Peg Kerr's Journal

Although both of my novels have romantic elements, I've never considered myself someone who generally reads romance novels myself. There are a few exceptions. Jane Austen, of course, is the most important one. I adore Jane Austen, as long-time readers of this blog know. Interestingly enough, it was a science fiction writer who got me to read Jane Austen, when I was (I think?) somewhere in my late twenties or early thirties. Eleanor Arnason made an off-hand comment at a panel at a science fiction convention (or perhaps it was one of our one-on-one conversations afterwards; my memory is hazy) that one of the best Iago-like depictions of evil she's ever read takes place in the opening chapter of Sense and Sensibility. Fanny Dashwood cleverly leads her husband, step-by-step, to repudiate the promise he made to his father on the latter’s deathbed to support his sisters. She gets him to agree to a little, and then a little more, and a little more, until by the end he is actually congratulating himself for his generosity for resolving to behave in totally dishonorable and miserly way to the women his father commended to his care. I was intrigued by her description of the passage and so read the book--and I was hooked. It's curious, that my introduction to romances was due to my writerly curiosity about how to write an effective villain.

Of course, Jane Austen wasn't considered a 'romance writer' in her day because the marketing category simply didn't even exist yet. Even today, I think that people who dismiss her as a mere romance novelist (often without reading her) are missing the point. She wrote about love and marriage, true. But she was hardly a wild romantic, but more of an Augustan realist with a very keen sense of the absurdity of human nature. When it comes down choosing between the worldview of Marianne or Elinor Dashwood, I think Miss Austen would clearly side with Elinor.

I also read Georgette Heyer's novels, which were recommended to me by a friend. I loved them and reread them almost every year. I had a couple Joan Aiken and Jane Aiken Hodge romances, which I picked up because I read Joan Aiken's children's books, and because Joan Aiken wrote continuations of Jane Austen's works.

Last year I picked up the Sons of Destiny novels of Jean Johnson (ladyofthemasque) because I'd read and enjoyed some of her fanfiction. These were fantasy romances. Magic+sex=fluffy and fun.

But last month, I did something I'd never done before. I'd just finished the Jean Johnson books and when I got the bookstore gift card from my family, I went into a bookstore and headed, somewhat uncertainly, to a section I'd never hung out in before: I think I'll buy a romance. Any romance, I don't care. Um, well, a good romance. But which one? No recommendation. No knowledge of the author. Could I pick a romance up off the shelf and just read it cold?

I didn't know and I had literally never tried doing such a thing before. I have a sense of a slight preference for type (I was gravitating toward the historical romances, particularly regency) but I have no idea who popular romance authors are. As a genre, I had a little idea of how the marketing works from reading, of all things, Elizabeth Peter's Die for Love, a marvelously snarky and fun murder mystery set, of all places, at a romance writers convention. Yeah, Elizabeth Peters was right. The covers of romance novels ARE embarrassing. I thought about Joanna Russ' essay "How to Suppress Women's Writing" as I browsed the lurid covers. Here was writing by women, for women. It's wildly successful, but I'm embarrassed to pick it up. I thought a lot about that as I browsed, but yeah, I was uneasy about being seen carrying a book with those stereotypical clinch bodice-ripper covers. How interesting. Was I buying into the disparagment of the genre without thinking about it?

My first two picks were okay. Fun and pleasantly salacious. I enjoyed them well enough that I went back last weekend and picked up four more, again, picking cold. OMG. This last attempt was much less successful. I squirmed at the egregious errors, in history and voice. It was like biting into a bon bon, hoping for some delicious chococolate, and encountering plastic. Well, that was a waste of money. The cover blurbs were useless and "New York Times Best Selling Author" is no guarantee of quality, believe me. The historical errors irritated me, and the cliches were a turn off.

Well, what do other people think are good fantasy novelists? So I googled "Best romance novels" and picked a book that came in #1 on several lists: Outlander by Diane Gabaldon. There are over sixteen hundred reviews on the Amazon page, so I guess a few people have read it. I was interested to discover, when I got to the bookstore to pick up a copy, that although it was considered a rather groundbreaking book when it came out, and won the best novel of 1991 from the Romance Writers of America, it is now shelved in "Fiction." Not Romance. No clinch on the cover.

So I'm diving into the book, and so far it's certainly gripping my attention. No taste of plastic in my teeth so far. I'll keep you posted.

MyCharityWater Campaign Report:

$5,000 CAMPAIGN GOAL
$1826 RAISED SO FAR
91 people served
42 donations
29 days left

The Charity:Water blog posted about this campaign, and I felt more than a little envious. He raised more than $25,000? What fundraising mojo does he have that I don't have?

Then I realized he is one of the co-founders of Twitter.

Oh. Guess that answers that.

(Only 29 days left! There's still time to make the goal!)

Here are two great stories I found through Twitter today about kids making a difference. The first is Evan Ducker, who founded an organization to educate kids about vascular birthmarks:



Read more about Evan's project at Do Something here.

The second tweet told me about a project looks like it's just getting started. The website Students Rebuild just went live today to challenge schools to start fundraising to rebuild Haitian schools:

Join Architecture for Humanity, the Bezos Family Foundation and Global Nomads Group as we rebuild schools in Haiti.

Your challenge: Create a team at your school to raise money – which will be matched dollar for dollar – to rebuild schools in Haiti.

Your opportunity: Help us rebuild better, safer schools in Haiti now. Stay connected through interactive video, conversations with building professionals and conversations with Haitian students. Learn first-hand how people can work together in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake to rebuild communities and lives.

My girls have been involved in many similar projects, such as participating in Feed My Starving Children and various mission trips, the biggest one, of course, being the annual trip to Mexico to Casa Hogar Elim. Community service is a strong emphasis and part of the requirement of the program in the International Baccalaureate program that Fiona attends.

Tell me about something that your kids have gotten involved in to make the world a better place. Did your child lead the way on his or her own, or was it a school, synogogue, church, etc., that got the child interested? In what ways has your child been a role model for you?

I'm late to the party, but...

naomikritzer sent me a link to a story a few months back because she knows I'm interested in reading good fanfiction depictions of Neville Longbottom. I didn't get around to reading it until this weekend, but the story sucked me right in. It's a re-telling of Deathly Hallows from Neville's point of view, covering what happened at Hogwarts, with Neville running the D.A. An author's note at the conclusion of the story ended with this:

...This story is not dedicated to my readers, or to a group of fictional, if -- at least to me -- compelling teenagers [i.e., the D.A.]. It is dedicated to the real-life soldiers who gave their time and effort to help me with the psychology of war. Many of these young men and women are as young as eighteen themselves, and they are not fighting with wands and hexes on the grounds of an imaginary wizarding school. They fire real bullets and shed real blood on the very non-fictional battlefields of the Muggle world even as you read this, and their courage, their sacrifice is too often ignored because they do so out of our daily sight...Go ahead and drop me some feedback if you want, but I would also ask that the next time you spot a young man or woman in uniform, take a moment to shake their hand. Their truth is greater than fiction.

That's quite a particularly graceful note, I thought. I remembered that Rowling has said that the series, and particularly the last book, is about recovering from the scars of war. Perhaps this fanfiction writer worked at the Veterans Administration or something?

There was something about that last line that niggled at me, though, something half-remembered. Who was this author, anyway?

I took a look. The author's name was "thanfiction" (on Livejournal as thanfiction). I sat there for a second and then my eyes widened. Thanfiction? Wait a minute. I spent a couple minutes googling, following up on something I'd noticed fleetingly on my friends list sometime in the last month.

I told you I was late to the party. Well, it was a weird trick of timing, actually. Naomi had sent me the link months ago, before the knowledge hit the internet (she said she's a little embarrassed about doing so, in retrospect), and I didn't look at the author's name until I had finished reading the entire story. But yes, dear reader, I had unknowingly spent the last two days reading and enjoying Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness (the "DAYDverse") a work written by one of the craziest people I've ever encountered on the internet: the notorious Amy Player AKA Victoria Bitter AKA Mr. Frodo AKA Jordan Wood AKA Andrew Blake AKA thanfiction. The dots were connected that thanfiction was the person that fandom_wank calls "VB," I guess, about a month ago.

( Read more )

So what did I really think about the story? And how did my opinion change, once I knew the authorship?

( Armchair psychology is so much fun )

Tell me about an author whose works you enjoy, rather against your own inclination, because you find the person doing the writing to be absolutely reprehensible. How do you reconcile that for yourself?

sdn asks a cool question:

what do you consider your personal super power?

Hmm. That's a tough one. For me, maybe it's my ability to recall verbatim passages of books I read decades ago.

( What I did today to make the world a better place )

I asked an attorney to sign a couple pleadings today as he was passing by my desk; they had been prepared by one of the associates for whom I work, who said we'd be filing them in federal court today. The attorney told me that he was still working on the related brief, and wasn't sure it would go out today, but that he'd get back to me.

"That's okay, I'll be here," I said as he walked away from my desk. "They also serve who only stand and wait."

And then it occurred to me: how many legal secretaries routinely quote Milton in their day-to-day working lives?

I looked up that particular sonnet, which I hadn't read in several years, although I do often quote that line. I had forgotten how closely it tracks a problem I have often thought and written about. Milton was speaking of his blindness, and I was speaking of writers block, but we both suffered from the same result, the gnawing feeling that God would call us to account for not using the talent He had given us. Given that Milton so clearly understood how I feel, I find the conclusion of the poem deeply comforting, which is probably why I have remembered it and quoted it so often.

Tell me a line of poetry (or perhaps a song lyric) you often quote to people in your daily life. What poem is it from, and why does it speak to you so strongly?

sdn suggested here that rather than making New Year's resolutions (a set up for guilt and failure), we make fake resolutions, to let ourselves off our particular hooks. I'm not exactly clear what she meant by this, but here are mine, quite tongue in cheek:

I will go to every sparring class and get through them without getting winded or bursting into tears.

I will stretch my inner hamstrings to the point of flexibility that I can kick any other student at my dojo in the head.

I will cook a meal that is so utterly delicious that every member of my family will slap the forehead and exclaim, "Damn, I never knew what I was missing before! From now on, I'll be eating onions! Voluntarily!"

I will use at least some of my awesome powers to keep the house clean.

I will dazzle my coworkers so much with my mad skillz that they'll beg me never to take a day off. Then I'll take a day off anyway.

I will dash off an exquisitely sensitive and beautiful novel in 30-second bursts, each snippet composed while brushing and flossing my teeth.

I will keep a personal (paper) journal that is so wise, brilliant, observant, funny and insightful that people will still be discussing with awe five hundred years later.

I will create a garden so beautiful that complete strangers will knock on my door and beg to be allowed to photograph it.

I will drink a glass of wine a day--purely for medicinal purposes. I will eat dark chocolate every day--purely for pleasure.

And you?

I've been asked to take stock of my resources, and in particular, to note all the things I am doing right. Not in the too distant past (yes, I wrote some good books, but that was several years ago). I'm talking about, within the past year.

Friends list, please tell me the things I am doing right. Lurkers, that includes you.

Right now, I need to hear that rather desperately.

Something kijjohnson said in our weekly telephone call really jumped out at me, maybe because it has the ring of truth. "You worry more than anybody I know."

I've been thinking about that statement ever since. Really, I'm quite embarrassed about it. Come on, Peg, you know that you're undermining your own health by always worrying so much. And how unnecessary it all is, really! I've been analyzing, trying to understand myself. How much of my worry is innate to my character, to the fact that I tend to be a depressive person (always seeing the glass half empty, Peg?) How much of it is integral to the structures within my marriage? Rob is adamantly NOT a worrier--and I have become, in a sense, the designated worrier of the family. It performs a function, but can slide into codependency, and really, when you look at it that way, getting off the worry hook (and maybe sticking HIM onto it) can only improve my marriage. How much of it is simply peculiar to my situation (layoff, money, some medical issues, etc.) such that any reasonable person in my position would worry the same amount?

Yes, I do worry too much. I agree. Way too much. How much can I change that? I do certain things that theoretically could help: regular exercise, including walking in sunlight, spiritual connection, antidepressants, support system. Yet I seem to be simply marinating in my own stress; my mind turns over and over on the well-worn ruts of low grade panic.

I'm sick of it.

My psychiatrist told me today that someone in my situation should be worried, yes--if I weren't, it would indicate a serious breach with reality. But the level of worry I cope with every day is so hard on me, my family, my body. There's also a part of me that thinks it's also a spiritual malaise--although I am REALLY wary of falling into the trap in which I suffered for so many years, of believing that the reason I was depressed was that I didn't have enough faith.

Still. Is it possible to change? How? I have been thinking about experimenting with meditation.

Have you managed to get a grip on worry and change yourself and the way that you deal with anxiety to the point that you think you have made a real difference in your life? What prompted the change? What did you do? How did it work for you?

cakmpls here continues a meme she got from chronicpaint, who asked people to post about what they believe. cakmpls pointed to a nice video clip of Elton John playing "Circle of Life," saying that pretty much comes closest to hers. She also mentioned her daughter's R's answer, which she came up with when she was 14: "Watch your back, watch your heart, and don't be a dumb-ass." Which I think is pretty fabulous philosophy, too, and a good indication of why I admire cakmpls and her husband J. as parents. They've raised great and wise kids.

You may remember a post I did awhile ago:

As I was making my breakfast this morning I had the KSJN Morning Show on, and the song "Nature Boy" started playing.

After listening for a moment, I stepped out into living room, where Fiona was playing a computer game and Rob was talking to Delia, who was sitting on his lap.

"May I have your attention for a moment?" I said. My family looked up at me expectantly. "I just wanted to say that I think that this song has it right. The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." I went over and kissed Delia on the top of her head. "If you take anything from what your parents teach you, remember that."

"That's a pretty good rule," said Rob.

It's worth asking again. If you boiled it all down, what would you say under the title "This I Believe" ? Both, perhaps, as something you'd like to pass on as a parent, and more generally, as a guiding philosophy of life?

???

I brought an AWESOME lunch today: ratatouille, topped with monterey jack cheese, homemade fresh peach pie (oatmeal topping!), beets and onions, oven-roasted in balsamic vinegar and a little bit of butter, and a dessert made of plain yogurt mixed with pumpkin and a dollop of maple syrup. Sorry I didn't have time to take a picture and post it before leaving this morning, but trust me: it's pretty, healthy and delicious.

Delia got up this morning and kept me company as I was getting ready for work, which was nice. She's trying to shift her circadium rhythms because next week she's got to get up early enough to catch a bus that arrives at 7:00 a.m. Ouch.

My bike ride this morning was really enjoyable. Perfect weather. No wind, clear skies. Lots of frisking squirrels sighted. Listened to Entrain's "Can U Get It" which would make anybody want to get up and dance. And I had put a splash of Kahlua in my homemade coffee slush. Yum.

What's making you happy today?