My Best Friends are All Adventurers

by Patricia Sprinkle

My friend Miriam once confided, "I always wanted to be an adventurer."

She and I recently returned from a five-week trip to India and Nepal. She wrote me a note afterward: "Thanks for the adventure of a lifetime."  It was. The real purpose of our trip was to teach creative writing for three weeks to middle school students in a small village school, but we can also check "Ride an elephant," "Visit the Taj Mahal," and "See the Himalayas" off our bucket lists.

Only recently have I begun to appreciate how brave we were. We went alone and made our own travel arrangements, staying in moderately priced hotels and hiring our own guides. Everything went exactly as planned except when our train from Agra to Delhi took us to a station across the city from our hotel. We will never forget our late-night ride through Delhi traffic in an auto-rickshaw, also known as a tuk-tuk. Most of the tuk-tuks we saw had some religious talisman swinging from the mirror or painted on the front. We know why. Riding a tuk-tuk through India's traffic does wonders for your prayer life.

Or maybe we weren't so brave. Maybe we were just finally having some of the adventures our favorite characters have been having for years. You see, Miriam and I are both avid readers. As I think about it, all my best friends are avid readers. Seldom am I with a good friend that we don't discuss at least one book.

     If people who read are adventurers at heart, that goes double for writers of fiction. We inhabit two worlds most of the time--the mundane world our bodies move around in and the far-more-exiting world our characters know. No reader enjoys an adventure in a book that the author hasn't already experienced, revisited, and honed down to its bare bones.    


Maybe that's why the authors I know are so enjoyable to be around. Every one of them is as interesting as the people s/he writes about. While the mystery writers don't generally go around killing people, the romance writers are seldom involved in torrid affairs, and the southern novelists don't spend their entire days drinking mint juleps and coming up with cute new expressions, they are all curious about life and aware that there are more things under the sun than any of us will ever comprehend. As the late Charlotte MacLeod once said, "Don't write what you know, write what you want to know."  Anybody who meets Charlotte's quirky characters will be astonished at how many things Charlotte wanted to know.

So let's lift a glass to readers and writers, people who know that life is short and ought to be lived to the fullest. As a note says on the bulletin board above my desk, "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather let's skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, total worn out and loudly proclaiming, 'Wow! What a ride!'"

If your own life gets too dull, let me recommend a ride in Indian tuk-tuk.

Patricia Sprinkle is the author of twenty mysteries and three novels. Her most recent novel is Hold Up the Sky. A fourth, Friday's Daughter, will be released in March. 
 








   

Why Do You Write This Stuff?

Someone once asked me, “Why is it all your characters are so stupid?” The answer, although I didn’t think of it at the time, is that usually my characters are based on me.

I’m not saying I’m stupid – far from it. I’m extremely bright and highly educated. I have a PhD. I read books. Hell, I write books. Still, I do things that others might consider odd.

For example one time I came in the front door, and my wife asked me, “Where have you been?”

“Walking around the block,” I answered. I had some weighty matters on my mind that day, and I often find a stroll clears my head.

“Wearing that?” was Nancy’s follow-up query.

I studied my ensemble. A perfectly clean – well, almost perfectly – white terrycloth robe, cinched at the waist with a matching terrycloth belt. I also had on tennis shoes, but no socks.

“Please, tell me, please,” Nancy said, looking at the floor with a frown, and pinching the bridge of her nose as if she felt a headache coming on, “that you weren’t also talking to yourself.”

I considered. I probably had been talking to myself, but had no specific recollection. As I said, I had been wrestling with matters of weighty import, hence the reason for taking a stroll in the first place, and it seemed probable I had made my ruminations audible. Still. Talking to myself was probably overstating it by a fair margin; mumbling to myself was probably more like it. That being said, it must also be admitted that when dealing with complex topics, it is my practice to take both sides of the issue, to give every point a fair hearing. In the midst of a heated debate, I am prone to dramatic gestures, the better to emphasize a point.

Nevertheless, I did see Nancy’s point: a grown man strolling the streets in his bathrobe – reasonably clean or not – and talking to himself – be it ever so politely – is apt to raise eyebrows and attract the attention of passing patrol cars, especially if he is also gesturing to himself – even if it’s only in the give-and-take spirit of a free-wheeling debate.

Again, let me emphasize, contrary to appearances, I am not insane. I’ve never actually had a test to confirm this, but to the best of my knowledge, I am not insane. I just think differently. I do things differently.

This is why I write what I do. In my first novel, a mechanic believes that if he takes apart and rebuilds the same Corvette over and over again, saving the leftover pieces every time, eventually he’ll have enough parts to build an entire car.

I wrote this because it’s the sort of idea that occurs to me.

In my second novel, Paradise Dogs – due out this spring from Thomas Dunne Books, and a dandy gift for any occasion – the protagonist, Adam Newman, borrows a dozen loose diamonds from a jeweler. And loses them.

I wrote that because it’s just the sort of thing that would happen to me.

This same Adam Newman believes there’s a secret government project to dig a barge canal across Florida, and his son, the world’s least accurate obituary writer, is in love with his brother’s girlfriend, and…

Well, you get the idea.

These are the sort of people who walk around the block in their bathrobes.


Man Martin is the author of Days of the Endless Corvette, which won him Georgia Author of the Year in 2008. His next novel, Paradise Dogs, is due out this spring from Thomas Dunne Books. Visit him on the web at manmartin.net.

The Future of Publishing as I See It

As I pull up a stark white canvas to take my humble turn at Karin’s wonderful blog, fresh off the road from Kathy Patrick's delightfully wild Pulpwood Festival in Jefferson, Texas, it occurs to me that there’s no topic I’d like to address more right now than the future of publishing. (Note to reader, I’m not so sure I’ve taken my writing to the next level, so we may not go there. Only the muse knows. And may I add in a shameless attempt to hold your attention, that Pulpwood Pics of this most unique festival shall be forthcoming later in this post. )

Ironically, this very question concerning our industry’s future was put to an author panel I shared this past weekend with River Jordan and Deeanne Gist. My fellow panelists took turns speaking eloquently to the topic and then it was my bat. Because I somehow doubt the audience was riveted by my contribution, I’m choosing to consider this my do-over opportunity.

A world without books, could it really be? I can’t remember a day when the feel of a new book between my hands didn’t make my heart skip. I do remember being perched in a treetop scanning a long country road for the parish bookmobile. I can’t remember what life was like before letters made words and words made sentences. I do remember pushing open the bookmobile door and stepping my bare-footed self into my version of Disneyland. Book Land, books high, books low, darn that limit, anyway! How was a girl to choose from the treasures?

No, I can’t imagine a world without books. Many very smart people say I don’t have to, that books will always be with us. Other very smart people say they’ll survive, that nothing will really change. Still other wise souls say they’ll exist, but only as antiques; we won’t tote them around. Seriously, does anyone really know?

As I told the audience this past weekend, in the interest of full disclosure, I have a new Kindle myself. We’re still getting to know one another, but already we have a love/hate relationship. I love its immediacy. I hate its immediacy. The darn thing speaks loudly of what I don’t want said.

I would not have been able to imagine a world without books back when I was skinning my legs shimmying down that mimosa tree before the bookmobile could stop rolling, but I refuse to be scared of the future. For neither could I have imagined the type of access my children and grandchildren would have to the world’s written wealth.

What I wish I would have said to that book-loving audience is that they were seeing the future of publishing, that we were, at that very moment, living it in full color. It’s a brave new world where those who write the words are egged on, pushed, encouraged, and supported in mid-project by those looking forward to reading the words. Talk about throwing gas on a word fire! For those who love to tell stories, the stage seems set like no other time in history. I see the glass half-full.

Hugs,
Shellie

P.S. If you're still with me, please don't throw things at the screen. About those pics I promised you-- I was just a loading when I was suddenly overcome with the fear that I'd leave someone out! Hence, I offer you one solitary pic of the lady who is doing more for readers and writers than anyone it has been my privilege to know. I give you the inimitable Kathy Patrick posing as Tippi Hedren from the Birds on "Barbie Night". Please note her matching collector Tippi Barbie and the book-- it is signed by Tippi herself!