizon, and I don't just mean a democratic president--though I am not overly impressed with any of them, to be really truthful. Working Today, the Freelancers Union is a fabulous organization. They offer health insurance where the rates for us, while not cheap, are at least doable. But we need to prove billable NYC client hours. I'm not sure if selling a novel counts and how can you prove how much time you spent reading books to review them for NY sources? It's confusing, but at least it is a glimmer of hope.

Mediabistro.com, another fabulous place also offers insurance, but I'm waiting to hear from their agent. Of course, as soon as I said New Jersey, there was that pause....

I hate doing this every year when the rates rise and rise and rise. I hate having to research plans because I don't really understand them. I hate having to learn to understand them. I hate having to pay exhorbitant sums for insurance and then have to still fight the company to get anything paid for.

If anyone knows cheap decent, non HMO (oh, the horror!) insurance, please contact me and I will knit you a silk scarf or mittens or bake you cookies or edit your novel. You can call me on the phone and I'll listen to your personal problems for three whole weeks!

Portrait of a great guy and a great cause

The photo of the handsome man over there is one of my oldest and best friends, Peter Salzano. I met Peter millions of years ago when we were both toiling away at Macy's. He was my boss! One day he made the mistake of going on vacation and because I was bored I made up twenty five phone messages for him (Peter, please call the doctor, that nasty rash can be treated!; Peter, Jo says to meet him at Spitty's and bring a lawyer). I wasn't sure how he'd react, but we soon became fast friends, embarrassing each other every chance we could get.

I adore him. Together we've braved dating, divorce, birth, death of loved ones, marriage and illness. Every time I moan that I should stop writing and get a real job he yells at me. He's bought all of my books, and not at The Strand either! He spoke at my wedding and I toasted him at his (to the extraordinary Doug). In May 2003, Doug called me to tell me that Peter had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, a stage four Glioblastomia.


Yes, we were all terrified. But Peter smashed the odds and here he is five years later. He used yoga, visualization and a whole lot of silliness and love. Though he has to get MRIs more times than he would care to, he's tumor free now--and only 2% of Stage FourBrain tumor patients make this milestone. And even better, he and Doug started The Salzano-Smith Foundation for Brain Tumor Research in 2004. He's raised over 50,000 and the next one is coming up May 1, 2008. For details, or just to say hi to a magnificent human being, email Peter at Psal4444@aol.com.

And if you do write him, please nag him to write his book! And give him huge hug for me because I adore him and if I can help it, I want him to live to be 90, because I have lots more ways to embarrass him in elevators.

Happy New 2008

Jeeze Louise. 2008. I'm incredibly grateful for what I have--an adoring and adorable husband, a fantastic and amazing son, a home I love in a city I love, great friends and work I love. And health! Great health! But I am making a few resolutions.

1. Give negativity the boot. I know it sounds new agey, but seeing the glass as overflowing is a lot more fun than seeing it cracked and empty. Oh, and this goes for shame, too.
2. Be grateful. I already bought thank-you notes and I know how to use them.
3. Be loving and adventurous and bold. Shy no longer exists if I can help it.
4. Stop knitting every sweater in the round and learn how to put the pieces together so it looks professional. (If anyone can offer advise, PLEASE DO.)
5. Write as if my life depended on it. It does.


For everyone who has read or commented here, my thanks are huge and my gratitude the size of China.

Welcome to Redroom

I'm happy to announce a brand new website for writers and readers, redroom.com which just went live! And I'm thrilled to say that I was one of the founding authors, especially since the site calls itself "the online home of some of the world's greatest writers." (blush)

On redroom.com, you can view my author bio, published works, blog, book reviews, videos, and podcasts, as well as find out more about good causes I support. In fact, once the site has paid advertising, just viewing my page will send a portion of the proceeds to these causes.

Want to be a member of such a cool site? Then go to redroom.com, and become a member (it's free). Click "Join Now" on the homepage or "Join" in the upper right corner of the page. Then select your unique Red Room username. They encourage you to use your real first and last name; I've done so. Or, if you don't have time to join now, sign up for the Red Room email list at www.redroom.com/newsletter.

Once you've joined, please feel free to comment on my blog and media content (I'm a fantatic for comments), helping build a community around my work or the work of any of the other writers on the site. If you have time, you can even write reader reviews of books, adding to the literary conversation. Questions? Contact the member services manager at http://www.blogger.com/support@redroom.com.


Are you a published writer? They're happy to help you as they helped me build my author page. You can be in on the ground floor of building this community. Feel free to forward this invitation to your friends, family, and colleagues, too. And if you are an author, once you've joined redroom.com (again, it's free), you can apply to create an author page like mine. So come on in, the community's fine!

Happy New Year, well almost

Back from Boston, which is a gorgeous city (I grew up there) even though it isn't as spiffy as my beloved NYC. Lots of fun and now I'm back and here is the nine million dollar question. Does anyone out there know of any decent and reasonably priced health insurance? (Not an HMO please.) Ours just went up a whopping 25% and we are sticker shocked. I belong to a million organizations, but either they don't offer insurance for NJ (we live in Hoboken but our docs are all in NYC) or the policies are just plain scary (a $7000 cap, anyone, which is about the cost of half a day in a hospital or one test)?

Sigh, now I have to go answer 243 emails.

see you later health-insured alligators

In Which the author gets a ROAR!

Harriet Brown is wonderful. She was the editor of two truly great anthologies, Mr. Wrong (about all those loves you wish you hadn't had) and the upcoming Feed Me: Real-Life Tales of Our Pleasure, Shame, Anxiety, and Ambivalence About Food. I'm really excited about the Feed Me book, and not just because I get to work with Harriet again and because I'm in the company of some truly stellar talents, but because I got to write about an ex who wouldn't let me eat. Writing the piece made me feel as if I were performing a kind of literary exorcism of a fearful time for me (I was 93 pounds and so skinny my friends were about to do an intervention). Why couldn't I leave this guy? Because then I would have had to grieve for another man who had died--which was the reason I got involved with this guy in the first place.) In the essay I also get to put in a little Valentine to my husband--I fell in love with him on our second date because at dinner he insisted that I have no one dessert, but two!

But what really made me so happy was that in her blog, Harriet called me a fearless writer! Who doesn't want to be fearless? I always the writers I work with at UCLA to get that blood on the page, to risk everything--and this comment just made me so joyful.

Here's to a fearless 2008!

Happy Holidaze

We're off to Boston to see my amazing mother (she's 90, lives in her own house, drives and can hear every syllable from ten rooms away!We packing, getting a housesitter and we have an industrial strength alarm system! ) I'll be blogging again when I get back around the 26th--the day after Xmas, so here's what I'm hoping to be blessed with from Santa and the Channukah Bunny,
1. Decent health insurance that will pay all claims, 100 percent
2. literary success--for me and my friends and students and clients!
3. The Writers Strike to be over, so I can add, movie success!
4. Of course, the most important--love, health, happiness, friendship, warmth.

See you later, alligators.

Synopsis gives me headaches

First, the Nurse Molly Pin I have on (thank you, Houston Street Flea Market and forgive the blurry cell phone shot. My hand looks the size of Jupiter!) is indicative of my writing state of mind. I need Valium!

I know, I know. I make my students write synopsis because I feel that when you have 300 pages of mess and you don't know where you are, writing out a synopsis of your novel can help you identify story holes and pacing problems. Having one when you are starting out (and knowing you will probably throw out everything but the main idea which urges you to write) is helpful, too. But I agonize over my synopsis. I start surfing the net to see if it's too late for me to go to dental school (yup. It is.) I stare at it and think why did I ever imagine that I could write a grocery list, let alone a novel? The characters sound moronic, the plot forced, and the theme like something that should be in a fortune cookie. I pull out my Truby Story Structure notes and stare at them and then go alphabetize my books. I make notes and print them out and them hurl them on the floor. (My office is not exactly neat. When I had a job job, my review always said, "Excellent work, but you need to keep a tidier office."

I have one main reader who reads my stuff and I showed it to her and got the OK. (Bless her, bless her.) But here's a question: why can't I give myself the okay? Why can't I be sure of my own work? I can look at my students' writing and tell what needs to be done. I can look at my private client's manuscripts and know what they should do. But with myself? Clueless. Absolutely clueless. Sometimes I believe that every other writer knows exactly what he or she is doing at every moment. This other writer sits down gleefully, writes twenty pages a day in a heartbeat (and they are GOOD pages) and never agonizes over a single syllable.

Of course I also believe that huge quantities of chocolate are good for you.

Let's hear it for the boy!

Everyone who knows me knows how crazy I am about my son, Max. Chess champ, piano wiz, Johns Hopkins scholar (ask me about double replacement equations--he taught me!), novelist (he wrote MOVIES OF DOOM last year, which came complete with his own author page, reading group guide, author photo and cover design), voracious reader, and theater star. He auditioned and got into the company of the Hoboken Children's Theater (run by Chase Leyner who is amazing, and who is also the sister of hilarious author Mark Leyner) and here he is in Annie (tuck your shirt in, Max!)

He's just a superlative boy, and no, no, Mom, he is not cutting his hair. (Jeff and I aren't cutting ours either!)

A mouse in OUR house and a pox on health insurance

Eek! A mouse! Vermin. He races from behind my bookshelf. He's in the kitchen and he tore through a whole plastic wrap to get at some spicy potato chips. There are bite marks on the chocolate.

We tried humane traps. He laughed at our pitiful attempts and ate the chocolate we used as bait, gobbled the peanut butter and then used the trap as his personal lavatory before whisking away unharmed. I won't use glue traps (I used one once in my old NYC apartment and woke to agonizing squeaks and a tiny writing body.) The snap traps seem too brutal. So we hired an exterminator who told us about the brownstone down the street that had so many mice he had to open the walls where he found hundreds (HUNDREDS) of them nesting in the walls. So now we have green pellets that they seem to love to chew on so much they want their friends to join in the fun.

I found a dead mouse in my office. Jeff found a dead mouse tucked under the stove.

Added to this are health insurance woes. When you are freelance you have to buy your own policies which are about the same you might pay to buy a small country all your own. And they don't pay for anything. Ten years ago, when I was critically ill, I spent a whole year after I got well fighting the insurance companies because they refused to pay. Conversations would go like this:

Insurance: We need you to pay that 800,000 bill (this is for real) right away because you didn't sign a consent form for the operation. Your husband did.

Me: I was in a coma! I couldn't sign anything!

Insurance: It doesn't matter. Can you write us a check today?

It took us two years of fighting to get things settled (and I can never thank my doctors enough, who often told us, "You don't have to pay me." My beloved obgyn wouldn't except payment from me for years.

We are now battling the insurance again because a procedure they assured us was covered and in network, they are now claiming was not in network, and they say they have no records of our ever calling. Clearly, something has to be done about health insurance. So many of our friends don't even have it because they can't afford it. And even when you do have it, they don't pay. I know we are going to have to find a new policy but what? And how will we ever afford it? If anyone knows of any great insurance in NJ (we use all NYC doctors) that is at least semi-affordable (the price of a small city, rather than a small country), please let me know.

Sigh. I hear the mouse.

POSTSCRIPT: Our incredible GP called the place on our behalf (he's a mensch, a writer, and a stellar human being) and got them to drop the bill. All of it!

Let us now praise pandora.com

When I'm writing, I have to have music. A steady stream of it. It relaxes me (and it drives my writer husband crazy because he writes about music for a living and the thought of listening to the same thing over and over again is sacrilege to him--it may even be punishable in six states.) So I've discovered pandora.com. It's this very cool website and it plays a steady stream of music for you--most of it new music. You rate the songs when you remember (I sometimes forget) so it somehow knows to play music that is like (or unlike) what you've just rated.

Plus, the people at Pandora are really, really wonderful.


And other big news, I'm going to be reading at the AWP (The Associated Writing Programs) in NYC the last week of January. I'm reading from my prize-winning story, BREATHE, which was published in the Bellevue Literary Review, and which became part of my just finished novel TRAVELING ANGELS. If you come, please grab me and say hello.

NBCC Reviews the Review Process..sort of

I belong to the National Book Critics Circle, a great organization if there ever was one. Recently they took a survey of all of us members about the whole process of book reviewing. The finds are the kind that made me dying to know who in the NBCC thought what! Shoot, it's anonymous!

Anyway, here are just the facts, ma'am, and see if you agree with them. For me, this all applies to the reviewing I do for newspapers and magazines, not for my blog, where I give full disclosure if I know someone in any way before I rave about his or her book.


68.5 percent of book reviewers think anyone mentioned in a book's acknowledgements should be barred from reviewing it. (I agree)

64.9 percent think anyone who has written an unpaid blurb for a book should also be banned from writing a fuller review. (I agree)

76.5 percent think it's never ethical to review a book without reading the whole thing. (Oh, gosh, I agree. You have to read the whole book! What if a dull book catches fire on page 450?)

And 52 percent think it's not okay for a book-review editor, in assigning books for review, to favor books by writers who also review regularly for that editor's book section. (Oh gosh, it's the word favor that gets me....)

40.1 percent think a reviewer shouldn't read other reviews of a book before writing his or her own, but 17.9 per cent think that's perfectly okay, and 33.5 per cent feel it's complicated enough to require commentary rather than a firm answer. (I don't think it's okay, but sometimes it's hard not to see the other reviews!)

60.5 percent think it's okay for a newspaper book section or magazine to ignore self-published books that authors submit to them, e.g., iUniverse type books. (Well, it depends. Nowadays there are some writers who started out that way and ended up with deals with the bigger publishing houses. It's worth a three minute read of a first page, no?)

See the whole survey here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=oe_2bklUHwCmVaYIdiR0zw82a9Gdykw2Tl900qjJw9Z8I_3d

And the winner is.....This Young House

Novel writing (and screenwriting, but after the writer's strike!) is as hard as it is glorious, and sometimes while I am taking a work break from my new novel in progress, I like to wander the net and look at blogs. Of course I look at writing and bookish blogs, but I also love film ones, knitting ones, vegan cooking ones, and anything out of the ordinary. The keyword is fun.

Jeff and I spent almost a year renovating our 1865 rowhouse, so I fully understand what the whole process is like and how things can look much worse before they start to look better, and how important a sense of humor is--which explains why I adore Sherry and John Petersik's uber-cool blog, This Young House. The truly cool news is that she and John just won (beating out 46 other blogs in the running) the Remodel, Blog & Win contest by RemodelingMySpace.com a few months ago--a $5000 win which will presto chango into any number of things like tiles, sinks or built-in bookcases.

The blog is quirky and hilarious. They watch paint dry, they yearn for neighbors, they post gorgeous pictures (I wrote Sherry because she seemed to have discovered the perfect blue and I wanted to know the exact name so I could grab it up for our bedroom.) They have entries like "Our kitchen cabinets are like Brangalina" and "Our kitchen cabinets are like slugs". The photos are fab, the writing is stellar, and the house in progress is to die for.

So go check out the blog and send congrats to Sherry and John--and then please, tell me if I should paint my office white or a color..(Is a color to distracting? Is white too clinical?)

Praise-worthy Jewelry

Kar 5 Home is home to the coolest jewelry I have ever seen. Note these way cool vertebrae earrings that shimmer and sway. I've been wearing them every day since I bought them at the Hoboken Gift Fair. She's also got amazing bracelets and necklaces, like the one on the left that is made out of a washer.

Hint, hint, these would make great giftts!

What makes a good reading?

I don't know about you, but doing readings makes me anxious. I worry, who will show up? What if they don't like what I'm reading, or what if they hate what I have on? Going to readings can be dicey, too. I've gone to readings where authors have droned on and I've had to entertain myself by doing math equations in my head until it's over. Some authors are incredible writers but they speak in tones so soft or emotionless that you want to just open up their book and read.

So, let us now praise Clea Simon's reading. It was freezing cold last night--17 degrees with the wind chill, dark and windy but of course I went to see her. She's a great reader, her books are wonderful, and she's my friend. A handful of people showed up, but we ended up having an amazing time. What was so interesting about last night was how the event really was an event, and here's why.

1. First, the bookstore, Partner's & Crime on Greenwich, is wonderful and cozy. There's a fireplace and there are tons of shelf-talkers (you know, those labels that call out why you need to buy a certain book). The owner is wonderful and you just have a sense that this is a bookstore where they really know and love books.

2. Second, Clea. Clea got into a conversation with the audience. We talked about her book, we talked about the animal groups that want to do away with domesticated animals, we talked about reptiles and different kinds of cats and writing, and every single person was engaged and laughing and talking and not wanting to stop. It was electric!

Next reading, I'm cutting down on the actual reading and talking more to my audience. By listening to her audience and really wanting to know what they had to say and feel and think, Clea really made the night, well just plain special.

Guest Blogger Clea Simon

I'm thrilled to have author Clea Simon guest blogging here. Clea is the author of Mad House: Growing Up in the Shadow of Mentally Ill Siblings (Penguin), Fatherless Women: How We Change After We Lose Our Dads (Wiley), The Feline Mystique: On the Mysterious Connection Between Women and Cats (St. Martin's), and the Theda Krakow mysteries, Mew is for Murder, Cattery Row, and the upcoming Cries and Whiskers (Poisoned Pen Press).

She's also a writing instructor at my beloved UCLA online and a journalist for my other beloved, The Boston Globe. Clea is also one of my favorite people on the planet and one of the most giving to other writers. And so with no further introduction, I give over my blog to Clea:

How’d she get that?

Doesn’t matter what “that” was: placement in a bookstore window, a review in the New York Times. A bookseller recommendation on a little shelf-talker card. When I was first starting out as a writer, I was envious of everyone. I wanted it all!

Amazing what a few years will do. Six books in, and my appetite hasn’t decreased. I still fall in love with every one of my creations, and I can’t understand it when reviewers/bookstore staff/the nice couple across the hall don’t respond as I do. But I’ve gotten a bit mellower in my response to other writers.

How could I not? This group of potential rivals – often better established, more practiced in the craft, more gifted in the art – has proven to be the most generous community I have yet to meet. Other writers have read my drafts and made kind, but useful comments. They have hosted me at their neighborhood bookstores (and on their blogs!) and shown up to cheer me on. They have given me the use of their guest rooms while traveling, and their shoulders, when everything gets to be too much and I need a good cry.

These wonderful colleagues have also crept into my books. I have long been a believer in the wonderful nurturing qualities of “families of choice,” the warm group of people we choose to be around us. But now that I’m writing fiction – mysteries – I find that same type of family coming to life in my pages. And as much as I work on burying clues, killing people in ingenious ways, and making sure all the cats in the book come out okay (my number one rule with my mysteries!), often it’s the characters readers email me about. It’s the characters I come back for, too, and now, with my third mystery, “Cries and Whiskers,” coming out, I look forward to revisiting my heroine, Theda, and her own family of friends. There’s Violet, the punk rocker/shelter worker, and Tess, her high-strung buddy, and Patti, a prim realtor, and the antithesis of Theda’s free-wheeling rock fan.

What do they have in common? Very little. But I like to think that, as in my life, they’ve found some bond in being women, being friends, making it in what can be a tough world. They’re my homage to my real friends, the writers who have helped me become a better writer.

Do I still get jealous? Sure. But only of the writers I haven’t yet met. --Clea Simon

Read This Book!

For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older and Acceptance is a great anthology about the way women view their bodies and all the things that happen as we age (sigh and alas.) Edited by Victoria Zackheim (she also edited the superlativeThe Other Women), it boasts great essays from Abby Frucht, Liza Nelson, Rochelle Shapiro, Clea Simon, Susan Ito, Masha Hamilton, Victoria Zackheim, Leora Skolkin-Smith, Christine Kehl O'Hagan, Ellie McGrath, Susanne Dunlap, Kate Maloy, Deborah Grabien, Louise Ermelino, Sara Nelson, Aimee Liu, Elizabeth Rosner, many more--and me, me, me!

There's a reading, too! It's on December 9th at Bluestocking Bookstore on the Lower East Side of NYC at 172 Allen Street at 7. If you come, please say hello to me and I promise to look right at you as I do my part of the reading and I will also draw a really festive looking coffee cup, spoon and fork in your copy of your book.

Please come and cybertalk to me on Backspace

Let us now praise famous websites--and parentheses because this entry has about a million of them.

Backspace is this great, great place for writers. In fact, it was named one of the 101 best websites for writers from Writer's Digest. Their mission is "writers helping writers." What could be better or more karmic than that? Karen Dionne who helps run it (and who has an article on the International Thriller Writers website, "I am Not a Scientist"about what it is like to write about science without being a scientist,) is completely wonderful. She's the author of FREEZING POINT, a science thriller ala Michael Crichton about an environmental disaster in Antarctica, set in the present day (coming Oct. 2008 from Berkley.)

Backspace features blogs, book reviews, tips, tricks, contests, agents news--everything except how you can tell the difference between a molecule and a compound. They have a great newsletter (which featured my friend Clea Simon's fabulous new book Cries and Whiskers--and Clea will be guest blogging here, probably next week), lots of member news (and the roster is star-studded!)

But my big news is that from December 10-12, I'll be there as an online guest speaker. I'm going to be talking about what it's like for a writer to also be a book critic, and how each one impacts the other--and I welcome zillions of questions, comments and complaints. So please, log on, come join Backspace, and come talk to me, and ask me anything except what is the difference between a double replacement reaction and a combustion reaction or where the semi-metals are on the periodic table. (My 11 year old is taking Johns Hopkins gifted program in physical science--he's brilliant at this but my brain fumbles.)


In other news, the Writers Strike continues, and I just got my alumnae copy of Brandeis University magazine--which comes out about twice a year, and yep, they had the old pre-Writers' Strike news that I gave them six months ago--that I was writing a film. Nope, nope, nope. All on hold. Not until the strike is over, which I support absolutely and positively.

And you should, too.

Writers' Strike

I'm a huge supporter of the writers' strike. I had a few deals brewing before the strike and immediately put everything on hold. This morning, a friend emailed me to congratulate me on my film deal--something she saw on my beloved UCLA webpage. By mistake, UCLA posted news that I had sent them months ago--well before the strike--but because of the strike, I called them panicked and told them they had to take it down because it was no longer true at this time, and I am not doing any screenwriting work of any kind, nor will I, and could they also post a disclaimer saying that it was taken down because of this?

And yes, they will and they are going to, in a few seconds!


I feel so less anxious.

Another Best Book You Haven't Read--YET!

I don’t really know beans about YA fiction, though as my son Max approaches the magic of twelve, I bet I will soon be learning. One of my friends, the novelist Rochelle Jewell Shapiro (Miriam the Medium) recently gave me a just finished draft of a fantasy adventure she’s written called Altivar, the Quest. I wasn’t sure how to read it or what to say—but within sentences, I was enthralled. How could you not fall in love with a story about a moody Prince who befriends a fool, a marauder, and (my favorite) a highly intelligent rabbit named Rowena? It’s really a book about the ties that bind families and the bonds of shared experience that create new ones.

The Best Book You Haven't Read-YET

Ok. Full disclosure. Leora Skolkin-Smith is my friend but that doesn't mean I can't have a deeply critical mind toward her work. I do. We routinely swap pages and push each other to go further in our work, to dig deeper, to find the facets.We don't suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. I met her during a reading of my own a few years ago, a tiny “meet and greet the writer” in a little bookshop where I sat for hours waiting to meet and greet anyone other than the girl working the cash register.

No one showed up. No one.

My husband Jeff was there to hold my hand and offer solace, and then this whippet of a woman with long hair showed up with a box of cookies and a megawatt smile. Leora.

We’ve been friends ever since, but more than that, we’re also colleagues. Right up until the Writer’s Strike, I was about to do the screenplay for her novel Edges, which has been optioned for film. I carried Edges around with me on a beach vacation and reread it, marking it up for a script, trying to figure out how it was put together and what was the best way it might work. The more I read, the more excited I became because the book has so many different levels, and such brilliance. The pages still smell of chlorine and still have sand in the creases because I couldn't let the book alone. I had to keep reading and rereading to be lost in that world. In the end, I bought two copies just so I could mark one up and scribble obsessively in the margins.

The Fragile Mistress strikes me the same way--and right now it's out making the rounds of publishers, agented by Tim Seldes and Jesseca Salky at Russell & Volkening, Inc. It’s a breathtaker, a deeply intelligent and darkly hypnotic novel. Adrienne’s a young woman admitted into a mental hospital in New York City circa 1970s. Patty Hearst era. As Adrienne struggles to cope with this new world, she drifts back to her old ones: her troubled relationship with her boyfriend, her fractious bonds with her mother and father, until she finds solace in a world of her own making—alchemy notebooks. Forget Girl Interrupted—this is something very, very special, very literate, gorgeously written, and provocative.

Let us now praise Kpixie.com

Every writer should learn to knit. It's very Zen and it helps to figure out story problems ALMOST as well as Truby story structure, but not quite, because really, that is the gold standard, and the diamond.

Behold my shimmering black silk with tiny little sequins scarf made out of Tilli Tomas yarn. (Great name for a character, right? Didn't I tell you knitting helps novelists?) This is one of the extraordinary yummy yarns carried on Kpixie.com, a site specializing in exotic yarns. I admit it. I am in love with this site. The yarns are so delicious you want to eat them or ask them to marry you. And the staff is amazing! When I emailed in a panic about a problem I had, not only did I get a response in five minutes, but they instantly solved my problem, and they were warm, friendly and soothing. I'm devoted to the site, and a friend has already bought me yarn for Xmas! (Hint, hint, hint, yarn makes a GREAT gift for a writer. Really! What better way to wait out the Writers' Strike or think about your novel?)

The Best Book You Haven't Read---Yet

Part of the fun of being a critic (I have a column at The Boston Globe and at Dame Magazine, and I review for People) is that you get to dip your literary nose into a whole wide variety of books that you might never have experienced on your own. And part of the fun of being a novelist-slash-screenwriter (but not until after the strike)-slash-writing instructor-slash-editor, is that a lot of time I get to see books before they go out to agents or before they find their rightful homes with publishers. I know the writing and publishing process is so hard—and I always want to champion the books I have loved, so I’ve decided to now occasionally do that here. And while I would never and could never ethically review a book by someone I know or am friends with for the above places (and that includes that person's agent and editor) here in this blog is a little different. And yes, there will be full disclosure in my blog. If I am friends with the person or the editor or the agent, I will reveal it.

The Women’s Verses by Linda Lafferty, which is just now making the rounds of publishing and is agented by Kimberly Witherspoon and David Forrer at InkWell Management, came to me first for a blurb. I didn't know Linda. I wasn’t sure I was going to read it because I don’t really read historical dramas. I don’t expect to like or even love them.

But I did.

I got twenty pages into this novel before I was intoxicated. It’s part Scherezade story and part dazzling historical drama, and truly like nothing I’ve read before. This book just tugged me into this strange, vivid and intoxicating world of the Ottoman Empire and a real life heroine, Esma Sultan, who could be the first feminist of the Islamic world. This was a woman who had her own harem –and a drowning guard to dispatch the lovers she grew tired of. A story of role reversals in the early 19th century, set against one of the most repressive eras of all, including the struggle between the Christian and the Islamic world, The Women’s Verses was so richly intelligent, and so original, that it really did what I want all the books I read to do—it kept me entranced in its world, and it made me keep thinking about Esma long after I shut the page. These characters are so intelligent, so multilayered and so alive, that reading was a kind of hypnotic enchantment. (By way of a fun fact, Linda Lafferty was tutor to the Royal Family of Spain!)

United Hollywood!

United Hollywood is a fabulous site. Go there and watch the WHY WE FIGHT video which really explains the Writers Strike. (And support the strike, too.)

READ THIS BOOK!

Let us now praise famous men. John Truby, story structure guru. The Anatomy of Story. Way back when I began to think I might want to write screenplays I picked up a book by the current guru Syd Field. It pushed a three act structure with plot points (reversals) which had to come at certain points in the story. It was sort of a nightmare to try to figure out a script this way, and in the end, I flung the book across the hall. Next up was Robert McKee. He was better on story structure, but I took his class and he was so caustic and bitter that it was hard to realize that I wasn't really learning very much until I left the class, and by then it was too late to ask for a refund. A few years ago I started teaching novel writing at UCLA (a dream job if there ever was one.) I adore the classes I teach, adore the writers in my class, and one day one of the writers mentioned Truby Story Structure. I never heard of it, but I went to the website, and then called the studio to ask if this was something that novelists could benefit from. "Absolutely," a voice told me, and so I took the course, and my life (sorry for the cliche) changed.

I mean it.

Truby, first of all, is a bonafide genius. He also has a wonderful dry wit and the most soothing voice I have ever heard, which is just what any writer contemplating hurling her computer out the third story window and herself after it, needs to hear in order to calm right down. He ignores three act structure and instead focuses on the moral needs of the characters, and seven basic story elements (there are really 22, but the seven matter most for a novelist, I think) and slowly, patiently, and brilliantly, he shows you how to shape your story around your characters, how to find the deeper meanings that transform a good book into a great one. I had 400 pges of mess. I reoutlined it with my Truby notes and I was not just able to finish, I saw my theme shimmering up at me, I felt my characters were breathing on the pages, too. He saved my writing life.

I know one novelist who tells everyone that she just "follows her pen" and never structures or outlines or thinks beyond her first line. All power to her if that is her way, but for me, and most of the novelists I know, that can be the road to ruin and we wonder if she is insane (Not really, I just threw that in to be witty. She writes fine novels.) You need some moral line, you need some direction so you aren't drowning in a sea of pages. The beauty of this kind of structure is that it offers you a lifeline to hold onto and it isn't one size fits all or restrictive, which is what a novelist wants. You still have room for surprises. You still have to struggle through those dark roads where all you have is the faintest light in the distance. And I swear, it helps me the most after I've done my first and second draft, when I finally am beginning to discover what it is I want to write about.

The book is fabulous. And I've invited him to my UCLA class to speak to my students, who are "speaking" a little Truby themselves these days.

Go get the book. It's the perfect thing to read during the Writers Strike.

Writers Strike

I'm not (yet, yet, yet) a member of WGA but I absolutely and totally support the Writers Strike--and everyone else should too-- even though when I called the WGA to ask some questions about the strike, the woman who answered the phone yelled at me to stop asking questions and read the rules. Still despite this clearly under-pressure woman who was obviously having a bad day, the WGA is a great organization and writers don't get the respect or the earning that they deserve. It's hard because right before the strike I had a few irons in the fire and I needed to immediately cool them until the strike is over.

Which means I am immersed in reading Truby story structure and thinking about my new novel and writing parts of it, which oh God, is the best kind of joy. For the first time, the ending of my latest novel came to me right after the first chapter. I had no idea how to get to it, and of course, it changed during the writing, but I wrote it in a fever and it changed the whole way I wrote the novel. This was so exciting that I forced--um, I mean, required--my UCLA students to show me their last chapters of their novel first (their whole novels or 7/8 had to be written to get into the class.) Some grumbling. Probably some people questioning my abilities. But then I got a lot of emails from people who also felt their novelistic world had opened up.

I'm a little unnerved because I can't think of a last chapter for this new novel or even a name for the novel. Traveling Angels, the name of the novel I just finished, came from this old story about two traveling angels, one of whom keeps saying, "Don't think you know the whole story, because you don't. Things are not what they seem." It also comes from Truby story structure where he talks about traveling angel stories--the stranger who comes into the midst and changes things in unexpected way, but is this stranger good or not? I was tempted to start a name Leavitt's novel contest, but I can't. It has to come from me, me, me. Sigh and alas.

I was going to post Halloween photos of us (Jeff was Allen Ginsberg wearing a Howl t-shirt, carrying ON THE ROAD, a black beret over his long curls and a fake mustache I inked on, Max was a Yankee fan, and I was a sock farm in a pink wig (I spent hours sewing on socks to my jeans and hoody.) But everytime I see myself in the pink wig, I have serious doubts about showing this face to the world again.

Tomorrow is the chocolate show in NYC! Speaking of which BLACK BOOK (chocolate plays an important part) is a fabulous video. Some inconsistencies and I wasn't wild about the framing device, but it's a movie that really explores the moral choices of its characters. The heroine is a Jewish woman during WWII who is in the resistence but falls in love with the leader of the SS--a man she is supposed to seduce to get his secrets and free a lot of people. He's not brutal--the film makes him very human, and everyone is really not whom you think they are.

See you later, alligators.

Down the Shore with Jen--and Caroline

I am thrilled to report that I am going to be interviewed on this very cool blog about the Jersey Shore called Downtheshorewithjen.blogspot.com. (Jen Miller also has another very cool blog--
bookaweekwithjen.blogspot.com.)

She's absolutely wonderful and so are her blogs, so I hope everyone will obsessively go there again and again and again.

Max's new sweater

My cellphone camera is possessed so none of these colors came out right. Every year, my son comes with me to the yarn shop and picks out colors for a sweater. The top color is actually this deep, lustrous navyblue, the mid stripe is sort of robin-eggy blue, and the bottom is this bold true blue. I find that knits really look great against a wood floor!

I just found out that the ABC Primetime show on lost kids will be airing in December. I have no idea if my segment will be on, but the nasty letters on Hoboken411.com have gotten me down. (I've been accused of being gullible and stupid for stopping for a crying child. This written by people who didn't stop because they obviously knew it was a TV set up. Oh. I see. Excuse me?)

Meanwhile, it is a waiting game. When will I hear about my new novel? Will my scripts sell? (Oh please, please, please--if there are any producers or directors out there, I will bake you a peach pie, I will knit you mittens, I will grovel!) I work a little on my new novel, I try to concentrate.

Sigh, the life of a writer...but it still is a great one, and after a stint in the corporate world writing about videos (a nightmare of a job! I got bad critiques because my desk was too messy and because they said they "knew I was thinking about my novel and not about videos and therefore all mistakes would be blamed on me!") I vowed never again.

Truly, to wake up every morning without that clutch of panic is just bliss. Pure bliss.

Kids in distress

I live in Hoboken, which is NYC's unofficial 6th borough, and urban, but pretty safe. I was coming out of the market today--a bright, gorgeous day--with lots of goodies for brownies and sugar shock, when I saw this five year old little boy sitting in the middle of the sidewalk crying. I didn't see his mom, so I crouched down and asked him if he was okay. He shook his head. "Where's your Mommy?" I asked and he cried harder and said, "We got separated! I don't know where she is!" I swear my bones turned to water. I asked him if his Daddy was around and he said, "I don't have one!" Then I noticed his dirty jacket, so I told him as soothingly as I could that I was going to call someone to help. "Who are you calling?" he said, alarmed, and I told him I was calling the police and I would stay right with him and they would come and help him.

I fumbled with my phone, while trying to keep the little boy calm. As soon as I got the cops and hung up, I was surrounded by lights, cameras and these very polished, well-dressed and broadly smiling people. I was baffled but one guy said, "You did such a great thing! We're NYC ABC news! This boy is an actor! The cops are in on this!"

I was really pissed because I had been so upset, and I said, "What, this is your idea of some sort of sick candid camera? You think it's funny to do things about lost kids? To trick people like this?" I was really mad and I said, "Right now, stop filming me," and I started to walk off and they FOLLOWED me and I stopped again and this woman said, "Look, we're working with this organization to find lost children and I have to tell you that you were the ONLY person who stopped for this little boy and he's been sitting out here for over half an hour."

That got me.

That made me stop and listen.

The woman told me that they wanted to make people aware that there are lots of lost and kidnapped kids right under everyone's noses and it's important to stop and notice who is around you. She also wanted people to know that no one stopped for this boy and how horrific that is and b. that I had stopped instantly and I was an example of what a good person should do. We talked for about half an hour and I got less angry and I finally began to think that maybe this was something important for people to know about. I told her she could use the footage but I didn't want to be filmed anymore and I've spent the rest of the day feeling sort of sick that no one else stopped for this little boy! So I'm going to be on Abc news, but I'm really upset that no one else stopped on a gorgeous sunny day for a little crying five year old but me. That scares me.

Then Max came home with a 101 fever and that scared me, too.
What's wrong with people that no one else stopped?