Now Presenting: Leslie Lehr

I'm so happy to have the luminous, TALENTED Leslie Lehr on the blog today to celebrate the release of her latest novel, What a Mother Knows: an unsettling, emotional and suspenseful novel of the unshakable bonds of motherhood, in which Michelle Mason not only loses her memory after a deadly car crash, but can't find her 16-year-old daughter, the one person who may know what happened that day. But the deeper Michelle digs, the more she questions the innocence of everyone, even herself. A dramatic portrayal of the fragile skin of memory, What a Mother Knows is about finding the truth that can set love free.

NYT Bestselling author Caroline Leavitt called it an "achingly moving suspense drama. Dark and unsettling, but with a ray of hope like a splash of light, and a knockout ending you won't see coming."

Leslie has stated that it will be a few years before her next novel is available, so savor this one--I know I plan to!

1) What inspired you to write What a Mother Knows?

When my daughter was in middle school, she started crying at night, every night - and I felt so helpless. I imagined the worst. I wrote an essay called “Parenting Paranoia” that Arianna Huffington excerpted in her book, On Becoming Fearless. But I was still afraid.

Then I had jury duty on a manslaughter case in which two women were suing the driver of a car that crashed into a sports bar and killed their sons. We had to decide on the value of their loss. And so, in the worst of what-ifs, I started worrying about what my daughter’s value was to me, who I was without her…and how far would I go to protect her.

2) Who are some of your author idols? 

Different novelists inspire me for different reasons. Starting out, I idolized Carolyn See, Margaret Atwood. and Isabelle Allende. I love current authors who combine beautiful language with solid storytelling, like Leslie Schwartz and Carolyn Leavitt. I love Jane Porter for writing as if she’s my best friend telling me a story. I like Heather Gudenkauf and Jillian Medoff for sucking me into their worlds and making me race to the end. I love Megan Abbot for being so snarky and Megan Crane and Emily Griffin for making me smile.  And I’m loving all the authors in the Girlfriends Group Book Club – so much diversity and talent like you, Jess, in this one group, it’s hard name everyone! I do favor women authors, not just because I can relate, but also because I do think it’s harder to carve out writing time, let alone a career.

3) What teenage memory makes you cringe?

Tumbling down the stairs in front of my first date and his hunky big brother, who was driving us to the Eighth Grade Dance. My girlfriend sewed a new dress for me  - a short flowered number – and I had a new pair of platform shoes that I forgot to buckle. I’d been crushing on this boy for months and was so excited that he asked me instead of a girl with bigger boobs. I thought I’d make a grand entrance when he arrived, and did I ever. He ended up being my boyfriend all through high school, but I could never look his big brother in the eye.

 
4) Are you a cat or dog person?

Both. I adopted a cat and named him Puppy when I started out on my own, because my apartment didn’t take dogs. My younger daughter had several kittens - Buttercup, then Cupcake - a friend asked of number three would be named Cup ‘O Soup. But they died tragically, so my older daughter adopted a black lab and named her Scout after the girl in To Kill a Mockingbird. When she left for college, I was traveling a lot, so we gave her to a family with another dog to play with. (We see happy pics of her on Fb all the time.) Both of my girls made up for it by adopting dogs as soon as they moved out after high school. It drives me crazy, but they love those dogs, so what can I do?

 
5) What advice do you have for aspiring authors?

1. Read!

2. Love the process, that’s all you have control of.
3. Lock your refrigerator.
4. Write something good enough to make your family proud, but don’t let the thought of your family stop you from writing something good.
 

6) If you could have any super power, what would it be?

I would like to zap my kids from afar to be happy and safe all the time.

~~~~
Isn't she lovely? Leslie is a prize-winning novelist, screenwriter, and essayist; What a Mother Knows is her third novel. She's also incognito as "Chemo Chick" in Karen Rinehart’s breast cancer blog, Sick of Pink. Book clubs, Leslie would LOVE to Skype with you after you read What a Mother Knows! (Which you're going to do, right???) She's got a beautiful website (www.leslielehr.com); you can also find her on Facebook (www.facebook.com/authorleslielehr) and Twitter (@leslielehr1).

Gearing Up

If you're an avid reader of this blog (stop laughing), you may have noticed a few changes to the layout. Yes, things are happening! A new header is in the works, and I'm also going to tackle my disaster of a website in the next few months.

Spring cleaning, yes, but also because I'm gearing up to launch Mandatory Release this July. *breathes into a paper bag* I have cover art, and I am DYING to share it with you all....soon enough. Julie Metz designed it, and guys: she did the cover for Judy Blume's Summer Sisters. Recognize any other names in her portfolio? She's amazing, amazing. More on this soon...

Mandatory Release is "officially" my third novel, but I actually started it fourteen years ago, under a different title, with a different plot and different characters. I've read the opening chapter at several book events years ago, so some of you may remember it.

I don't know if other authors are like this, but my novels feel sort of like my children; I always worry, at least a little, when I release them into the big, wide world. But with Driving Sideways and All the Lonely People, I felt they could take any kind of heat. Strangely, the book with the toughest setting and darkest themes and most vulnerable, honest, and raw characters is the book I'm most protective of. It's the book closest to my heart. It's the book that felt like opening a vein and bleeding onto the page.

Mandatory Release features my favorite character ever; if you liked Driving Sideways, I basically took Leigh Fielding, gave her a spinal cord injury, a crush on a coworker, mild anger issues, and a job in a prison. Oh, and I made her a guy. Okay, that sounds a little weird. But I think you're going to like Graham. He's got a sick sense of humor, lots of hope, and lots of heart.

It's a crazy mash-up of dick lit and women's fiction, written in alternating POV chapters. Maybe my tagline can be, "Throws like a girl, writes like a boy." My editor said it reminded him of Tom Perrotta, and I had to lie down when I heard that because The Wishbones is only one of my FAVORITE BOOKS EVER.

So. New author photo next week. Cover reveal soon. Blog and website overhaul underway. Final copyedits in process.

If you're in the Appleton, WI area this Wednesday April 17, I'll be at the Little Chute Public Library at 6:30 pm, for the Fox Cities Book Festival. I'm not sure what exactly I'll be talking about, but bring some questions--let's play "Ask Me Anything!" (Er, sort of.)

Sneak Peek: Yesterday I created a playlist featuring songs that would be my soundtrack for Mandatory Release. There's one key song that I didn't include, because if I did, I'd give a huge plot point away. I was all proud of how I figured Spotify out until I saw that a few songs didn't make it over on the embed, so you'll just have to pretend "Pursuit of Happiness" by Kid Cudi, MGMT, and Ratatat is there. Also, if anyone wants to make MR into a movie? I always thought "Vaya Con Dios" by Les Paul and Mary Ford would be a fun backdrop to a riot scene. Just sayin'.

Bad School Musical

Spring is in the air, and for me that means Grant Crunch Season: late nights, poor personal hygiene, sleepless nights, and the attention span of a cricket born in a fuel refinery.

When I was a kid, I liked spring a lot more. Except for our spring concerts. Every year, my entire elementary school put on an all-school musical in the gymnasium. The themes changed annually. When I was in second grade, we sang “Up, Up, and Away” and “The Trolley Song” for a transportation-themed musical, because there’s probably nothing more exciting for young girls than singing about cars, planes, trains, trucks, boats, and motorcycles. The next year my class dressed up like ragamuffin orphans to sing “It’s a Hard-Knock Life” for the school’s version of Annie. We did The Sound of Music in fourth grade, Peter Pan in fifth grade.

It was during that performance that the second-ugliest picture of me ever was taken.  Look at this!

 

Music Teacher: “Hey kid, you have a nice, fat head and look like a prepubescent boy. Want to be Captain Hook?”

Me: “Sure! I’ve always wanted to wave around a plastic hook hand while singing an off-key solo before a hot, crowded gymnasium full of parents forced to sit on hard, metal folding chairs. I'm going to look so awesome in that hat!”

The next year could have been somewhat redeeming. Our sixth grade class (the far-flung Eden Elementary contingent) would meet all the other sixth grade classes from Campbellsport at the annual 6th Grade Spring Camp experience--sort of a “meet & greet” before they threw us together in the junior high blender the next school year.

And we were sure to make a great first impression with our medley of Beach Boy tunes.

We earnestly practiced for weeks. Everyone had a part to play. Me? I pretended to ride in a car, bopping my head and doing some kind of hand motions to “California Girls” with three other kids from my class. We sounded awesome. We were so psyched. The day of the camp performance arrived, and we donned our surfer shorts, pastel tops, Swatch watches, leis, and dorky smiles. Each song had a carefully choreographed dance routine, accompanied by piano.  Jazz hands may have been involved.

The other sixth grade classes? Lip-synched to Bon Jovi in acid-washed jean jackets and sunglasses. They were accompanied by a boom box and somehow, a kick-ass laser show.  No one was told to smile. No one flashed jazz hands, but there may have been some rudimentary break-dancing.

Afterwards, we felt as if a trick had been played. At least I did. I’d spent years lip-synching into the mirror in my bedroom, only to never have the opportunity to publicly display my talents. Lip-synching was actually an option? As was maintaining some sort of cool factor in the critical weeks before the first day of seventh grade?

Also, it’s a miracle none of us were beaten.

Fast-forward two years to the eighth grade spring chorus concert. I vaguely recall singing a bunch of shitty rock songs (“R.O.C.K. in the USA” comes to mind), and the show was to close with a stirring rendition of White Lion’s “When the Children Cry.” All of us were supposed to sit on the edge of the stage, our legs dangling into the void before the front row—to make it more profound or intimate, maybe, or so the audience would have more difficulty seeing us…it’s hard to say. Our chorus teacher revealed the true extent of some childhood head injury when he said to us, “Everyone! Idea! Find a small child to bring with you for our final performance. The kids are going to sit on your laps while you sing ‘When the Children Cry.’”

Luckily, I had a three-year-old sister, so I was set. Others begged to borrow children from babysitting clients. Some classmates simply couldn't find a kid to sit on their lap for the song and were summarily banished to the edges of the line-up, which made the rest of us hugely jealous and resentful. I can tell you laps were urinated on, and children actually did cry. Beyond that, I've suppressed most of the memory.

Behind the Music: every kid in that class (one of two required electives--it was that or band) had to select and sing a SOLO in front of THE WHOLE 8th GRADE CHORUS CLASS that semester. And when I say "every kid," I mean every kid: the jocks, the nerds, the farm boys, the cheerleaders, the burnouts, the shy bookworms, ALL of us in our awkward, tuneless, voice-cracking, middle school glory. By the time we'd selected our Top 40 sheet music, practiced at the piano with Mr. Krumbein, and actually sung the fucker into a microphone before nearly fifty of our peers, a kid peeing on your lap during a White Lion song sounded great by comparison.

In case you were wondering, I picked "Heaven" by Bryan Adams. I made my friend Pam sing "The Living Years" by Mike and the Mechanics, and I still can't believe what an evil bastard I was back then.

More Home Reno, Before and After

Last year was a big year for remodeling at our house. In the winter of 2011-12, we gutted our second floor and rebuilt it from the studs up, moving walls and creating a bathroom that didn't make guests recoil in horror.

Then, because we hadn't yet had enough, we took on two more projects last summer. I haven't posted the Before and After photos yet (something about a book release and five grants due in a few weeks or whatever), but I'm finally getting around to it.

As some of you know, our house was built in 1885, long before things like electrical and plumbing codes or symmetry and safety existed. Our primary entrance does not lead you to a foyer, because that would make too much sense. Instead, you open the front door and land right in the kitchen. Which has FIVE doors: to the back hall, upstairs, downstairs bathroom, the porch, and the living room. When we finally tackle our kitchen remodel, this will actually make our job easier, because there's only so much room to put new cabinets when you have five freaking doors and two windows in a small room shaped like a box.

But back to my story. So you arrive at my house. The first thing I used to say when I took your coat was, "Welcome to the hovel!" The second thing I still say is, "She only pees when she's really excited. Sorry about that."

When you turn to your right, you enter the living room, which until last summer looked like this (minus the furniture):

Teeny-tiny. And don't you just love the blue carpet? It was probably installed in the early seventies--a used remnant from some shagadelic van. When it got really humid and hot in summers, it would smell like moldy, rotting death.

This used to be my office. Without the desk, you can get more of a feel for the delightful, stained orange carpet, which was a nice contrast to the blue in the adjacent living room.  I don't know what that big black blob in the upper left-hand corner of the photo is--it's either my thumb, or the ceiling finally caving in. Last winter I was showing some friends a funny video on the computer in that room--the video of the mullet guy playing "Careless Whisper" on sax? Anyway, at one point one of them looked up and asked me, "Uh, is this safe?" I honestly had no answer to that. We're all lucky to be alive.

In May, the contractor who'd worked on our second story emailed again, offering a deal if we had a project for him. Did we ever! Let's start by tearing up the carpet (put your gas masks on) and blasting the wall out between the living room and office. Don't forget to fix the ceiling! We took everything down to the studs again--all new plaster. So purty.

Did I mention we don't have a basement, so our furnace was in a little closet in the old office? Oh well, no basement means no flooding! And no place for J to arrange his ugly beer can collection!

Things are progressing. Look, new window trim, paint on the walls, and a fun light fixture! Also, holy damn am I sick of painting!

At the same time, we hired a crew to dig up our backyard and install a patio. There's pretty much no lawn to mow now.

 I read Gone Girl in the chair in the upper right-hand corner.

 And here's the living room After. No more blue or orange carpeting!

 This couch is the best ever. J's already making impressive progress on his Indent.

 My old Hope Chest, which my Dad used to call my "Hopeless Chest." My Godfather made it for me out of pews from the church in which I was baptized. (Sidebar: Isn't "pew" a funny word?)

Still trying to figure out what to hang over the TV. Daisy is barking at her Nemesis in this shot.

Maybe next year we'll tackle our kitchen and downstairs bathroom--the only two rooms in the house that have yet to be touched. And boy howdy do they need help! The floor beneath the toilet is squishy, and it's so close to the oven you can watch garlic bread brown under the broiler if you pee with the door open. *Pukes*  Also, the linoleum has more peaks and valleys than Appalachia. Also, Daisy used to snack on it as a puppy. So stay tuned. This house, like life, is always a work in progress.

I Shouldn't Have Had That V8

Was what I was thinking last night while I tossed and turned and watched the clock tick into the wee hours of the morning.

Well, the spicy V8 and all those pickles. I could feel all the sodium chugging through my veins, raising my blood pressure, desiccating my cells and turning my tongue into a dehydrated apple slice.

I guess I'm getting to that age, where sodium intake is a concern. *sigh*

Anyway, there are three things rattling around my head today:

(1) I met with several fantastic book clubs in the last few weeks and had so much fun. Two of them included members who were friends/acquaintances with two of my HUGE author crushes, Lauren Fox and Shannon Olson. Lauren will actually be attending the May meeting of one of the clubs, and I immediately started thinking of ways to pressure them to invite me as well, if only so I could sit behind Lauren and pet her hair. (Just kidding, Lauren! Maybe.)

It's like when you're in a decent-ish local band, shooting the shit with some fans, and one of them casually mentions that their next-door neighbor is Adele (or Geddy Lee from Rush, depending on your musical inclinations).

(2) Still in the major weeds at work. I have four Federal grant proposals due by mid-April, plus one outlier for a client in West Virginia (mountain mama, take me home....). It's the time of year I pay the piper for my summer off--but every year, I feel like I get through our crazy time by the skin of my teeth. These grants HAVE to be submitted, or I don't have a job. So you just pray there are no family emergencies, or funerals, or trips to the Emergency Room. (See you in May, loved ones!)

(3) I like to totally stress myself out, so I am also doing some behind-the-scenes work on Mandatory Release and prepping for three speaking gigs in the next two months. I'll be getting a new author photo soon, so I should probably stop eating all this salt or I'll look like Juanita the Ice Maiden.

Presenting Sam Wilde: I'll Take What She Has

I'm so excited to have Samantha Wilde on the blog today to discuss her new novel, I'll Take What She Has. Sam is such a sweetheart, and isn't that the most adorable baby on the cover?? I'd buy it based on the cover alone (but the story inside is wonderful, too!)

Tell us about your new novel. What inspired you to write it? 

Here’s a brief synopsis: Best friends since kindergarten, Nora, a reserved English teacher, and Annie, an out-spoken stay-at-home mother, wrestle with the green-eyed monster when the new history department hire at the suburban Boston prep school where they teacher, Cynthia Cypress, arrives on campus. A missing grandmother, a depressed sex therapist, and a financial crisis add to the comedy in a novel about imperfect friendships, mixed up families, the messiness of motherhood, and the quest for the greenest grass.

My running joke about this book is that I wrote a novel about envy and had to do extensive research! I really didn’t need to look much farther than my own grassy yard to come up with the felt experience of the novel. I started with three women, Annie, Nora and Cynthia. The novel, which underwent years of extensive revisions under three separate editors, has morphed almost completely since I first plotted the story. The heart of it, the meat of it, concerns friendship and motherhood and how envy changes both of these things—and changes the women, too. The book explores the idea that envy can eventually change someone into something better.

Book readings, signings, and events: tell us one wonderful memory and one awkward one.

When my first novel, This Little Mommy Stayed Home, released, I had a book launch at the amazing independent store, Odyssey Books. Because I’ve lived in this area for so long and have taught yoga to so many people, serving as a minister to others, a large crowd gathered. At the end of the night, the owner had to turn a friend away without a book. She had sold out all the copies of my novel and told me that in all her years that had never happened before! (I didn’t sell out, by the way, for my book launch of I’ll Take What She Has on Wednesday night and I tried not to be disappointed!)

Around the same time, I went with my mother, novelist Nancy Thayer, to do a book signing in Connecticut. When we arrived, the most amazing, enormous arrangement of flowers greeted us. My wonderful Aunt had sent them and they were clearly meant for two important, famous, awesome novelists. Then, we had about three people attend the talk! It was a beautiful, sunny July day after three weeks of rain…still, it can be hard. We had a lovely time with our three audience members and our flowers. I wanted to have an event equal to the flowers. Only in hindsight could I see what really mattered: spending that time with my mother.

How do you unwind after a horribly stressful day?

A good book. A good book can fix everything. I find reading so relaxing and healing and restorative. On a really bad day, after the children go to sleep, I might put on my pajamas early and dive into my bed. I really love my bed. My husband makes fun of me, but I get a lot of pleasure from hanging out in bed (reading, people, that’s all I meant!). Talking to friends also, the kind of long, meandering conversations I can’t have when children are awake. I often end my day on my bedroom floor with some gentle yoga poses, sometimes listening to an uplifting podcast.  Also: curling up beside my husband, knowing I have chocolate in my cupboards, watching my children sleep.

What advice do you have for your fifteen-year-old self?

I love that question. I’ve been thinking about it lately because a friend who started babysitting for us at twelve has just turned eighteen! I thought about what I would like to tell her if I could speak candidly. I would say the same to her as to my younger self: You are precious. You may not feel it, but you are. Live with a sense of your own value. Know, regardless of how others may treat you, that you are deeply loved. At fifteen, I struggled so much with wanting beauty and thin thighs and the adoration of boys. I wish I could pull that girl into my arms and give her a piece of the satisfaction I have now—much of which came through motherhood—from simply being myself.

What’s next from you?

The laundry. Then sweeping up underneath the kitchen table. I have to unpack the duffle bag from our trip last week and try to locate the playroom floor underneath the toys. But that’s probably not what you had in mind! Right now, I’ve got my whole focus on getting I’ll Take What She Has into the world. I call it the “little book that could” because of all the editorial changes it survived. I’ve put my third novel on the back burner; it’s there though, patiently waiting. I have two memoir books I’d love to finish. I wouldn’t mind another child either…. Probably what I should do is finish my cup of tea, floss my teeth, and go to sleep. Sometimes, what’s next is so ordinary! 

 ~~~

Thanks, Sam! For more on Sam and her books, visit her Facebook page, her website, and check out the terrific book trailer for I'll Take What She Has. 

Housekeeping

I'm blogging at the Girlfriends Book Club tomorrow at noon EST on how to decide whether going indie is right for you. You could also go rogue or go crazy. Whatever flips your skirt.

I hate to turn stupid comment verification back on, but I've been getting bombarded with spam comments lately, so bear with me. I know most of you aren't robots or cubicle spam slaves in a third world country, but you know how it is.

AND, posting may be light these days, because I'll be drowning in a pit of grants until late April ... but if anything amusing happens, you'll be among the first to hear it.

In the meantime, think spring! Daylight Saving Time is almost here, and the car in my clock will  only be 32 minutes slower again in a matter of days.