The Best Way to Change the World

This past week my dad and I watched a delightful movie, Akeelah and the Bee. On one level it is the story of how an eleven-year-old girl from a tough section of Los Angeles is able to win the national spelling bee. On a far deeper level it is about how one small girl by changing her own life, changes the lives of everybody she touches.

I am writing a similar story right now. Tentatively entitled Friday's Daughter, it is about a woman who has deferred her own life for years to take care of family members, and who always gave in to her older sisters because they were more powerful than she. Teensie wishes she could change her sisters. She discovers that when she changes herself, her sisters change to accomodate the new Teensie.

Years ago I was in a church where an old man, Walter, was very ill. Walter was also obnoxious. He had selected five members of the church, including me, to call day in and day out with demands. He needed a notebook and pens. He needed cigarettes. He needed somebody to take him here or there. Because we were "nice" people who felt sorry for Walter, we generally obeyed his summons, but every one of us resented it.

One morning the five of us met for breakfast and after a Walter gripe session, we decided to change our strategy. We couldn't change Walter, but we could change ourselves. Instead of simply responding to Walter's demands, we decided to institute "an offense of love." Don't football coaches say that the best defense is a strong offense? We started calling Walter. We invited him to our children's birthday parties and our family dinners. We cleared out his apartment when he had to move into a nursing home. We were with him when he died. At his funeral, we all admitted that we had come to love Walter, ornery though he could be. And we noted in amazement that as we had changed the way we related to Walter, he had become more lovable.

Have you got a story about how changing yourself resulted in an unexpected change in somebody else? Would you share it with us?

Getting to know you

I see this blog as a way to get to know readers out there who would like to have a conversation with me and with other readers about things that matter to us. I hope you will comment not only on anything I have to say in this blog and about my books but also on what other readers have to say.

For this first blog, I am asking: Have you ever done something very risky?

I have. In three weeks my first women's mainstream novel will come out. I decided a couple of years ago that after writing twenty mysteries in twenty years, it was time to write some books I've been carrying around inside me for almost that long.

HOLD UP THE SKY is set on a dairy farm in West Georgia and is about Billie Waits, the single mother of a disabled child who depends on checks from her estranged husband, and Margaret Baxter, Billie's older sister. When the story begins, Billie's monthly check has not come and Margaret--the woman who has everything and can do anything--is trying to help her find out what has happened to Porter Waits. A crisis in Margaret's life, however, forces her to move out to their father's farm during a summer of record heat and drought. The two sisters are joined in their dad's sweltering kitchen by two other women also facing crises in their lives. What they learn about one another and living while canning tomatoes is at the heart of the story.

One reason for writing this book was to illustrate what a scientific study demonstrated several years ago: the best thing women can do in times of stress is find a girlfriend. We need each other.

Taking the risk of writing novels instead of mysteries, however, is scary. The whole time I was writing, I was thinking, "What if I can't do this? What if I can't carry this story to completion without strewing a few bodies along the plot for excitement?" (Okay, I cheated. I did put in one.)

Now that the story is written in stone--or in published form, which is about as solid--I wonder, "What if nobody buys the book? What if you readers don't like the characters or their story? What if you march in my street to protest my leaving a genre you already like?"

But you know what? I'm glad I did it. I've learned this past year I could do something I wasn't sure I could.

Is there a risk you've been wanting to take and haven't? Do it! Whether the end product is a success or not, you will have expanded your horizons and learned new things about your own capabilities.

Let me know what you think about the new book, but be gentle. Writers have feelings, too!

In future blogs I will try to answer some of your most frequent questions, like "Will MacLaren ever solve another case? Will Sheila Travis? Did Katharine Murray eventually stick with Tom or bail?"

Until then, happy reading. You are the reason I write.