Who are my favorite authors? My favorite books? I’m asked this by nearly every group with which I talk, and the answer is that when I’m writing my own book, I can’t read at all. I do knit, which explains the yarn in books like Not My Daughter and Family Tree.
Once monthly, I attend Stitch Night at Iron Horse, a local yarn store owned by Debbie Smith, and she has just introduced something new to her knitters. The project is called Stitching for Babies (more…)
Rule #2. Cut – always. Repetition bores readers.
It’s taken me many years to learn this one – but, in fairness, cutting things you’ve worked so hard to create is devastating. I’ve often likened it to slitting one’s wrists and watching the blood flow away, which is a gruesome analogy, but apt. Sadly, cutting is necessary. Just as ancient doctors used leeching to remove bad stuff, so we writers use the DELETE button.
How did I finally learn?
Are books getting shorter, or is it my imagination? Last week alone, I picked up three books by three renowned writers, and found the length of each to be under 300 pages. These were not short story collections, but novels.
Hey, I have no problem with this. I’m curious, is all. Are readers driving this trend, wanting quick reads? Or is it the writer who runs out of plot?
I’ve always envied those people who could bake scrumptious cookies, decorate them, package them in pretty tins, and give them as gifts. Or bake a loaf of moist homemade bread, and put it in plastic wrap with a big red ribbon on top. Or take a glass canning jar and artfully layer it with the ingredients for something indecently good (like butterscotch brownies), screw the top on tight, and tie the recipe on with a ribbon.
Being a knitter, I think about homemade gifts a lot. Actually, how can I not?
Thanks to all of you who entered the contest I ran this summer. I’m pleased to announce that Barbara Braun of Michigan and Jackie Kenny of Rhode Island have won the last two Family Tree knitting kits. Congratulations, Barbara and Jackie. Your knitting kits will be on their way to you ASAP. For the others of you out there who want to knit up these patterns, which were inspired by Dana, Elizabeth, Saundra, and Lizzie, please visit your LYS (that’s local yarn store). Alternately, you can order the Family Tree Knitting Collection straight from Berroco.
I highly recommend it, because, now that September is here, we knitters are thinking of warm wools. In my case, it’s hats …
Think that only grandmothers knit? You’re wrong on two counts. First, I belong to knitting groups whose members include many twenty- and thirty-somethings. Second, those grandmothers in my groups don’t call themselves “grandmother.” They’re Mimi, Lala, and Grammi with an i, a whole new generation of with-it women who happen to have children who have children.
Knitting has changed right along with the women who do it. Those of you who’ve read Family Tree will already know this. Yarns today are exquisitely hand-dyed, needles are hi-tech, and patterns include stitch variations that would have shocked my grandmother right along with the Excel program generating them.
So why do people look down their noses at knitters? Is it zenophobia? Misogyny? Needle envy?
I do what I can to change the image. When I travel, I knit. I sit in airports wearing classy business attire – and I look pretty good, if I don’t say so myself – and I knit. Men occasionally ask how I got my needles through security. Flight attendants occasionally ask about the yarn I’m using (more intelligent questions, here). I am definitely noticed.
What kinds of things do I knit? At any given time, I have four of five working projects. I am currently (a) finishing a sweater for my youngest granddaughter, (b) working on a (sleeveless) sweater for me, (c) knitting a pair of gloves, (d) doing blocks for an afghan, and (e) making a wrap. The sweater for me is pure silk and includes ribbing with a twisted stitch that gives a beaded effect. The gloves are of fine-guage merino, hand-dyed, and knit with a picot edging around the long cuffs. The afghan blocks are done with a technique called mosaic knitting, a different pattern each month. And the wrap is from a pattern inspired by one of DKNY’s signature sweaters.
Very different stuff. I may not live long enough to see the image change, but some of you will. One thing’s for sure. If the cost of gas keeps climbing, self-starting hobbies like knitting will look better and better.
As of Tuesday, June 24, Family Tree is out in mass market paperback. To mark its publication, I’d like to give away the two final knitting kits I have here at my house.
Those of you who have read about Family Tree on my site know that knitting is part of the protagonist’s past, something she loves doing, something that soothes her. The same goes for me. I have always been an avid knitter, which is why our partnering with the Berroco Yarn Company for the Family Tree tour was so exciting. Prior to the book’s original publication, I had the joy of visiting Berroco and working with master designers Margery Winter and Norah Gaughan to create the “Family Tree Knitting Collection,” which consists of patterns that are either knitted by or worn by various characters in the book.
Each of the kits I’m giving way in this contest contains 20 (yes, 20!) balls of Berroco Pure Merino, a pair of gauge-appropriate needles, and the “Family Tree Knitting Collection” pattern book.
What do you have to do to enter the contest? Simply visit CONTACT and send a note asking to be entered in the drawing. The deadline is Labor Day – that’s Monday September 1, so that the winners will receive their kits just as they’re starting to plan their knitting for fall and winter. Not a knitter yourself, but know someone who is? Why not enter to win a kit for them? They’ll love you forever.
Last night I made my first visit to a book group discussing The Secret Between Us, and I have to say I was a little nervous. For one thing, I had laryngitis and had been whispering for two days to “save” my voice, but even then, I wasn’t sure could make myself heard. If you’ve ever had a bad case of laryngitis, you know the sheer effort it takes to produce sound.
Secondly, I wasn’t sure what I’d be asked. I’ve made many dozens of visits to book groups discussing Family Tree, but The Secret Between Us? This was the first. Okay, now, I have loads of things I would ask if I were talking with the author of this book. But what would this group ask? I had no idea.
An hour before the meeting, drinking hot tea laced with lemon and honey, I pulled The Secret Between Us off my shelf and flipped through just to remind myself of the story. If that sounds awful, take pity, please. I am up to my ears in my next book, which means total immersion in the characters, the plot, the themes. Wrenching myself from that and reimmersing myself in a whole other book takes some doing. Funny, though, the act of flipping through the pages did the trick. That quickly, it all came back.
Dinner was a silent fifteen minute thing with my husband, who is getting tired of my not having a voice, but there was no help for it last night. Leaving him to clean up, I came up here to my office to read up on the group I would be visiting. In planning each of these visits, my assistant asks for as much information on the group as possible. It helps me envision them and makes the time more fun.
My phone rang at eight on the dot. I took a breath and answered, forcing out a hello as best I could. It wasn’t pretty. But at least the women on the other end could hear me. So the voice worked. And the questions they asked? Amazing. They started by observing that I have children (they’d done their homework, too), and asking whether I would have done the same thing as Deborah if what happened to her daughter and her had happened to one of my sons and me.
It was a really thoughtful question. The answer is “yes,” to which several of the women voiced their agreement – and that set the tone for the evening. We went back and forth discussing what mothers do, agreeing for the most part but raising thought-provoking points – like after reading the book would we still have done the same thing in that situation? These women made me think in the way friends around a table would do.
Thirty-five minutes passed in a wink, and though my voice was growing worse for the wear, I would have talked even longer if – would you believe? – I hadn’t had another group to visit at nine.
The Secret Between Us turned out to be a terrific discussion book. Let me tell you, that’s a relief. And my voice is better today. Still not great. But better. And I don’t have another book group visit until next Tuesday. Should be perfect by then!
Naturally, I’m thinking about this because my new book. The Secret Between Us is on sale, contests are running, and I’m booking phone visits with reading groups to discuss it. Secrets – why we keep them, when we tell them, whether they help or hurt – are bound to be part of the discussion.
Want to help me prepare? Here are some questions.
Yes or no. Do you have a secret you’ve never told another living soul?
Yes or no. Did you ever keep a secret from a parent?
Yes or no. Have you kept a secret from a spouse?
Yes or no. Are there any situations when keeping a secret is the best thing to do?
I thought about these issues often while I was writing The Secret Between Us. Using the word ‘secret’ is something of a set-up. From the get-go, the reader knows that a secret if the focal point of the book.
If you’ve read my earlier blogs on this book, you’ll remember that its original title was Driving at Night. I loved the ambiguity of it, the juxtaposition of the physical act of driving at night, as occurs in the opening scene of the book, with the figurative act of feeling one’s way through the murky times in life. My publisher came up with The Secret Between Us, and from a marketing standpoint, it is better. There’s something about a secret that makes people lean in, cup an ear, and listen close.
What is it about secrets that makes them so appealing? Is it their hidden nature? Their potential for dirt or intimacy or even betrayal?
When you think about it, secrets are a staple of fiction. I’ve dealt with them in many of my books. Jenny, in Flirting With Pete, kept a major secret. The secret held by Gretchen, the title character in The Woman Next Door, kept the tension up through three neighborhood marriages and much of the book. And no less than four characters grapple with secrets in Family Tree.
One of my favorites when it comes to secrets is For My Daughters. This is the book I wrote after reading The Bridges of Madison County and seriously doubting that a woman could meet the love of her life during a summer fling and afterward return to her life with no one ever the wiser. My Virginia wasn’t so lucky. Now, at the age of seventy and in failing health, she has a secret to tell her daughters. The reader learns that at the outset, and doesn’t learn the secret until the end of the book. It keeps her reading.
So. How about you? Right now, right here. Want to share your thoughts about secrets?
In most major publishing houses today, an author has a publicist assigned to her book. In my case at Doubleday, that’s Todd Doughty, whom I admire and adore. Todd crafted my Family Tree tour last year, and though I haven’t done a formal, in-the-flesh tour for The Secret Between Us, he has still done plenty of work. It’s his job, for instance, to send review copies of the book to every possible media outlet, and while that sounds simple enough, consider this. I’ve been around for a while. Yes, my books consistently hit the NY Times list (did you see my NEWS clip about its debut at #12 on February 10?), but lots of other books hit those lists, and many are books by first-time authors and are, therefore, treated like the next new not-to-be-left-unreviewed thing.
Getting reviewers to read and review my books can be a challenge. Todd’s pitch letter (describing the book, telling why it’s different) is crucial, as is a follow-up phone call or two. And even then, a newspaper or magazine may say they’ll be posting a review, only to preempt it if something better comes along.
Moreover, there’s the be-careful-what-you-wish-for phenomenon. A review may be hard-won … but scathing! Is all publicity good publicity? Is it better to have a bad review than no review at all?
I don’t know the answers to these questions. But I lucked out last Friday. My PEOPLE magazine arrived with a fabulous review of The Secret Between Us inside.
“What would you do? That’s the question implicitly posed in Delinsky’s provocative new novel when mother and daughter Deborah and Grace Monroe hit Grace’s history teacher with their car, mortally wounding him. Grace, 16, was driving, but Deborah hides that fact and takes the blame. Delinsky is interested in how the lies we tell for love can destroy us instead – and she lays out this particular deception so painstakingly that even the most honest reader will sympathize. Like a car wreck about to happen, this family’s near-undoing can be tough to watch, but it’s even tougher to look away.”
Can an author ask for a better recommendation? Well, I can’t. And I’m reprinting the PEOPLE review here in this blog, because (a) PEOPLE doesn’t seem to post its book reviews online, and (b) I am so proud of this one. Okay, I’m also hoping to impress you, so that when you read the inevitable bad review, you’ll know there are two sides to every story.
BTW, just to clarify, review copies are sent by the publisher to its own list, not mine. They decide how many to send out and to whom. So if you’re one of those writing to me asking for a review copy, I just can’t help you. I’m sorry. I bet you’d write me a good revew.
Actually, many of you have. Check it out!
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