Kick Start Your Novel

For the first time in several years, I’ll be teaching the Kick Start Your Novel class June 4,5,6,7 in Eugene, Oregon.

This series of four evening classes is an intense, hands-on novel writing workshop designed to get your novel going in the right direction. Classes are structured so you will learn about the internal structure of fiction and the key aspects of writing a novel, then work on your book in class.

This workshop is for the writer who has basic writing experience, is highly motivated and has at least a nodding acquaintance with the novel that dwells within. While you may work on your novel-in-progress if you insist, I strongly suggest that instead, you work on something fresh for the purposes of this workshop. Leave your old work at home and let the spirit of the moment move you. Trust the creative process and watch the magic happen.

Plan to attend all four sessions, and spend non-class hours working intensively on your book as well. Momentum is important. This class is not for the faint of heart, the weak-willed or those who are afraid of the intense internal examination that novel writing entails. Your level of experience is not as important as your dedication to the process.

The fun, intense class will take place over four consecutive evenings, June 4,5,6,7 from 6pm to about 9 or 9:30pm. Space is limited to six participants. Cost is $250 per person. Email me for more information.

The Tao of Yarn

Anyone who knows me knows that I knit. In fact, I’m kind of a knitting maniac. Not a day goes by without yarn handling of some sort. I make yarn, spinning it out of beautiful, silky fibers. I knit garments and things. Warm things for children and old people, fashionable things, utilitarian things, things of beauty, filled with the peace that I feel when I’m knitting.

For the last two years I’ve been knitting and/or spinning twice a week at a yarn shop in town, Textiles A Mano, run by Laura Macagno-Shang, a delightful woman of amazing expertise and artistic talents.  Inspired by her and the other spinners and knitters, my knitting has gone from mundane, meat-and-potatoes knitting to creating incredible laces, intricate cable networks and dozens of warm things for the Relief Nursery, a local charity that helps out parents and their children from newborn to six years old.

Most of the things I knit are given away to family, friends, or charitable organizations. I keep a few special things, of course, but it seems as though the minute I cast on a project, a person comes to mind and I begin to think about that person, meditate on his or her situation, and pretty soon that warm garment becomes first a thing of comfort for me and then a thing of comfort for the recipient. But this is not a blog post about what a great knitter I am. It’s about how we can all do little things to enrich a life.

Something as simple as a warm “chemo cap” for those going through treatment. Something as simple as a pair of baby booties for a friend’s new grandson. Something as easy as a set of felted coasters as a wedding gift. These are not items of great value, but I believe that they send good, healing heart-energy into the universe that is multiplied over and over and over again. When we give gifts from the heart, from our creativity, we affirm the recipient’s worth, we spend time in creative contemplation, we engage in constructive prayer.

And that is always a worthwhile endeavor. It adds love to the planetary consciousness.

What can you do today to make the life of a loved one — or even an acquaintance — better?

 

I love Edgar Allan Poe

Whenever I am asked, as all authors are, who the writers were who influenced me, Edgar Allan Poe is always the first to come to mind.

I was an odd child, and in the year between seventh and eighth grade, I spent all summer wearing my swimming suit and living in my bed, reading. I read the collected works of Poe, of course, and everything from Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan, Pelucidar and more), Ian Fleming, Rod Serling, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury… I read voraciously. The only time I got out of bed was to load the books in the basket of my bicycle and head to the library for another load. This immersion in literature was the most valuable use of time (though my mother never understood) for a fledgling writer.

I’ve since read most of those authors many times, none more than Mr. Poe: the author, the poet, the enigma, the influence. I glean new appreciation every time I read something of his.

Several years ago I was invited to contribute to an anthology entitled Poe’s Lighthouse, a collection of stories about the most mysterious story of all: an unfinished one by Poe. Chris Conlon did a nice job of putting the anthology together, and I was delighted to contribute. Now that story is available as a $.99 stand-alone short story for the Kindle.

I hope all Poe fans enjoy it. As always now and forever: if you read something you like, post a review.

Energy

Let me begin this post by saying that I am not a scientist. I am not schooled in engineering or any of the ways in which power is generated. I have a basic knowledge of many systems of the world, but I have no expertise. What I do have, however, is a modicum of common sense, and that is what this post is about.

It seems to me that drilling for more oil is futile. Whatever pools of it we find, it’s still a finite resource and as our population continues to explode unabated, it won’t stretch as far as we think it ought to or need it to. Ditto natural gas and all those fossil fuels. Finite. Any energy system that requires them is unsustainable. To me, it is sheer madness to be using up our fossil fuels in automobiles and airplanes at such a prodigious rate. But what’s the alternative?

Alternatives are all around us. The tides go in and out, twice a day, every day. This seems to me to be an enormous resource of power. Even the temperature difference in the oceans between the surface and thirty feet under could be used to drive a turbine. Hydro-power we know how to use; we need to figure out how to use it without damming up all the rivers. Geothermal is in its infancy, and yet what more abundant power could could there possibly be? We just need to be a little more clever about it. Run certain strips of metal through seawater and they become magnetized. Magnetism is a source of power. And, by the way, isn’t the whole world covered by a magnetic field?  Bringing the needs down to a small, local level, what if we put thick plates of steel at every intersection on thick springs that ran a turbine under the intersection? Cars driving over the plate would turn the turbine and make the electricity to run the streetlights. I bet each one of you reading this post can think of at least a dozen ways to power your house, your town, your corner of the world.

The problem with all the solutions we can think of is that the fossil fuels we are using up are still so cheap that it doesn’t pay to invest entrepreneurial money on an alternative. So what if gas goes up to $5/gallon? Oh well, fewer lattes at Starbucks, but we’ll still fill our gas-guzzlers. What if it goes up to $10/gallon?

What if there suddenly is no more gasoline? Surely somebody, somewhere will do something about that, right?

Well, the time is now, because all these fossil fuels are finite. We’re running out of them. Drilling will not help. Coal-mining will not help. Fracking will not help, not in the long run. Those are short-sighted, non-sustainable solutions to a problem that needs vision for the next two hundred years or more. Now is the time to kick these alternatives into gear and get them going so that when that day comes that the gasoline pumps run dry — and believe me, that day is coming sooner than any politician will tell you — we’ll have another way of doing things already in place. Already up and running. A smooth transition.

In this era of unfettered capitalism where greed rules the day, money is not likely to be invested into a new infrastructure of power until there is real money to be made, and that isn’t happening yet, because gasoline is still less than $5 per gallon.  We need to stop looking down at the gas pedal and look up toward the horizon.  We’re running out of fuel. Carpooling one day a week isn’t going to help. We need real, sustainable solutions, put forth by the best minds in the world (not politicians) and we need them now.

Moxie and the African Queen

I’ve been experimenting with publishing some short fiction on Amazon.com for the Kindle.

The latest short story I posted was “Moxie and the African Queen”, a sweet little read for kids of all ages. Inspired originally by Alexis America, whose beautiful watercolor painting still hangs on my wall, my daughter and I collaborated on the bones of the story for an anthology called Great Writers and Kids Write Mystery Stories, illustrated by the incomparable Gahan Wilson and edited by Jill Morgan, Martin Greenberg and  Robert Weinberg.

I buy stand-alone short stories from Amazon, and am interested to find out if anyone else does. This is the fourth short story to appear in this form. Apex published “Music Ascending,” IFD published “Crosley” and I previously published “Charlie’s Grave.”

Check them out. They’re $.99, and as always, if you like what you find, please post a review on Amazon.com.

And if you want, I have some far darker pieces I could post. Let me know.

2012 – The Year of Power

Settle down, relax yourself, and then play this video. Be patient, close your eyes or watch the images, and let the message wash over you and flow through you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJJ_AM5C4ns

 

I don’t know who this guy is, but his message resonates deeply.

Every Season is Cranberry Season

I should write a cranberry cookbook. I love cranberries, in all forms. I almost wrote that I like them even more than blackberries and raspberries, but that’s not entirely true. They’re so different, with different characteristics, moods, and creative potentials.

After Christmas, I buy cranberries on sale and stock up the freezer. I have lots of cranberry recipes.  In fact, cranberries are very versatile and can be chopped and added to lots of different things for a tangy surprise. I make juice, cookies, breads and scones, but most of all, I just like a good cranberry relish. There’s nothing new or different, particularly, in these recipes. They’re just designed to bring out the cranberry flavor.

Here are two recipes, one of which I just made. I love both of these, and we eat them year round.

Cranberry-Orange Relish

1 package cranberries (I chop them in the food processor while they’re still frozen so they don’t turn to mush)

1 whole navel orange, skin included

A good inch of fresh ginger

1 cup sugar

Chop the first three items together, add the sugar, mix and store, covered, in the fridge overnight to let the flavors blend.

Here’s another. Similar, and yet oh, so different:

Cranberry-Jalapeno Relish

1 package cranberries (I chop them in the food processor while they’re still frozen so they don’t turn to mush)

1 whole lime, skin included

1 jalapeno, seeded

1 bunch of cilantro

1 cup sugar

Chop the first four items together, add the sugar, mix and store, covered, in the fridge overnight to let the flavors blend.

Yum!

The Sunday Morning Soak

I don’t always take a long, hot bath on Sunday mornings. Mostly I do that in the winter, after a morning’s work, before the afternoon’s football game.  But whenever I, a shower taker, take a bath, it’s kind of a special occasion.

I’m rarely warm enough in the winter, but I am when I’m in the bath. My tub is deep, my bathroom beautiful, and I use a nice smelling bath oil that helps soften my skin that often dries out during the winter.

The bath gives me enough aromatic comfort to spend time thinking about what I just wrote and what I’ll write tomorrow. I can review my schedule or calendar in peace and in solitude, mulling without distraction. I can spend time giving thanks for my amazing life and find perspective in the silly things I worry over during the course of my busy life. The bath is a time to rest, to reflect, to pamper, to be nice to myself.

I know there are many religious, spiritual, communal and cultural rituals with regards to water, and immersion, and bathing and all of that. I’m sure there is a reason, as when I get out, and get dressed, I feel renewed in a way that only a long, hot soak can provide. I’m refreshed and ready for another stint at the computer or to pick up the knitting and turn on the game.

A Sunday Morning Soak: Worthwhile in every respect.

2012: The Year of Forgiveness

I’ve been naming my years for a while now. 2009 was The Year of Hesed (lovingkindness).2010 was The Year of the Tao. 2011 was The Year of Living Simply, and for 2012, I’ve chosen The Year of Forgiveness.

I’ve heard that to forgive someone means to merely allow them their path. Very simple, and my experience says that what is simple is best.

Many years ago, I hurt a lot of people who got caught up in my tsunami of self-destruction. I am soul-sorry about that, and everyone that I’m aware of has forgiven me for my actions during those dark times, for which I will be eternally grateful. I needed those times; they were a part of my path to today. Surely I can allow someone else their path.

I find that it’s easier to forgive someone the big transgressions, but what about the guy who cuts me off in traffic? I am usually outwardly calm, but in my head, I’m screaming: “You idiot!” I really don’t want to do that any more, so I’m going to stop it in 2012. I’m going to let the little things flow over me, making “allow them their path” my mantra for the year.

And I’m going to forgive myself, too, on a daily basis, for being imperfect and doing all the stupid things I do. I say the wrong thing all the time, I eat the wrong things, I still am tempted to slide into old behavior patterns. I no longer burn with resentment, but I can chew on a good one for a while before letting it go. I don’t want to do that any more, either, and so I won’t in 2012. Forgiveness is sustainable; resentment is not.

Living consciously is a decision. Each of us is faced with a million tiny decisions every day as to how to react to a million tiny situations. So in 2012, I will react with love in my heart and the perspective that while we all might be on different paths, the goal is the same.

I have a good feeling about what 2012 has to bring.

Happy New Year!

Something Happened To Grandma

My new true-crime book, Something Happened to Grandma,  has just been released in e-book form from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and all electronic formats. Rosetta Books did a fine job, as did Marilyn and Elliott Bardsley from Crimescape.

The Foreword by Marilyn Bardsley:

Gabriel Morris was a rambunctious but adorable child who was probably sexually abused by his father while his mother tried to win back custody of him. He grew into an intelligent and gifted adult, but there was something very wrong. As he grew older, serious character flaws and emotional problems emerged which caused made it impossible for him to hold a job for any length of time. Eventually his deceptions and deep-seated anger caught up with him, precipitating a tragic family crisis.

Elizabeth Engstrom is uniquely positioned to write this story. She lives in Oregon and attended Gabriel Morris’ recent trial, observing both Morris’ behavior and the impact that his crimes had upon his family. Known primarily as a novelist of mystery books with dark psychological landscapes, the chilling story of Gabriel Morris is one that dovetails with both Engstrom’s fiction and nonfiction accomplishments.

As the author of 13 books and more than 250 published short stories, articles and essays. Her most recent novels are York’s Moon, a critically acclaimed mystery, and The Northwoods Chronicles, a wonderful tale of dark fantasy. An author, teacher, editor and former publisher, she is a sought-after panelist, keynote speaker and instructor at writing conferences and conventions around the world. Since she completed her master’s degree in applied theology, she has begun a small interfaith ministry called Love and Mercy Ministries. She is on faculty at the University of Phoenix.  www.elizabethengstrom.com

“Something Happened to Grandma” Cover