Tell Me What You See

People-watching is always an enjoyable activity, but it's a particularly useful one for writers. (As is eavesdropping, but that's a topic for another post). This past Friday night, I was in Nevada City to see my favorite local band, Saint Ashbury, play at Cooper's bar. Watching people interact in bars is pretty fascinating anyway, but small town bars filled with locals? Gold mine.

My friends and I arrived about 20 minutes before the band was due to go on and as we stood near the stage chatting, an older guy of indeterminate age walked by. He was balding, but his long white hair touched his shoulders and he had a long white beard to match. He was wearing a t-shirt, spandex exercise pants and white athletic socks, sans shoes. The woman I was talking to smiled at my raised eyebrow, and whispered, "That’s J_____.  He went home to change into those pants so he can dance tonight." Apparently J is a regular at Cooper's, and dance he did, by himself, with a lady friend roughly his age, and any woman who happened to be on the dance floor, including me. Amusement at his outfit aside, I started watching J be in the moment and enjoy the evening. He was content just to listen to the music and let it move him. His stockinged feet slid around the old wooden floor and he was in heaven.

I also met a couple who'd gotten married at the county court house earlier that day. The woman was dressed like most of us in the bar: sweater, jeans and boots. But the man, he had gone all out. He was wearing a vintage suit, complete with a white shirt, skinny tie, a fedora and black and white wing tips. I didn't ask, but was dying to know if she had attended their ceremony dressed as she was while her groom had pulled out all the stops.

People-watching is great fun, especially in cities like San Francisco or New York, but there's something inherently sweet about the eccentricities found in the small towns in the foothills. There's a delightful lack of self-consciousness, and I had the sense that no one--including the woman who was around my age and way over-dressed for a hole-in-the-wall bar on a rainy night--was trying too hard or thinking too much about how they looked. They were just out to have a good time on a Friday night.

Will J, the dressed up woman or the newlyweds (or some iteration of them) appear in my writing at some point? It's entirely possible. If we pay attention, real life shows us things we couldn't possibly make up. Power to the people...

A Billion Stars Look Very Different Today…

2016 hasn't been very kind to the entertainment world so far. David Bowie. Alan Rickman. Glenn Frey. What is going on?? The web is packed with celebrity tributes and remembrances, and of course Facebook is full of posts expressing grief over the loss of these artists whose work touched so many lives. High-profile celebrity deaths seem to neatly divide people into two distinct camps: those who don't understand mourning the loss of someone you've never met, and those who get it. (Guess which camp I'm in).

Not to take anything away from Mr. Rickman, who was an absolutely brilliant actor, and by all accounts I've read, a stellar human being, but losing a musician, especially a multi-faceted, brilliant artist like David Bowie, or an architect of a classic sub-genre like Glenn Frey, hits harder and cuts more deeply. Growing up listening to someone's music can influence everything from who we choose to hang out with to the way we see the world. I'll wager that most of us can name at least one musician or band that we absolutely feel spoke to us, for us and about us, (especially during our teens and early 20s).

It's difficult to quantify the impact of an artist like David Bowie. I keep reading words like "visionary" and "genius," and while appropriate, they fall short. Glenn Frey, a kid from Detroit with a gift for writing songs became an integral part of the 1970s Southern California sound. Their art is their legacy, and the music remains, but the loss is all too real...and the stars do look very different today. Thank you for all the incredible music, gentlemen, and the peaceful, easy feelings you inspired. 

Promises Kept

Reading a new book by a favorite author featuring returning characters is like getting together again with old friends. It just feels...right. I've been a fan of Robert Crais since my early days at Tower Books and have therefore been hanging out with Elvis Cole and Joe Pike for quite a long time.

One of RC's great strengths is his ability to keep his signature characters fresh, and reveal a bit more about them in each book. The Promise, the 16^th novel in the Elvis-Joe series, brings Scott and Maggie from Suspect into Elvis and Joe's world. It's risky to mess with a successful franchise, especially one with a large fan base, but Crais pulls it off. The Promise really is one of those books you don't want to put down. (No, I will not use the term, 'unputdownable,' even though Dictionary.com claims it's a word). I finished it after midnight.

My theory as to why RC's books are so successful is that his characters touch something in all of us. From Elvis' wise cracks and Pinocchio clock making up for his lost childhood, to Joe's sunglasses hiding the pain in his impossibly blue eyes, to Scott's efforts to repair what's broken within, and even Maggie the German Shepherd, who understands that pack comes first, i.e. take care of your own, we can all relate on some level. And we want very much for each character to triumph over adversity and find what they're looking for.

A good novel draws readers in, makes them form emotional attachments with the characters and creates a personal interest in the outcome. The Promise does all that and more.  

We All Shine On

Nothing slows down time like a good book. Or, more precisely, finding a book I can't put down forces me to make better use of my time. Amid the holiday craziness of extra hours at work, more socializing than usual and the mad rush to get everything done, I got completely lost in Anthony Doerr's "All the Light We Cannot See."

It's a complex story, with wonderful character development, and Doerr's stunning use of language and vivid imagery makes it a pleasure to read. But it went deeper for me. Perhaps it's because I'm the daughter and granddaughter of people who survived World War II by living in a cellar in Brussels while Hitler's army bombed Belgium. Maybe having an emotional link with such a dark time in history made me immediately bond with Marie-Laure, a young blind girl, as I pictured her making her way up and down the winding stairs in her uncle's tall house by the sea, in Saint Malo. Marie-Laure is only a few years older than my mother was at the beginning of the war, when nearly everything she had known changed dramatically.

I also developed a deep empathy for Werner, the young German soldier who is cast into the ugliness of war when he's just a small-for-his-age 14-year-old. Given my heritage, the Germans were of course the enemy, but I just couldn't see Werner that way. He was a boy, an orphan who ended up at an academy for Hitler Youth thanks to his expertise building and fixing radios. His and Marie-Laure's stories come together in Saint Malo, near the end of the war, as Germany loses its hold on France. Strangers and enemies, barely more than children, they experience the illumination of human connection. For a story full of the darkness of war, Doerr's novel is also full of light: sunlight on the ocean, the sea breeze drifting into the window of Marie-Laure's tiny bedroom, Werner's need to be decent, even in brutal circumstances, and kindness against a backdrop of brutality. Not all light can be seen, but it certainly can be felt.