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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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

Adopting a “Home Away from Home”

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Authors, Bellydancing, Farmers Market, Maxine Davenport, New Mexico Book Association, nonfiction, Novels, Santa Fe NM, writing

My town, Santa Fe, New Mexico, has a great Farmers Market, and, because of Maxine Davenport, retired attorney-turned-mystery writer, other local authors and I are now part of it. We comprise HOMEGROWN AUTHORS. The New Mexico Book Association sponsors us. Interested authors (who must be part of the New Mexico Book Association) apply two weeks ahead of time to be at the tables. HOMEGROWN AUTHORS is at the market Tuesday mornings from 7 a.m. till 1 p.m. and Wednesday afternoon from 3 till 7 p.m.. We greet locals and visitors, the latter hailing from all over the world. On a good day, we sell lots of our books.

Maxine, in her website http://www.davenportstories.com, tells how “Homegrown Authors” got started…
This will be the fifth year that Homegrown Authors has appeared at Farmers Market. In 2012, Rosemary Zibart and I were discussing the need for outlets where local authors could sell their books. Some bookstores had ceased selling self-published books, particularly if they were connected to Amazon. Rosemary suggested that we investigate the possibility of selling at the Santa Fe Farmers Market. Actually, she suggested that I do that research, and the result, after a meeting with the Farmers Market Board, was that we were allowed to set up a table. We tried the Saturday venue and discovered that Saturday buyers knew exactly what they had come for and were less interested in shopping for books. The noise made it impossible to converse with visitors. On Tuesdays there are many tourists, and local shoppers are more interested in stopping by for a chat.

While we remain independent, the New Mexico Book Association agreed to act as sponsor. We have seen an increase in book sales despite a decrease in member participation. Some authors find that they aren’t cut out to be booksellers and others love it. We’ve never had trouble filling our chairs.

****

Last Wednesday brought exotic music and a talented troupe of dancers.

The Wednesday market often features entertainment. Last week, we were entertained by a belly dancing troupe, the week before that, by “Wise Fools” and a children’s play. Speaking of children, they love playing in the market’s indoor area. Plenty of room for them to race about without being in anyone’s way. Homegrown Authors has a resident children’s author, Sandi Wright, whose book Santa Fe Sam delights children of all ages.

If you’re in Santa Fe, be sure to come visit us at the Market. We feature discounts, write inscriptions to order and are always happy to talk about the craft of writing. The beauty of the venue? In addition to being surrounded by a cornucopia of locally grown fruit and vegetables, the wonderful opportunity to meet our readers.

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

Join Elaine on Mondays for blog posts on adoption, hiking, travel, and the writing life. It’s all grist for the mill! If you have an adoption-related post in mind, send me a message: I welcome guest bloggers.

 

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.