Tag Archive for: Linda Rodriguez

American Literature’s Love/Hate Relationship with Success

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
All my life I’ve been a voracious
reader and writers have been important to me. They’ve helped me to
grow and mature. They’ve broadened my mind and my outlook. They’ve
inspired me to keep going when things looked grim and to aim for ever
loftier goals. Sometimes when I’ve been sick or in physical pain or
grief-stricken, they have taken me out of my situation for a few
hours and given me respite and relief. In so many ways, writers and
the books they wrote have been important to me and my life.

Still, I’ve noticed an odd thing—some
writers, who may have been hugely successful and famous, disappear
from view. It seems that some writers become so successful that the
critics and professors who set the canon of literature decide they
must not be any good because they’re too successful. Who ever hears
or sees the name Edna Ferber now? Yet she was world-famous several
decades ago for her large novels telling the stories of states or
sections of America, such as Cimarron (Oklahoma), Ice
Palace (Alaska), So Big (Chicago), Come and Get It
(Wisconsin), Giant (Texas), and Showboat (the deep
South). Ferber won major awards for her books, which were always
bestsellers. Hollywood made huge, successful movies from many of
them, and Showboat was also a hit as a Broadway play, and her
movies and plays also often won major awards.

Ahead of her time and with a sure eye
for the plight of the underdog, Ferber often dealt with controversial
issues in her work, such as racism and miscegenation laws,
immigration, political corruption, the treatment of women and
minorities, issues that you wouldn’t expect to be at the center of
such popular books. Millions have found themselves mesmerized by her
portrayals of the people, places, and times she portrays, as I have
many times. She did extensive research for each book and was, in my
opinion, the unsung precursor of James Michener’s research-heavy
tomes about states in the US and hot-spot areas of the world and the
better writer. Ferber wrote real characters the reader could care
about, rather than mouthpieces for the various aspects of history or
area controversies as Michener did.

Kenneth Roberts is another writer whose
books have vanished into the out-of-print bins at used bookstores and friends of library sales. His bestselling books, such as Northwest
Passage, Lydia Bailey, The Lively Lady, Captain
Caution, Arundel, Rabble in Arms, and Oliver
Wiswell, focus on the periods of American history before and
during the American Revolution, and many of them were made into
successful films and TV series.



Roberts was famous for his meticulous
research into his period, and he told the stories of heroes and
mavericks on both sides of that struggle. I think he was the first
popular writer to offer the sympathetic portrayals of the Loyalist
(usually called Tory) families who had to go into exile once the
United States was independent, as well as the families and soldiers
who fought for independence. Roberts wrote about the founding fathers
and the soldiers who fought for the American Revolution, warts and
all, as very real human beings with often conflicting motives and
with families and other entanglements that complicated their efforts.
When I finish one of his books, I always feel as if I have lived
through the period that book covers in a complete immersion
experience.

Pearl Buck is one of these once-great
and now-forgotten authors who’s getting a new lease on life through
the influence of Oprah Winfrey. I know it’s fashionable in literary
circles to criticize Oprah, but I believe she provides America, in
general, and literary culture, in particular, a real service in
encouraging reading and in bringing recognition to forgotten or
overlooked works. Look at what happened to Pearl Buck. Even though
Buck was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for
Literature, her bestselling and award-winning books, such as The
Good Earth, Sons, A House Divided, Other Gods,
China Sky, Dragon Seed, Pavilion of Women,
Peony, The Big Wave, and Imperial Woman, had
mostly been out of print. The gatekeepers of American literature,
professors and critics, had pretty much consigned her books to the
ash heap as “not literary enough” until Oprah pointed a spotlight
back on her Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, The Good Earth.

I love what Buck said in her Nobel
acceptance speech. She pointed out that, in

China, “the novelist
did not have the task of creating art but of speaking to the people.”
“Like the Chinese novelist,” she said, “I have been taught to
want to write for these people. If they are reading their magazines
by the million, then I want my stories there rather than in magazines
read only by a few.” Perhaps this is why her stories of people’s
lives, especially women’s, are so enthralling. I know they have
helped me through times of great physical and emotional pain.


What authors of the past have been
favorites of yours and helped you make it through times of illness or
boredom or other difficulty? What writers who are out of fashion now
would you like to see back in print and in active circulation?
Linda Rodriguez’s Dark Sister: Poems
has just been released. Plotting the Character-Driven Novel,
based on her popular workshop, and The World Is One Place: Native
American Poets Visit the Middle East, an anthology she co-edited,
were published to high praise in 2017. Every Family Doubt,
her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police chief,
Skeet Bannion, will appear in August, 2018, and Revising the
Character-Driven Novel will be published in November, 2018. Her
three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every
Broken Trust, and Every Last Secret—and
her books of poetry—Skin Hunger
and Heart’s Migration—have
received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s
Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International
Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices
& Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and
Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good
Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has
been optioned for film.
Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP
Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter
of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers
Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International
Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and
Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at
http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

TURNING TO OTHER WRITERS IN TIMES OF TROUBLE

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
Like
most writers, periodically, I struggle with my work. Often it’s
because of physical health problems. Often, it’s because of family
issues. Sometimes it’s because of the world around me.

Right now,
that world around us all is stressful, troubling, and even
frightening. In these times of difficulty, I turn to the wisdom of
other writers, and so today, I offer to all of us a collection of
things that writers who came before us have said about this
profession we all share.


“A
house uncleaned is better than a life unlived.” – Rebecca West

“Exercise
the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a
title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like
dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.”
– Jane Yolen

“Write
all the time. Rework what you write. Hack it to pieces, cut and
change. Writing is a self-conducted apprenticeship.” – Martha
Gellhorn

“Don’t
try to impress or show off. Just tell the story. Tell what happened
as you would to a friend.” – Maeve Binchy

“Every
new book is a challenge and requires different problem-solving for
the characters.” – Phyllis A. Whitney

“Discipline
is simply remembering what you want.” – Judith Claire Mitchell

“I
don’t think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid
you won’t be good at it.” – Anne Lamott

“If
I quit now I will soon go back to where I started. And when I
started, I was desperate to get to where I am now.” – Flannery
O’Connor

“You
may as well write what you want because there’s no predicting what
will sell.” – Judith Guest

“Fiction
writing is a kind of magic, and I don’t care to talk about a novel
I’m doing because if I communicate the magic spell, even in an
abbreviated form, it loses its force for me. And so many people have
talked out to me books they would otherwise have written. Once you
have talked, the act of communication has been made.” –- Angus
Wilson

“A
word after a word after a word is power.” – Margaret Atwood

“The
most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters
except sitting down every day and trying. … This is the other
secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we
sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us.”
– Steven Pressfield

“It’s
the writing that teaches you.” – Isaac Asimov

“There
are no rules except those you create page by page.” –Stuart Wood

“I
take writing terribly seriously, and sometimes that just gets in my
way. Writing is about the Shadow, which is about play. I just have to
learn that again. And, in my own life, it’s like I can’t learn
that I’ll rise to the occasion. I do rise to the occasion, but I’m
never sure that’s going to happen.” – Sue
Grafton

Linda Rodriguez’s Plotting the
Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The
World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East,
an anthology she co-edited, are her newest books. Dark Sister:
Poems will be published in February, 2018. Every Family Doubt,
her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police chief,
Skeet Bannion, will appear in August, 2018, and Revising the
Character-Driven Novel will be published in November, 2018. Her
three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every
Broken Trust, and Every Last Secret—and
her books of poetry—Skin Hunger
and Heart’s Migration—have
received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s
Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International
Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices
& Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and
Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good
Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has
been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP
Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter
of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers
Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International
Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and
Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at
http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

Remembering the Dream

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
I had a dream for many decades, a dream
that I would write novels that would be published by a major
publisher to great reviews and win many honors and, most of all, find
readers who loved them. And for many years I had to put that dream on
hold for lack of time as I worked a demanding and fulfilling job
while raising a family. I still wrote whenever I could and still had
my dream.

Poetry was shorter so I started writing
poetry in those bits and pieces of time I could steal, and eventually
some was published and then more. Finally, I had two books of poetry
published to good reviews and even some awards. I was happy, but… I
wanted to write novels, too.

Ultimately, I had to leave my job for
health reasons. After a period of getting my health stabilized, I had
time to write, and I wrote a novel. This novel won a major
competition and was published by a major Big Five publisher. It got
tons of great reviews and won some national honors. I was happy with
my editor and publicist and loved my book cover.

My publishers were happy with the
sales—for a first book. It didn’t put me in line for the New York
Times bestseller list any time in the near future. And my publishers
even wanted more books, but they didn’t want to pay much in the way
of an advance for them. The whole industry had gone this way of
drastically smaller advances, it seemed. I began to fret about sales,
following the BookScan numbers and Amazon rankings all the time. Even
as everything in my dream came true, I became depressed and stressed
about my sales and my future.


A good friend, a literary fiction
writer who runs a prestigious MFA program, came to town on book tour,
and my husband and I took him to dinner. As usual, we spent the night
talking writing and the state of publishing. This is what writers
tend to do, I’m afraid. He asked me about my book, and I told him
about the Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month and the national book
club selection and the reviews. But, I added, not wanting him to
think I was bragging or that I was more successful than I was, it
wasn’t translating into real money. My friend looked at me and
gently said, “Linda, what you’ve got is what every MFA student in
America wants—and most of the faculty, too.”

And he was right, of course. I had been
phenomenally lucky. Instead of celebrating and enjoying all that
wonderful good fortune, a dream come true, I had allowed myself to
fall into the trap of moving the finish line until it was once more
out of reach. I wasted all the goodness of a large part of that year
with such silliness.

So I determined to do no more of that.
I decided to change my attitude. I’m living the dream I always
wanted—my books in stores with great reviews, up for awards, and
other great bonuses, including enthusiastic, loyal readers and
opportunities to read and speak at national venues. I decided I no
longer cared what the BookScan numbers were. After researching it, I
found that the BookScan numbers are not much of an accurate picture
of how your sales are doing anymore. I decided to enjoy the fact that
I was living my dream come true and that I wasn’t going to
immediately move the goalposts further down the field.

I’ve since decided that my focus in
my professional life needs to be on writing the books I want read,
the highest-quality books I can create, and on doing all I can to see
that they connect with readers. The rest is out of my control, so I
can’t waste my energy worrying about it. I’m just going to be
happy living the dream.

Have you ever found yourself moving the
goalposts as you accomplish some desired goal or make some
long-desired dream come true? Have you ever let the things you can’t
control mess with your emotions to the detriment of the things you
can? What have you learned in these kinds of situations?


Linda Rodriguez’s Plotting the
Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The
World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East,
an anthology she co-edited, are her newest books. Dark Sister:
Poems will be published in May, 2018. Every Family Doubt,
her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police chief,
Skeet Bannion, will appear in August, 2018, and Revising the
Character-Driven Novel will be published in November, 2018. Her
three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every
Broken Trust, and Every Last Secret—and
her books of poetry—Skin Hunger
and Heart’s Migration—have
received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s
Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International
Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices
& Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and
Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good
Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has
been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP
Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter
of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers
Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International
Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and
Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at
http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

Keeping a Writer’s Journal

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
I
have kept journals for many decades. Even before my creative writing
professors encouraged me to keep them, I kept writer’s journals
after reading that writers I respected, such as Virginia Woolf and
Madeleine L’Engle, had kept writer’s journals. I have stacks and
stacks of them, and periodically I wade through years of them,
reading and mining for ideas and memories.

You
will notice I did not say I’ve kept diaries. A diary is an account
of your day-to-day activities. A writer’s journal is the artist’s
sketchbook of a writer. It holds the raw material, the thinking on
paper, that goes into learning how to write better and into creating
minor and major projects.

A
writer’s journal may have accounts of daily activities in it, along
with discussions of current events, descriptions of the striking
woman seen at the coffee shop, the idea for a new novel, the first
few paragraphs of a short story, lines or whole stanzas of a poem,
descriptions of the sound water makes dripping from trees into a
fountain at the park, pages of location or historical research, a
scary near-miss turned by what-if into the germ of a story or novel,
lists of words I love, scenes recaptured from my childhood or other
past moments, and much, much more. Writing exercises. Lists of
possible titles. The initial sketches of characters. Accounts of
dreams. Rants and complaints and a good bit of whining, as well.

Now,
I also keep computer journals as I write each novel. This is where I
go deeper into character, work out plotting difficulties, set myself
goals for the next chapter or section of the book, and keep track of
things that impinge on the writing of the book. Older versions of
this are what I turn to when I need to find out how long I think it
will take me to complete some phase of the new book. Also, it’s
where I look for encouragement when going through tough times on a
book. I almost always find I’ve made it through something similar
before. I keep my journals in bound books between novels and in
addition to the novel journals kept on the computer.

I
can’t tell you how many times I’ve found ideas or characters or
settings for stories, poems, and books while going back through these
journals—or found ideas that connect with other ideas I have to
complete the concept for a novel or poem. Also, as I look through
them, I can see on the page how my writing has improved over the
years. I consider these journals necessities for my continuing growth
as a writer. Just as a musician continues practicing the scales and
more ambitious exercises daily, just as a painter continues sketching
constantly, I keep opening my journal and writing down a description
or an idea or a question I’m wrestling with or a character I’m
exploring. Madeleine L’Engle called her journal work her
“five-finger exercises,” comparing this work to the concert
pianist’s practicing scales.

I
often tell young students to keep journals, even if they don’t want
to become writers. I believe it will help them navigate the fraught
waters of adolescence. I know it helped me come to terms with a
damaging, abusive childhood and write my way out of the anger, pain,
fear, and shame it engendered in me. I’ve used journaling as an
effective therapeutic technique with incarcerated youth, and I
believe it’s something anyone can do to help them work their way
through emotional pain and problems.

I
have plain spiral notebooks, composition books, three-ring binders,
and an assortment of bound books of many sizes and appearances. I
have heard some people say they could never write in a really
beautiful bound book because it would intimidate them, but I write
even in the gorgeous handmade ones friends and family give me as
luscious gifts. The act of writing is what keeps me from becoming too
intimidated to write.

If
you’re a writer, do you keep journals? In notebooks or on the
computer or both? And if you’re not a writer, have you used a
journal before to work through thorny issues?


Linda Rodriguez’s Plotting the
Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The
World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East,
an anthology she co-edited, are her newest books. Dark Sister:
Poems will be published in May, 2018. Every Family Doubt,
her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police chief,
Skeet Bannion, will appear in August, 2018, and Revising the
Character-Driven Novel will be published in November, 2018. Her
three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every
Broken Trust, and Every Last Secret—and
her books of poetry—Skin Hunger
and Heart’s Migration—have
received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s
Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International
Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices
& Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and
Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good
Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has
been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP
Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter
of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers
Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International
Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and
Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at
http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

Drunk Screenwriters Write My Family History

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
(This blog was first posted to Writers Who Kill.)
My husband is an internationally
recognized scholar in his field and a research maven, so naturally he
was drawn to the project of tracing my family history with a
grandmother who had married and divorced thirteen times to ten
different men. Most experts like a challenge, and my convoluted
family history seemed a challenge he would take on and defeat easily
with his ninja research skills. This weekend at lunch, he moaned to
me about the latest bizarre twist he’d uncovered. “The more
information I collect, the more confusing it gets, and the less I
know,” he complained.

We laughed at the strange tale he’s
just uncovered about my great-grandparents and the way that means he
once again has much more work to do and it will be more difficult. He
said, “No one would believe any novel you wrote with all the
unbelievable but true stories about your family. They’d say it’s too
contrived and incredible.”

This left me picturing a group of drunk
screenwriters sitting around, desperate to pitch a story that will
excite the studio execs and get funding and become a huge hit.

Amy says, “We’ll begin with a guy who
marries a woman while he’s using an assumed name—and he doesn’t
tell her about it for years, but when he does, she has kids and goes
on with him under his real name.”

Dave adds, “But they keep divorcing
each other, marrying different people, then divorcing those people,
and remarrying each other again and again.”

“Yeah, I like it,” says Martin.
“They’re each the great love of the other’s life, but they just
can’t seem to make it work. That’s give us lots of dramatic
conflict.”

“And then,” Amy continues, on a
real roll now, “their oldest daughter, who’s grown up with all this
passionate craziness, gets married young and leaves husband and baby
a year later to marry another guy, whom she leaves in less than two
years with another baby, to go marry a guy with the Texas Rangers,
who gets killed in a gunfight, causing her to lose another baby, and
then she goes on a real tear, marrying and divorcing guys all over
the place.”

Martin laughs as he’s taking a swig of
vodka and spits it all over. “And one of them is an immigrant from
Czechoslovakia who loves her so much that he keeps hanging around
even after she dumps him and remarries her whenever she’s in some
kind of trouble again and again.”

Dave nods with a grin. “Loyal Dobbin.
Every story needs a loyal Dobbin.”

“We’ve got to make it weirder,”
says Amy. “More complications. Maybe the Texas Ranger isn’t really
dead and starts trying to find her, but she’s marrying all these guys
and taking their names. Oh. And she starts out as Bessie, but she
decides Agnes is a name with more class—she’s trying to marry her
way up the social ladder, a real Becky Sharp right out of Thackeray
on the American frontier.”

“Nah! Make it Indian Territory before
it became Oklahoma and make her an Indian and some of these guys she
marries early on Indians, too, but then she’s going for richer white
guys.” Dave grins again. “And of course, we’ve got Martin’s crazy
Czech hanging around, poor at first but he could be making himself
richer and richer for the sake of her.”

“I like it!” Martin says. “And
she also masquerades as someone named Dolly, too, when she wants to
get out of a tight situation. Then, as she gets older and more
settled, we’ve got those abandoned kids to come looking for her and
make her life difficult in revenge.”

“I’ve got it!” shouts Dave, jumping
around and half-falling over in drunken excitement. “She was the
oldest of a big family and born while that father was still using a
false name. Her birth name isn’t even what she thinks it is. Maybe
her dad was a crook or a wanted man of some kind. Maybe someone finds
out and blackmails her.”

“Yes!” screams Amy. “When she’s
older and thinks it’s all behind her, her son can come back and rape
her baby sister she’s always been closest to, and on her deathbed,
her daughter will find her and accuse her of ruining her life and
tell her she’s glad she’s dying.”

Martin shakes his head. “Dammit! I
hate that Bette Davis is dead. Would she make a great Bessie/Agnes or
what? It would be Oscars all the way. I can see it now.”

The three are now so drunk and stoned
on the weed they’ve been smoking along the way that they just lay
back in a beatific stupor, certain that they’ve come up with the
greatest movie concept ever and their fortunes are surely made.

I am married to a man of fortitude,
however, and he has only begun to fight. He’s currently trying to
track down the marriage certificate for that initial marriage between
my great-grandparents under the false name—and who knows what new
dramatic material he will uncover when he does?

Linda Rodriguez’s Plotting the
Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The
World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East,
an anthology she co-edited, are her newest books. Every Family
Doubt, her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police
chief, Skeet Bannion, will appear August 15, 2018. Her three earlier
Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust,
and Every Last Secret—and
her books of poetry—Skin Hunger
and Heart’s Migration—have
received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s
Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International
Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices
& Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and
Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good
Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has
been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP
Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter
of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers
Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International
Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and
Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at
http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

Guest Interview with Marcie Rendon, author of MURDER ON THE RED RIVER

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
My guest today is Marcie Rendon, whose debut mystery novel, Murder on the Red River, is receiving critical praise and was just translated into German. I’m particularly interested in Marcie’s work because there are so few Native writers of mysteries, and I thought our readers would be, as well, so I asked Marcie to answer some questions that I thought you readers might be interested in. Please welcome Marcie Rendon to The Stiletto Gang.
Murder on the Red River by Marcie Rendon is available in paperback at http://www.cincopuntos.com/products_detail.sstg?id=277  and in ebook at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06X94B6PM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1.
Cash and Sheriff Wheaton make for a strange partnership. He pulled her from her mother’s wrecked car when she was three. He’s kept an eye out for her ever since. It’s a tough place to live—northern Minnesota along the Red River. Cash navigated through foster homes, and at thirteen was working farms. She’s tough as nails—Five feet two inches, blue jeans, blue jean jacket, smokes Marlboros, drinks Bud Longnecks. Makes her living driving truck. Playing pool on the side. Wheaton is big lawman type. Maybe Scandinavian stock, but darker skin than most. He wants her to take hold of her life. Get into Junior College. So there they are, staring at the dead Indian lying in the field. Soon Cash was dreaming the dead man’s cheap house on the Red Lake Reservation, mother and kids waiting. She has that kind of power. That’s the place to start looking. There’s a long and dangerous way to go to find the men who killed him. Plus there’s Jim, the married white guy. And Longbraids, the Indian guy headed for Minneapolis to join the American Indian Movement.
Marcie R. Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Anishinabe Nation. She is a mother, grandmother, writer, and performance artist. A recipient of the Loft’s Inroads Writers of Color Award for Native Americans, she studied under Anishinabe author Jim Northrup. Her first children’s book is Pow Wow Summer (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2014). Murder on the Red River is her debut novel.
You’ve written
award-winning children’s books. What was the toughest part of
switching genres to a mystery?
I love to write so I
really didn’t have a problem switching genres. I haven’t quit
writing for children. My children’s books are non-fiction. I find
them harder to do because I want to accurately portray the families
and their children and the story. With fiction I can just make stuff
up.
How does writing for
adults differ from writing for kids?
When writing for children
there exists standardized word lists appropriate to each reading
level. With adults I don’t have worry about that. I actually think
that Native American children and other children of color have a
greater understanding of some hard, real life situations and that the
industry needs to not be so leery of addressing some issues. With
adults you can write what you want. I consciously attempt to write
all of my stories in a way where people can see their resilience over
trauma, whether that is for children or adults.
What was the hardest
part of writing this book for you?
It was a fun and enjoyable
book to write. There wasn’t really a hard part to the writing of
it. It did take a while to find a publisher and I didn’t get an
agent before I found a publisher. Hopefully, that will be easier with
this go-round of the next book.
Also, the book is set in a
time before cell phones and DNA analysis so I didn’t have to worry
about my lack of knowledge in those areas.
During the editing process
I discovered that I had given every bartender in every bar the same
name and had to go back in and re-name folks. Catching those kinds of
errors required reading and re-reading and an outside eye. Thank
goodness for a good editor.
What are some of your
favorite fictional characters?
Lucas Davenport and Jack
Reacher, Alex Delaware and his wife. Milo in the Coben books.
What has been your
journey as a writer? Did you always want to be a writer?
I have always written
since learning to write but you know, as a Native woman, I was never
told that making a living as a writer was an option. During my early
adult years we were all supposed to be doctors or teachers or lawyers
and work for our people. So, I got a bit of a late start on the novel
writing but I figure there is still time to crank a few out.
What has been your
biggest surprise with this debut mystery?
I am surprised by people’s
attachment to the characters in the story. Readers ‘want’ certain
things for Cash and they let me know what they want for her. People
are curious about the children in the story and want to know what
happens to them. When I write, the characters are real to me – I
was surprised that they are as real to so many of the readers also
and that they are invested in their lives/their story.
What do you wish
someone had told you before you ever started writing?
To sit my ass down and
start cranking out books decades earlier.
I also wish that there
were more affordable writing conferences that Native writers could
attend. There is a business side to writing that I still am not that
savvy about. How do I get someone to read my contracts? How do I know
who a good agent is? Should I shell out money to have someone read
and critique my manuscript? Who ‘should’ I know in the business?
The whole publishing industry is not readily accessible to someone
who is just writing. I think if you work in academia you have a few
more doors at the ready to open, but I could be wrong about that
also.

Forgotten Arts

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
In
my series of Skeet Bannion mystery novels, Skeet’s best friend,
Karen, owns a shop called Forgotten Arts, offering knitting,
spinning, and weaving supplies, as well as a farm with a herd of
sheep. This shop is basically in the book because I love to knit,
spin, and weave, and I’ve always had a little daydream of having
just such a shop of my own.

It
probably all began with my grandmothers. One of them was an excellent
needlewoman who taught me to sew doll clothes and doll quilts, using
the scraps from her many sewing and quilting projects. This
grandmother even made spring corsages for each granddaughter from old
nylon stockings, cut up and dyed into violets, iris, lilies, and
roses. The other grandmother knit and crocheted afghans, sweaters,
even golf-club covers. Neither of them knew how to spin or weave, as
far as I know.

Both
of my grandmothers were great “makers from scratch,” though,
whether with food, such as bread, butter, cheeses, and such, or with
household items, such as baskets, candles, lotions, soaps,
washcloths, and dish towels. My Cherokee grandmother even made her
own medicines with herbs from her garden and wild-harvested plants.
Most of these medicines, foods, and household items were more
effective or better-tasting than the mass-produced versions available
in stores and pharmacies.

Beginning
as a childhood apprentice to these two grand old dames, I set off on
a lifelong quest for the forgotten arts. I have a huge library, and
one of the categories within it is that of how-to books. I have books
on how to design and make furniture from cast-off materials, how to
make braided rugs, how to make doll houses and furniture, how to make
canned foods and jellies, how to make your own purses and shoes, and
books on yogurt making and felt making—and I have made all of these
things and more. I seek out books on forgotten arts, such as
spinning, weaving, smocking, rug hooking, tatting, and bobbin-lace
making. (I’ve done the first three, but haven’t tried the last
three yet.) I even have books on how to build your own log cabin or
barn from scratch, how to raise and milk a goat, and how to grow and
use your own natural-dye garden. If all these dystopian novels and
movies come true and we have some kind of societal collapse, I’m
the neighbor you want to have.

Of
course, now that writing has taken over my life, my big floor loom in
one end of the living room has become a cat gymnasium, my sewing
machine sits permanently covered on a table where manuscripts have
replaced fabric pieces, and gorgeous hand-knit projects languish
neglected and unfinished in tote bags hanging from the doorknobs of
my combination office and studio. I still believe these crafts have
great value. I used to make time for them in a busy life, but I’ve
lost that knack somewhere and need to recover it for a sense of
balance, so I wrote into my books a character who has that balance
and that fibercraft store that I used to dream of owning.

Now,
I’m downsizing and moving. I am letting go many of the books,
including some of the how-to books (like building log cabins and
raising goats), but most of those and the loom,

spinning wheels, and
sewing machine are making the move with me. I’ve decided that a new
house can also equal a new way of living and am determined to put
more balance into my life. But I still won’t have my own fiberarts
shop or herd of sheep, except in the Skeet books.



In
your own writing, what aspect of your life finds its way as a part of
your story? Do you give a character some passion or aspect of your
own personality? And when you’re reading, do you like to see these
bits of the author’s personality embodied in the work?


Linda Rodriguez’s Plotting the
Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The
World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East,
an anthology she co-edited, are her newest books. Every Family
Doubt, her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police
chief, Skeet Bannion, will appear January 17, 2018. Her three earlier
Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust,
and Every Last Secret—and
her books of poetry—Skin Hunger
and Heart’s Migration—have
received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s
Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International
Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices
& Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and
Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good
Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has
been optioned for film.
Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP
Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter
of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers
Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International
Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and
Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at
http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

She’s Leaving Home–Bye, Bye

/in /by

Readers of a certain age will recognize the title of this blog as the chorus to a Beatles song. Nostalgia is my mood at the moment, so I’m playing and singing all the oldies.


In this particular case, the “she” who’s leaving home is me. I’m about to leave my home of the past 42 years with its marble fireplace with walnut mantel, walnut crown moldings, multiple built-in cupboards (including a corner glass-doored china cupboard), wood floors, tall ceilings, big windows, spacious rooms –and outdated plumbing and wiring. My husband and I are in the last throes of decluttering and packing for our move to a much smaller house without the great storage and space of this one but without its problems, as well. As we pack up and pile boxes and bins, I know we’ve made the right decision, but I’m reminded constantly of the many great years I had in this house while raising my family. So, yeah, nostalgia.

I decided I wanted to take photos of the rooms before they were turned into stacks of boxes and stripped of their furniture. Of course, my tablet’s excellent camera suddenly wouldn’t work, and my cell phone’s too old to have a camera. I refused to be thwarted, however, and took the interior shots with my laptop webcam (which is why they’re blurry enough to pass as Impressionist paintings). For the record, though, I now have photos of my living room and dining room. (My arms tired quickly–it’s awkward taking regular photos with a webcam–so my ambition to snap pictures of all the rooms quickly faded.)


Above, you see my marble fireplace with walnut mantel, as well as my quilt-covered old wicker couch and one of my spinning wheels. This is the middle third of our extremely large living room. The first photo is of the front of our house with part of the front-yard gardens. The next photo is of the front third of our living room with my big floor loom and another spinning wheel partially obscured by the boxes we’ve started piling in the living room. The loom and both spinning wheels will join my Husqvarna sewing machine in our new home.

The final photo is of part of the dining room with its big round wooden table and chairs and one of the two freestanding china cabinets in that room. The built-in one is in the breakfast room next door. Only one of these freestanding cabinets is going with us, but the table and chairs–as old as my time in this house–will accompany us, as well.


I will not miss the extension cord shuffle which all unrenovated-old-house owners do, of necessity. I will not miss the months of the year when it’s simply too cold or too hot to work in my upstairs office/studio, even wrapped in wool shawls and gloves or stripped to underwear. Modern insulation and central HVAC have a lot to recommend them. I will not miss all the stairs. Most of all, I won’t miss the constant sucking sounds as all the money I make goes into household emergencies like storm-damaged gutters or yet another plumbing disaster. (When you own a house, my child, water is not your friend.)

Still, this house has been the site of many holiday feasts for the extended family. It sheltered not only my two husbands and three children but two foster sons, a nephew, and at one time or another, all my brothers and their friends or wives, as well as my sister. We’ve had celebrations and parties. When my oldest kids were young, the teachers went on strike for a year, and this house became a schoolroom for most of the kids in the neighborhood. Every summer, it was kid headquarters as I kept the block’s youngsters out of trouble by teaching them how to make butter, soap, candles, bread, cheese, baskets, and many other projects. That dining room table has seen so many home-cooked meals and craft projects and school homework assignments and science-fair projects and family council meetings that my family’s DNA is embedded deep within the fiber of the wood. It’s been a wonderful home.


Now, the time is right to move on to a more convenient, safer (no stairs for me to break anything more on), lower maintenance, and smaller place. I’m looking forward to it. But yeah, I’ll miss the old girl as we drive off with the moving van. 42 years is a long time, and what warm, lovely years they’ve been!

Linda Rodriguez’s Plotting the
Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The
World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East,
an anthology she co-edited, are her newest books. Every Family
Doubt, her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police
chief, Skeet Bannion, will appear January 17, 2018. Her three earlier
Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust,
and Every Last Secret—and
her books of poetry—Skin Hunger
and Heart’s Migration—have
received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s
Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International
Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices
& Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and
Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good
Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has
been optioned for film.
Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP
Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter
of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers
Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International
Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and
Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at
http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

Lost in the Jungles of Final Revision

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
I’m
in the throes of final revisions. Toss me a lifeline. Or at least
some really fine imported dark chocolate.
There
are several times when writing a novel is no fun. The first is the
middle of the book. Middles are always sucky. There’s no way around
it.
They’re
swamps that you just have to wade through, never being able to see
more than a few inches ahead and full of traps, quicksand, and
dangerous predators.
Every
writer I know—and some of them are multiple NYT bestsellers—hates
herself or himself and the book while in the middle. Once you emerge
into the end, the pace steps up, your excitement returns, and you
stop feeling your book is horrible and deformed. By the last page,
you’re in love with it again.
In
the first read-through and the revisions that come from that, you see
problems, but it all looks fixable, and you’re stunned at how
basically good the book actually is—or has the potential to be.
Your beta reader told you about things that need work, but also said
the book was going to be great. So you wade in and start hacking this
off here and moving it over there, cutting out these and adding that,
beefing up this character and toning down that one. You feel like
you’re doing good work.
Then,
you start on the final revision. This is not the last editing your
book will get, of course. You’ll do line edits and proof it before
sending it off to agent and editor where they will find new things
that need fixing, and you’ll love them for it. This is just the
final big structural revision before it goes out to others because
anything else will need another good eye. (Every writer needs at
least one good editor, no matter how good a writer and editor she is
herself.)
This
is where you’re making all the major and difficult changes that you
left for later because they were major and difficult. This is where
you’re honing theme and correcting pacing and making sure you use
all the senses throughout and that you keep the reader engaged all
the time.
This
is where you hack your way into the jungle of book with a mental
picture of how you’ll carve out a gorgeous estate with a palatial
residence, and then you get lost, and your bearers run off with the
last of your food and water. You have to keep moving because if you
don’t, you will sit down and cry as you starve to death.
This
is where I am right now. I have come through this before. I know I
will again. I continue repeating this mantra to myself as I keep
cutting a path for myself. It’s not that I hate the book, as in the
sucky middle. This time it’s that I’m afraid I’ll… Let. The.
Book. Down.

But
I’ve promised to have this done and send the book off, and I have
to make it something good enough to send. I think I’ll have my
husband take me out for dinner, and I’ll buy some luscious imported
chocolate. And tomorrow, I’ll head back into the jungle of final
revision.



Linda Rodriguez’s Plotting the
Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The
World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East,
an anthology she co-edited, are her newest books. Every Family
Doubt, her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police
chief, Skeet Bannion, will appear January 17, 2018. Her three earlier
Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust,
and Every Last Secret—and
her books of poetry—Skin Hunger
and Heart’s Migration—have
received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s
Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International
Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices
& Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and
Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good
Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has
been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP
Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter
of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers
Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International
Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and
Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at
http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

When a Writer Faces a True Life Crisis

/in /by
Recently,
I have been trying to help a dear friend, who’s dealing with major
chronic illness, the results of unhealed traumatic brain injury,
vision problems, flood and tornado damage to her farm and house, and
a right hand where a bone has come completely unmoored, requiring
hand surgery. This woman, almost 70, is a major poet and novelist. In
fact, her most famous and successful novel is often included on lists
of Best Novels of the 20th Century.
(The problem is that she was robbed of all royalties for this book
that’s just been issued in a new edition after twenty printings.
Never saw a dime, was told it just wasn’t selling, and now has a
lawyer from the Authors Guild working on trying to recover some of
her stolen monies.)
My
friend struggles to deal with all these issues, including massive
amounts of pain, as she lives a financially precarious life based on
reading and workshop fees and visiting writer gigs. She lost her
tenured professorship years ago when she suffered TBI, and they
wouldn’t allow her time for rehabilitation. She has recovered her
ability to write beautifully, to teach, to give talks and readings,
but the executive ability of her brain is permanently damaged,
meaning she can’t organize her papers, she loses track of dates and
commitments, and she basically can’t find what she needs when she
needs it. And now the vision problem and the need for surgery on her
hand have struck.
As
part of what I’ve been doing to help her, other than to be a
shoulder to cry on long distance, I have been researching sources of
help for writers in real crisis like this. And I have discovered that
there are a number of resources out there. I’ve sent them to her
and am now helping her to apply for some financial aid to hire
someone to deal with the tornado and flood damage and to hire a
college student to help her organize her papers, set up a filing
system, coordinate her calendar, and help her with typing on the new
novel she’s been trying so hard to finish during all this.
It
made me think about the knife edge many of us live on as writers. I’d
have been in her situation recently when going through cancer
treatments and surgeries while already dealing with chronic,
disabling illness—if I hadn’t had my dear, supportive, gainfully
employed husband but had been all alone like her. So I thought I’d
post the resources for writers in emergency situations here for all
our readers. Maybe save it for a rainy day—because you never know
when you might be facing similar difficulties.
http://www.pen.org/writers-emergency-fund –
This is the granddaddy of all emergency grants to writers. PEN
realized how vulnerable writers could be many, many years ago and set
up this fund, which has grown through the years and allowed them to
help hundreds of writers in emergency
situations.

http://www.thehavenfdn.org/about –
This is a foundation funded by Stephen King after he was struck by a
hit-and-run driver and lost years of work to surgeries and
rehabilitation. King, of course, was a millionaire, so it wasn’t a
financial hardship for him, but he came from poverty and thought
about what this would have done to him when he was starting out and
hadn’t had a bestseller yet. This fund not only provides a sum up
front for emergencies, but can provide up to $2,000/month for six or
more months while someone is going through a major situation and
trying to get back on her/his feet. Yay, Stephen King!
Change,
Inc.
(212)
473-3742
Change,
Inc. provides one-time emergency grants of up to $1,000 to artists of
any discipline. Applicants must be professional artists who can
demonstrate need. Each applicant must submit a detailed letter
describing the financial emergency, copies of outstanding bills,
medical fee estimates and current financial statements, along with a
career resume, reviews, exhibition or performance announcements, and
two letters of reference from someone in affiliated field. For more
information, write to:
Change Emergency Funds
Change, Inc.
P.O.
Box 54
Captiva, FL 33924
Carnegie
Fund for Authors
The
Carnegie Fund offers grants to published writers who are in need due
to an emergency, whether medical or otherwise. The fund does not
award grants for work projects.
Individuals wishing to apply can
write to the following address to request an application:
Carnegie
Fund for Authors
Post Office Box 409
Lenox Hill Station
New
York, NY 10021
Author’s
League Fund 
31
East 32nd Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Fund offers
interest-free loans of between $2,000 and $3,000 to writers with
severe medical/health-related problems and other serious misfortunes.
No membership necessary. Application and details available on web
site: www.authorsleaguefund.org Most
supportive of older authors
American
Poets Fund- Emergency Funds
The
Academy of American Poets
584 Broadway Suite 1208
New York, NY
10012
The fund assists poets of demonstrated ability who are in a
state of urgent financial need. Grants cannot be used to promote or
otherwise enhance literary talent or reputation, and applications are
not accepted. Academy Chancellors, Fellows, and prize winners must
bring the circumstances of qualifying poets to the attention of the
American Poets Fund committee by sending a letter of nomination,
including specifics about the nominee’s current financial situation,
to the Executive Director of the Academy. For more information,
please visit:  www.speculativeliterature.org/Writing/medical.php 
I
hope none of our readers or bloggers ever need these resources, but
even then, one of our friends might, so I’d suggest you save this
information somewhere permanent. Often people like my friend will
struggle alone in silence through heartbreaking circumstances because
they have no idea that such help exists.

Linda Rodriguez’s Plotting the
Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The
World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East,
an anthology she co-edited, are her newest books. Every Family
Doubt, her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police
chief, Skeet Bannion, will appear January 17, 2018. Her three earlier
Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust,
and Every Last Secret—and
her books of poetry—Skin Hunger
and Heart’s Migration—have
received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s
Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International
Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices
& Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and
Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good
Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has
been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP
Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter
of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers
Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International
Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and
Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at
http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com