Julia French

I am a fairly good speller, but I have my weaknesses. I always have trouble with sheriff – which letter doubles, the R or the F? What about ceiling – is that EI or IE? (I have to write it in the air with my finger every time.) Knowledge – to D or not to D? And judgment, shouldn’t there be an E in there somewhere, and if not, why not?  Yet I can correctly spell words like eccentric, appalling, and Renaissance. I am a stickler for correct pronunciation too, both out of respect for the English language and for fear of sounding dumb. However, I’m not perfect there, either. For years I thought the chief dweller on Mount Olympus was “Zee-uss.” “Zooss?” Who the hell was that, and why didn’t I know the right way to say this guy’s name? Because I had never heard it out loud, that’s why. In my younger years people would pat me on the head for such verbal mistakes as though I were some kind of child prodigy, too busy reading books to spend time in the real world. Now that I am well past that stage, errors like that just sound ignorant. All I can do is shrug and smile and try to say it right next time.

But I am not so innocent and eager to please as I seem. Sometimes my dark side comes out. Like a child reaching for a box of cookies on top shelf of the cabinet, I feel sort of forbidden glee in pronouncing selected words incorrectly. I like to scramble the word soufflé into “soof-ell,” which makes my culinary-minded friends twitch. I have been known to say “purpledicular” instead of “perpendicular.” When I come across a phrase in an older text such as “divers items of wealth” I whisper to myself, “divers, divers!” when I know darned well it’s pronounced “diverse.” I also take malicious pleasure in mispronouncing the old-style letter S, the one that looks like a lower-case F, in a lisping Daffy Duck accent: “Get fome Griftle of Beef from the lower Part of the Brifket, cut in Pieces the Bignefs of two Fingers, and put them in Water; take alfo some Griftle of a Leg of Mutton…” (The Whole Duty of a Woman, 1701, Gutenberg digital edition)

Good spelling and pronunciation isn’t a positive moral quality like being kind to animals or working with the homeless or listening patiently to your great aunt’s stories of her childhood for the hundredth time. However, having these things makes me feel warm inside and slightly smug, on a strictly personal level. I would be equally proud if I could play the trumpet, which I can’t to save my life, or if I could paint or draw, in my case the level of those abilities being so low that experts have measured them in the minus range.

So, like everybody else in the world, I am loud and proud where I can be. Anybody for zabaglione and escargot? Mmmmmm….

*image from Desktop Nexus

Inside my head I imagine myself at a book signing, fans of my latest work queueing up for autographed copies of my work in a line that stretches out of the bookstore and around the block. Policemen are directing traffic outside, and overworked bookstore clerks are glaring at me over the heads of hundreds of adoring fans.

“I just love your new book, High Ground,” one enthusiastic reader gushes. “Didn’t you also write Run for the Hills?”

“Oh, yes.” I nod sagely. “That was the first one of my books to make the New York Times Best Sellers list.” Bursts of admiring sounds come from the crowd and I smile, careful to keep my expression modest and humble.

In real life that scene would probably go like this: I am sitting in an empty corner of the bookstore with a stack of my books, looking anxiously at the people passing by me on their way to the children’s corner or the magazine racks. I hear a voice at my elbow – at last, somebody has fallen in love with my deathless prose!

“Wow, your new book High Ground looks awesome,” they say, pressing a copy into my hand for my signature. “Aren’t you also the author of Run for the Hills?”

Run for the Hills? Feverishly I wrack my brains and come up empty. As my lips are shaping the word “no” it comes to me. Of course I’d written it. All those anguished days and sleepless nights — this side of hell, how could I possibly forget I’d written Run for the Hills? Because for the time I was sweating over this book, I knew it as Milestone.

I admire the writers who always seem to find the right words to distill the essence of their work and elevate it to a higher level. Personally, I can’t do it. I have to sit down with my unfinished manuscript (sometimes a mere outline), talk to it, take it out for coffee, perhaps even dinner and a movie. Then I sit down with a pen and paper, generate a list of unsuitable appellations, and circle the three least obnoxious ones. Finally I am able to settle on the title by which I hope my novel will be known from this time forward. However, while I am still hunting around for that title I have to refer to my unfinished manuscript as something other than “that life-sucking black hole.” That’s where a working title comes in. Without a working title my manuscript remains a nameless, amorphous blob that slips through my fingers like warm jello. With a working title, the story acquires structure and identity and I gain some measure of control.

So, if you visit your favorite bookstore and see me sitting in the corner with a stack of novels at my side, come and talk to me about my latest work. Go ahead, ask me — “Didn’t you also write Anguished Draft?” And if I take a minute to think about my answer, please don’t think I have lost my memory. It’s just that during the time I was writing it, it was a Milestone to me.

(book titles made up for purposes of this post.)

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” as the saying goes. Well, I know my own road certainly is. When I get a great story idea, one that hits me in my guts and makes me hyperventilate, my intention is to write a good, rip-roaring tale about that idea. The trouble is, I almost never get there from here. I can carry a plot through to its logical conclusion, I can make it exciting and thrilling, but the finished product always seems to bear no resemblance at all to the idea I started with. I’m not referring to the normal changes of the creative process, I am talking about starting with skyscrapers or cheeseburgers or skiing in Colorado and ending up with a story about volcanoes, sea urchins, or Gothic cathedrals – it’s that much of a gap between my original idea and the end point.

Do other writers do it this way, or is it just me? I don’t know, but it’s next to impossible for me to finish a work with the same idea I started. But, as I have discovered and as Martha Stewart might say, this is a GOOD thing. Not only is my creativity enhanced, but that same starting idea can be recycled more than once, a sort of conservation of initial ideas, I suppose.

Waffles. To date, I’ve gotten two short stories and one novel out of waffles. The next time I am stuck for a fresh idea I will start with waffles again and see where they take me. Perhaps one day I will write a short story or a book that is actually about waffles, but for now those tasty treats serve as a jumping-off place for better things.

“No, not that one.” On the shelf to the right of the expensive gift pen sets I indicate another box, a cheaper, bulkier one. Thirty pens for $3.59, not bad. “I’ll take those, and a pack of pastel writing pads.”

“The legal pads are on sale today. The pastel ones are almost twice as much.”

“I know, but I’d like the pastel.” I require the pastel, I almost say, but I catch myself in time because I don’t want to be That Customer.

Since my Great Migration to computers years ago I have less need for actual pens and paper, but there are still some things I prefer to write out by hand. Brainstorming a new work from scratch is one of those things, but without my favorite cheapie pens and correctly colored paper, the center cannot hold and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world–my apologies to Mr. W. B. Yeats. If the barrel of the pen is too thin or too thick or the wrong shape, if the ink is blue and not black, if the paper has three-ring holes or has the wrong texture, or worst of all, is yellow ruled legal-size paper (oh, the horror – !), then all is not well in my universe. I can’t think properly, I can’t concentrate on what I have to get done, and I might as well go do the dishes or throw in a load of laundry or go outside and weed the garden because I’m not getting any writing done today.

 Just kidding–sort of. The look and feel of writing materials does matter to me, perhaps more than it should. I would rather use hot pink or Christmas green ink than blue (never, ever blue!), and I would sooner scribble my ideas on the back of a grocery store receipt than on one of those ruled yellow legal pads. If I had been present at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I would have held up the entire process because the quill came from the wrong bird.

I can remember life before computers, but I can’t imagine life without one. Neither can I imagine life without my pink, green, and purple writing pads and my grade-school quality black ink pens. These things satisfy my inner need to control freak about my working environment, and that’s OK. Just don’t get me started on pencils…or erasers…or sticky notes…

My favorite season has arrived at last!  Cool evenings, jacket weather, crunching through mounds of fallen leaves, cutting open pumpkins and scooping out and roasting their unborn children…these are the days I live for. Spring and summer just don’t have that mystique, and although I love winter too, winter embodies a different mind set entirely. To me autumn means gathering the harvest and preparing for the cold weather ahead, when one’s thoughts start to turn inward and pensive as one sits by the fire.

(image from Desktop Nexus)

Out of our five senses – sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, the one that has the most power over us is our sense of smell. Certain odors can evoke memories of our childhood, our first date, our last visit with a now-deceased family member, or some other significant time in our lives that is frozen forever in our minds.

The scent of brewing coffee gets me up on those mornings when I would rather lay in bed and let the cold winter day pass me by. The warm, yeasty smell of baking bread evokes the taste of my late mother’s homemade golden wheat bread slathered with butter. The rich, heavy perfume of peonies triggers memories of my grandmother’s living room and the black and white picture of cabbage roses hanging over the mantel. The odor of frying bacon reminds me of camping trips, damp sleeping bags, burnt hotdogs, and the crackling of pine branches in the fire circle. The odor of dried hay takes me back to my childhood on the farm and my faithful (but cantankerous) Appaloosa horse Nikki.

Our five senses (some people say six) are very valuable to us – we would never voluntarily go without any one of them. But the sense of smell, the one that would cost us perhaps the least anguish to lose, is also the sense that can bring us the most joy.

In real life, what we think of as “reality” depends upon what we perceive and the meaning we attach to it. Two people may take the same roller coaster ride, but while one thinks the ride was exciting, the other might see the same ride as scary and dangerous. From one objective shared experience we have gotten several different realities. I refer you to the Case of the Amazing Transforming Balloon.

It was a dark and stormy afternoon (it truly was, I swear). I was at my desk staring out the window and brooding over a short story that wasn’t coming together. Somebody in the apartment building next door had nailed a Garage Sale sign upon the trunk of a young tree and attached a blue balloon to it. I watched the wind play with the balloon for a while, then turned back to my work. When I looked up again I saw the balloon – the red balloon – tugging playfully on the string that fastened it to the sign. Last week I had passed my annual eye exam, but I had just mistaken a red balloon for a blue one.

Fifteen minutes later the story still wasn’t coming together so I stood up to stretch my legs. That was when I noticed the yellow balloon tied to the sign. It was definitely, unmistakably yellow. Had someone stolen the blue and red ones? Had they blown away? Was somebody switching balloons around and messing with my mind? I had to know. For the next ten minutes I stayed at the window and followed every move of that yellow balloon as it ducked behind the sign and then reappeared, as if to mock me. Then a gust of wind stronger than the others blew all three balloons around to the front of the sign. The trio of red, blue, and yellow balloons had been tied together, and whenever the wind changed direction the cluster rotated and a different-colored balloon was brought to the front of the sign while the others were trapped behind it. The mystery was solved.

Perception is everything!

Seeking escape from her abusive husband, aspiring newspaper columnist Rachel Jeffries travels into the hill country of Massachusetts, where she is saved from certain death by self-taught folk healer True Gannett. Armed only with his great grandfather’s knowledge, can True protect himself and Rachel and stop the swath of destruction started by the powerful magician Joshua Lambrecht and his obnoxious familiar?

A supernatural thriller with an exciting conclusion. Mystery, romance, and wizard battles.

Buy Hill Magic now at Amazon:  Hill Magick