My Writing Life ~ From Fact to Fiction

Tags

adoptee, adoption, diary-writing, Fiction, India, Native American, nonfiction, reunions, Searching, Southwest, suspense, writing

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are. – Joss Whedon

It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is just having written.
Robert Hass

*******************************************************************************************

I’ve enjoyed a lifetime of reading novels, and for the past decade, I’ve devoted my energy to writing them. A shift of focus, closer to my heart. Previously, my writing life had been devoted to nonfiction. As a young child, I recorded the events of each day in a diary (a habit that I’ve continued to this day!) For a decade, I made my living as a technical writer in the Information Services division of Los Alamos Laboratory. In the early 1980s, my love of hiking, running and bicycling resulted in the guidebook Santa Fe on Foot-Exploring the City Different. The fourth edition was published last year by Ocean Tree Books.
In 1991, another nonfiction book followed: The Santa Fe Trail by Bicycle, an account of my 1,000-mile bicycle journey from Santa Fe to New Franklin, Missouri. Fifteen of us cycled from Santa Fe to New Franklin, Missouri. We biked from dawn until afternoon, camping every night. My book began as newspaper articles. After each day of bicycling, I’d handwrite an account and fax it to The Albuquerque Journal. The quest for a fax machine took me to some unusual places. I’d bike around whatever town we’d camped near looking for a business that had a fax machine I could pay to use. The most offbeat fax machine location was an undertaker’s showroom, the friendliest was a bookstore.
Other nonfiction books came, one after another. From Calcutta with Love-The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard; The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries. My true love, from adolescence forward, was fiction. At long last, I’m realizing that dream.
I began the journey into the world of fiction-writing with a WWII suspense novel Beast of Bengal. It was inspired by a comment my brother John made about our father Richard. After Daddy died, I asked John to send me all the letters from WWII that my parents exchanged. “He didn’t DO anything,” John grumpily replied. “Nobody will be interested in these letters.” My brother was dead wrong. People were very interested in the archived letters, and From Calcutta with Love sold out. Texas Tech University Press, the publisher, returned full rights to me, and the book is currently being considered for re-publication by Pajarito Press.
In 2017,Pocol Press published my second novel All the Wrong Places, a page-turner set in a fictitious Native American school. Teacher Clara Jordan has to run for her life when her duplicitous lover Henry DiMarco realizes she is aware of his criminal activities. Moreover, she must draw upon inner strength to help her students survive the ragged remains of the school year.
One book just leads to another. Clara Jordan, my heroine, has more to tell. In All the Wrong Places, she lost her best friend, broke up with a bad boyfriend, and learned that the birthmother she’d been seeking died in an accident.

In  Hand of Ganesh, my girl moves from Red Mesa, New Mexico to Santa Fe. She meets Arundhati “Dottie” Bennett, a fellow adoptee, and they become close friends. Clara decides to help Dottie search for her origins. To do the necessary sleuthing, the two women must travel to Southern India. A daunting challenge, but as I left Clara and Dot, they were plotting and scheming for a way. What happens next? Though I have a general idea, I’m waiting for my characters to guide me. Throughout the day, I write down ideas that pop up while I’m in the dentist’s chair, in the middle of a hike, in the shower – or sometimes when I’m officially “writing.” My job is to collect the ideas and show up at the computer every day. This showing up feels like what I should be doing. Writing fiction is what I’ve been working toward for decades. In answer to the question posed by poet Mary Oliver
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
My answer is to listen to my characters and do their bidding.

*************************************************

Join adoptee Elaine Pinkerton on monthly Mondays for reflections on adoption and the writing life. Please email elaine.coleman2013@gmail.com if you’d like to propose a guest blog. Comments are welcome!

Author, Elaine Pinkerton, traveled to India to research her latest novel Hand of Ganesh

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Why I Write about Adoption – Part Two

Tags

adoption, Adoptive Mom, Celebrating Adoption, Fiction, Guatamala

Note: Welcome to the second installment of a two-part post by author/ adoptive mother Jessica O’Dwyer. For part one go to https://tinyurl.com/y3uff7xz

A novel was begging to be written, but I couldn’t find my way in…

Then one summer, we hired a driver who took us to Nebaj and Rabinal, in the highlands of Guatemala, the epicenter of the country’s armed conflict. It turned out our driver had been a little boy during those hard times. He took us to graveyards and memorials, churches and village squares. We met other survivors of the conflict and visited Rabinal’s museum honoring the victims. Everything came together in my mind. The beginning and end of the novel, the entire narrative arc.The story in Mother Mother is told from two points of view: Julie, a white adoptive mother in California, and Rosalba, the Ixil Maya mother in Guatemala whose baby Julie adopts. Both mothers grapple with power and race, deception and love as they navigate their life circumstances, and life choices.

I love my children and our lives together. Adoption is how my family was formed, and my family is the best thing in my life. But after nearly two decades as an adoptive mother, I know our lives together started at chapter two. My children’s first chapter was written before we came together, when they were formed in their mothers’ wombs and later separated from them. As a writer and adoptive mother, I honor that first chapter by acknowledging and exploring it.

After the publication of my second book, people ask if I’m planning a trilogy. Possibly. To me, adoption is the most fascinating subject on earth.

*********************************************************************

Jessica O’Dwyer, an adoptive mother, lives in California with her husband, son, and daughter. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Adoptive Families and Marin Independent Journal.

Celebrating National Adoption Month

Tags

Adopted daughter, adoption, Celebrating Adoption, Fiction, Jessica O'Dwyer, nonfiction

November is National Adoption Month — a time set aside to celebrate families that have grown through adoption. The goal is to raise awareness of the more than 125,000 children waiting in foster care in the United States. As an adoptee who writes both nonfiction and fiction centering on the “adoption theme,” I’ve often encountered fascinating stories and individuals through the online adoption network.The adoption triad comprises Adoptive parents, Birthparents, and Adoptees. I’ve enjoyed meeting people from every part of the triad.

Author Jessica O’Dwyer is one of those individuals. After reading her beautifully written books Mamalita and Mother Mother, I “met” (through her website) Jessica O’Dwyer.  Jessica is an adoptive parent; I’m an adoptee; we’re both authors. It’s no surprise that we’ve become online friends. In fact, we were recently interviewed by Santa Fe’s public radio station, KSFR (101.1). Here’s the podcast.

 

My first adoption book was a nonfiction collection, diary entries about growing up as an adopted daughter and feeling that I had to pretend to be the “real” daughter. It documents my life from the 1950s through the 1980s and concludes with a acceptance and reconciliation with the past.

My second adoption-themed book, All the Wrong Places is a suspense novel. Adoptee Clara Jordan moves from the east coast to Red Mesa, New Mexico, and begins a teaching year at the American Indian Academy. Shortly after the start of a new semester, headmaster Joseph Speckled Rock is found dead on Clara’s classroom floor. Both teacher and students are shocked.

Clara deals with her students’ grief and her own frustration by daily running in the rough hills surrounding the academy. Carnell Dorame, a talented student and Clara’s favorite, uses the Internet to trace the identity of her birthmother. The school’s computer teacher Henry DiMarco invites Clara out for a date and they end up falling in love. Henry, however, is not what he seems. His real business is smuggling pottery, an enterprise that is tied in with the death of Speckled Rock.

When Clara begins to suspect Henry’s dual nature, he decides that she is in the way and breaks up with her. She runs to a remote arroyo and underground cave studying petroglyphs that might lead to her birthmother’s identity. Not to give away the ending, I’ll just say that the question—Will adoptee Clara Jordan be able learn about her family tree or will she die trying? — is answered by the book’s conclusion.

The Hand of Ganesh – Publication Date 2021

Third in adoption theme is The Hand of Ganesh, an adventure story. Clara Jordan and her friend Arundhati (“Dottie”) Benet travel to India in search of Dottie’s birth family. The novel is finished and being edited.

Throughout the month of November, I’ll be publishing guest posts that reflect different parts of the adoption triad. Stay tuned!

*****************************

Join Elaine Pinkerton on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life.

Comments are welcome!

 

My Writing Life ~ From Fact to Fiction

Tags

adoptee, adoption, diary-writing, Fiction, India, Native American, nonfiction, reunions, Searching, Southwest, suspense, writing

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are. – Joss Whedon

It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is just having written.
Robert Hass

*******************************************************************************************

I’ve enjoyed a lifetime of reading novels, and for the past decade, I’ve devoted my energy to writing them. A shift of focus, closer to my heart. Previously, my writing life had been devoted to nonfiction. As a young child, I recorded the events of each day in a diary (a habit that I’ve continued to this day!) For a decade, I made my living as a technical writer in the Information Services division of Los Alamos Laboratory. In the early 1980s, my love of hiking, running and bicycling resulted in the guidebook Santa Fe on Foot-Exploring the City Different. The fourth edition was published last year by Ocean Tree Books.
In 1991, another nonfiction book followed: The Santa Fe Trail by Bicycle, an account of my 1,000-mile bicycle journey from Santa Fe to New Franklin, Missouri. Fifteen of us cycled from Santa Fe to New Franklin, Missouri. We biked from dawn until afternoon, camping every night. My book began as newspaper articles. After each day of bicycling, I’d handwrite an account and fax it to The Albuquerque Journal. The quest for a fax machine took me to some unusual places. I’d bike around whatever town we’d camped near looking for a business that had a fax machine I could pay to use. The most offbeat fax machine location was an undertaker’s showroom, the friendliest was a bookstore.
Other nonfiction books came, one after another. From Calcutta with Love-The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard; The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries. My true love, from adolescence forward, was fiction. At long last, I’m realizing that dream.
I began the journey into the world of fiction-writing with a WWII suspense novel Beast of Bengal. It was inspired by a comment my brother John made about our father Richard. After Daddy died, I asked John to send me all the letters from WWII that my parents exchanged. “He didn’t DO anything,” John grumpily replied. “Nobody will be interested in these letters.” My brother was dead wrong. People were very interested in the archived letters, and From Calcutta with Love sold out. Texas Tech University Press, the publisher, returned full rights to me, and the book is currently being considered for re-publication by Pajarito Press.
In 2017,Pocol Press published my second novel All the Wrong Places, a page-turner set in a fictitious Native American school. Teacher Clara Jordan has to run for her life when her duplicitous lover Henry DiMarco realizes she is aware of his criminal activities. Moreover, she must draw upon inner strength to help her students survive the ragged remains of the school year.
One book just leads to another. Clara Jordan, my heroine, has more to tell. In All the Wrong Places, she lost her best friend, broke up with a bad boyfriend, and learned that the birthmother she’d been seeking died in an accident.

In  Hand of Ganesh, my girl moves from Red Mesa, New Mexico to Santa Fe. She meets Arundhati “Dottie” Bennett, a fellow adoptee, and they become close friends. Clara decides to help Dottie search for her origins. To do the necessary sleuthing, the two women must travel to Southern India. A daunting challenge, but as I left Clara and Dot, they were plotting and scheming for a way. What happens next? Though I have a general idea, I’m waiting for my characters to guide me. Throughout the day, I write down ideas that pop up while I’m in the dentist’s chair, in the middle of a hike, in the shower – or sometimes when I’m officially “writing.” My job is to collect the ideas and show up at the computer every day. This showing up feels like what I should be doing. Writing fiction is what I’ve been working toward for decades. In answer to the question posed by poet Mary Oliver
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
My answer is to listen to my characters and do their bidding.

*************************************************

Join adoptee Elaine Pinkerton on monthly Mondays for reflections on adoption and the writing life. Please email elaine.coleman2013@gmail.com if you’d like to propose a guest blog. Comments are welcome!

Author, Elaine Pinkerton, traveled to India to research her latest novel Hand of Ganesh

Clara and Dottie go to India

Tags

adoptees, birthparents, Fiction, India, Khumba Mela, roots, Searching

Returning to Fiction

Today, going from the nonfiction world (writing about adoption) to fiction (still writing about adoption), I’m presenting scenes from my longtime novel-in-progress, Clara and the Hand of Ganesha. For months, the book gathered metaphorical dust. A new year, a fresh start, or rather a re-start. The central themes of adoption and the search for authenticity are propelling the book forward. This is just a preview and may not be exactly what ends up in my novel.

Here’s a brief summary: The two central characters are both adult adoptees. Clara Jordan, part Native American, loves her adoptive parents, but feels driven to find out about her origins. Arundati Ragan, known to her friends as “Dottie,” lost her adoptive parents in the Mumbai massacre of 2008. She now longs to go to India to search for her birthparents. Like Clara, she is challenged by the mystery surrounding her origins. When the two adoptees’ paths cross, they become friends and decide to travel together to India.

Scene One:

Arundhati Benet was pushed open the library’s heavy doors. Dot Benet, as she was

Searching for clues

known to her friends, shouldered in a briefcase heavy with articles from magazines, books, handwritten notes. She also lugged a carrying case with a new MacBook Thin and charging device. She headed toward the nearest carrel. Dottie Benet was not her original name. Born Arundhati Rangan, she was one of two adult adoptees in the library that day..

Scene Two:

“May I help you find anything?” The reference librarian’s question pierced through Clara’s reverie.

The University of Virginia Library’s deep silence so engulfed her, she thought rather than voiced her first response. Well yes, my roots, my origins, where I’m from. I doubt that you could help me with that.

The middle-aged gray haired, bespeckled woman stood impatiently, hovering over Clara’s table, awaiting an answer.

Finally Clara answered, “I’m doing some genealogy research. Just browsing…actually, looking for ideas.”

“There are some websites I can direct you to.” When Clara didn’t answer, the librarian continued. “If you’ll tell me more about your search, maybe there are materials right here in the library that you could begin with.”

This woman looked trustworthy. Why not tell all? She was getting nowhere on her own, and the longer she waited, the less likely that she’d discover the truth.

Clara, who usually didn’t confide in anyone – much less total strangers – decided to open up.

Author’s Note: Stay tuned for monthly installments. If you’ve read ALL THE WRONG PLACES (available from Pocol Press or Amazon), you’ll notice that my protagonist is named “Clara,” just like the heroine of my last novel. Not an accident! This new work-in-progress is a sequel.

Join Elaine on alternate Mondays.

ADOPTING FICTION~Characters in Search of a Plot

Tags

adoptee, Adoptee Recovery, Characters, Deadline, Fiction, India, Interviewing, New Mexico, novel, writing

January is a great month for new beginnings.

As an author and adoptee, I find myself forever involved in a personal makeover. Maybe it’s the extreme sort of freedom granted by having more than one family tree – the parents to which one is born and the adoptive parents who raised one. Whatever the case, I find myself often embarking on new ventures. This became crystal clear during the creation of my memoir The Goodbye Baby~Adoptee Diaries. During the 50s,60s and 70s, I sought to be the kind of daughter my parents wished they had, never meeting my own impossible standards. Harvesting my journals for that book was a route to being at peace with having been adopted. It freed me to write other books.

Searching for characters took me to Mahabalipuram, India

Always a new avenue… However, the constant thread has been and will always be writing.  After the debut of my guidebook Santa Fe On Foot-Exploring the City Different, I suffered from post-publication letdown  This reaction is not uncommon. With writers I know, the joy of completing a book brings with it a dreary vacuum, an emptiness. The only solution is to begin another book.
Good news: I have a novel coming out this April, All the Wrong Places. It’s being issued by Pocol Press, an independent publisher located in Clifton, Virginia. Here’s the plot…
Adoptee Clara moves from the east coast to Red Mesa, New Mexico, and begins a teaching year at the American Indian Academy. Shortly after the start of a new semester, headmaster Joseph Speckled Rock is found dead on Clara’s classroom floor. Both teacher and students are shocked.
    Clara deals with her students’ grief and her own frustration by daily running in the rough hills surrounding the academy. Carnell Dorame, a talented student and Clara’s favorite, uses the Internet to trace the identity of her birthmother. The school’s computer teacher Henry DiMarco invites Clara out for a date and they end up becoming lovers. Henry, however, is not what he seems. His real business is smuggling pottery, an enterprise that is tied in with the death of Speckled Rock.
    When Clara begins to suspect Henry’s dual nature, he decides that she is in the way and breaks up with her. She runs to a remote arroyo and underground cave studying petroglyphs that might lead to her birthmother’s identity. But it seems she is not alone…
Will adoptee Clara Jordan be able learn about her family tree? I can tell you this much: Clara does learn about her birthmother, but it is not a good reunion. She’s left with more questions than answers.

In Hindu tradition, Ganesha is a god of wisdom and success

I’m now at work on a second novel in the Clara Jordan series, The Hand of Ganesha. My heroine Clara moves to Santa Fe, New Mexico, still questing. There she befriends Arundhati Benet, another adoptee. The two discuss traveling to India to trace Dottie’s ancestry. Their friend Sanjay Roy invites them to go with him to Chennai, Tamil Nadu, where he has relatives. The two women end up being separated from Sanjay. They find themselves at a Kumba Mela festival and either find a clue as to Dottie’s real origins – or not. I’m “interviewing” Clara and Dottie. Daily “free writing” has yielded character revelation and background.r than imposing a plot, I listen to what they have to say about what happens.

Does the interview method work? Time will tell. I’ve given myself until Valentine’s Day to decide on a plot. After that I’ll begin the “real writing.” I’ll be armed with a plot, but that will be subject to change. The characters will have the final word.

********************************************************************

Join author Elaine Pinkerton on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption, writing, hiking and living in the Southwest. Stay tuned for news on All the Wrong Places, and check out http://www.santafeonfoot.com. Your comments are invited!

Poetry Monday

Tags

adoptee, Cats, escapism, Fiction, IRS, libraries, moths, nonfiction, Reading as therapy

A Series of Unfortunate Events

~Lemony Snickett: Book series for children

First it was a cat bite (yes, my own beloved Mr. Chapman when I was trying to keep

Even the best of friends, when engaged in a fight, becomes a wild beast.

him from getting into a fight with Fred, the neighbor’s cat…don’t ask; it was a stupid mistake)…

Then it was a letter from the IRS saying I owed more money (I didn’t but the snarky missive sounded ominous and I had to take it to my CPA for clarification and a final sigh of relief)…

The last straw was a massive invasion by tiny closet moths. Those pests had laid eggs in every one of my 15 Persian area rugs and even gnawed away at wall-to-wall carpeting. (I had the rugs removed, washed and moth proofed and the wall-to-wall steam cleaned; Every closet was treated for moths; I got rid of half of my wardrobe…a massive purging.) Exhausting and expensive but a war I was determined to win.

Thus today’s poetry offering, one which reflects the way I’m feeling and also expresses love for my favorite go-to activity when life becomes too much. READING READING and more READING!

PLEASE BURY ME IN THE LIBRARY

Lately I’ve found myself reading a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction works, often from my own at-home bookshelves

by J. Patrick Lewis:

Please Bury Me in the Library
Please bury me in the library
In the clean, well-lighted stacks
Of Novels, History, Poetry,
Right next to the Paperbacks,
Where the Kids’ Books dance
With True Romance
And the Dictionary dozes.
Please bury me in the library
With a dozen long-stemmed proses.
Way back by a rack of Magazines,
I won’t be sad too often,
If they bury me in the library
With Bookworms in my coffin.

Are You a Book Person?
A good book is a kind
Of person with a mind
Of her own,
Who lives alone,
Standing on a shelf
By herself.
She has a spine,
A heart, a soul,
And a goal —
To capture, to amuse,
To light a fire
(You’re the fuse),
Or else, joyfully,
Just to be.
From Beginning
To end,
Need a friend?

*******

Have you ever felt like escaping a slew of troubles through binge reading? Have you found comfort in a library? Please share your own favorite “reading escape routes.” And while you’re at it, sign up for my reflections on adoption and life— published every other Monday.

The Goodbye Baby gives an insider view of growing up adopted.