Three Weeks in December

Always I like to share with others the many ways that Tucson inspires me. It's nearly impossible as there are so many aspects to this diverse river valley-- that no longer has a flowing river (except after big storms and below the waste water treatment facility) but the riparian zone is still there as a reminder.  Washes come down out of the mountains with no water-- except after those storms.

Tucson is ringed by mountains. In the Catalinas, Mt. Lemmon is 9,157 feet with snow in winter and even skiing now and again. We had no time for it this time; but when you drive up there you travel through every climate zone from the desert to Canada with the appropriate trees. One time we drove down the backside (not the typical route down) and it was quite an experience on a winding, gravel road where we passed nobody on the whole drive down-- fortunately as it was narrow with steep sides.

Tucson is an incredibly creative area with tempting landscapes everywhere you look, the rich browns, olive greens, ochres, reds, purples, oranges, and golds. In the winter, the low lighting shadows everything richly, making it a photographer's dream. It has been interpreted by many artists through  brushes, canvas, cloth, paint, clay, and even etched into rock.

Arizona Historical Museum had a quilt show of totally gorgeous works depicting the desert and it's environs to tell Tucson's story.

It's also rich for an historian with the ancient peoples who left behind ruins and petroglyphs and then later comers with diverse Native American tribes, prospectors, miners, priests, ranchers and all those ready to make a profit without working for it. Indian wars, outlaws, corruption, heroics, even a big earthquake that redecorated one of Tucson's favorite little canyons.

With my visit to Old Tucson for photos of today's attempt to recreate the Old West for tourists and movie sets, then the Arizona Historical Museum full of old photos, stories, and information, I left the state happy with the photos and information I had gleaned for the book I am working on-- an 1886-87 historical romance sharing some characters with an earlier historical romance (not yet out).

I had a thought also on the drive back from Tucson that what I like better, as a description of what I write, would be to call them emotional adventures. On all levels they are about the adventure of life that centers around the emotional and sexual connection between two people. More on that at a future time.

For now, I created a video that attempts to capture a little of the Tucson mood and of what I experienced three weeks in December.

To be or not to be

When I am writing a story, going through this preliminary phase of creating in my head, one thing that always stops me for awhile is when I am considering adding a spiritual/paranormal element. When I wrote Sky Daughter it was one of the aspects with which I wrestled. Should the spiritual element be real or imaginary? Either are possible in such stories.

I woke up thinking about this problem because some aspect of it is going to be in the Tucson historical romance. Tucson, Arizona and the valley in which it sets is a place with a tremendous number of spiritual elements all coming together in what at one time was a flowing river and its surrounding riparian zone. It inspires the possibility of real spiritual power-- of positive and negative sorts.

Picture Rocks

Tucson is a good place to find love but also violence. The events that have happened, keep happening, have created an atmosphere of conflict and resolution, beauty and danger. If you are sensitive, you will feel it in the air and come across the evidence that others have felt it with their petroglyphs, the shrines, the churches.  It's a good place to be when wondering about spiritual traditions, mysteries, and the source of life.

 San Xavier, the White Dove of the Desert

Friday morning I awoke thinking about all this in terms of the story, which I had laid aside to write the Christmas novella. The one thing I knew is that this story will have a spiritual element with a heroine who is curious about the psychic world, a Yaqui sidekick for the hero, the setting in Tucson, but how far did I want to take that?


I know a lot of the plot, the dilemmas the couple will face and feel I know these people but what about the part I don't know? How much of that shall I put into it? There will be some spiritual searching but how about the paranormal itself? I find it fascinating and have done a lot of research over the years, but how far do I want to go in this book?

While I’ve been in Tucson, I’ve gone to some of my favorite petroglyph sites, which show at the least an attempt to understand the Cosmos, possibly tell their stories, but were they placed where they are with a feeling these were sacred sites or are they all that is left? They do feel like sacred space which is to be respected in the same way a church does. Is there real energy of some sort and it's why they exist where they are? The site for San Xavier was a holy site to the Tohono O'odham before the Spanish priests came and erected a church there.

Shrine in downtown Tucson

There are many sacred sites around the United States and, of course, the world. Do they hold some kind of power as some believe of the Sedona vortexes? Or Stonehenge in England? Is there some kind of reality to the paranormal, that which we might experience but cannot explain? Could there be power from a physical source like say ions in the air which is why the energy is good around a waterfall?

For the book I am soon to start writing, my big question is not whether the questing will be there. It will be part of the underlying theme. The question is how real do I make it?

Once in awhile I have wrestled with that for a story as I am not traditionally religious and am more of an agnostic than an atheist. I don't write sci fi or fantasy where you can let fly with what you might imagine. Romances can have all of that, but mine have not. They have been grounded in the 'real' world as much as I know of it. It would be possible to put the spiritual elements in the story and have the characters recognize it as a false quest or equally it would be possible to have them touch the unknown, to come out of their experiences with a greater understanding of the unexplainable, the mystery of life. That's the quandary of a writer.
 

 el Tiradito

Humans really do want to believe there is magic and you see the evidence of it everywhere. Should this book be a place to find some of that magic or is it better to be 'realistic' about what is true...  if we know what that is.

streams in the desert

After the rains, Tucsonians know to head for the stream beds. Many will have been dry, sometimes for months. Rain will change all of that, and desert dwellers know it. Because it's winter, the recent rains meant the Catalina Mountains have snow on their tops. That means the streams will have water for awhile as at least some of that snow won't last long.

Sunday when it was in the low 60s, we were among the many thrilled to have time once again with flowing water. People were in a good mood even as some weren't quite sure how to cross the streams without getting their feet wet. Me, I have no such problem as the one thing I most want to do is get my feet wet. It is part of the experience, and the price I pay is figuring out how to dry wet tennis shoes once I get home.

Since I have been here over many years, I can remember times where crossing this stream meant almost hip high. I don't do this, of course, when the floods are at the dangerous levels, where flash floods are likely, where the water has the force to take down trees. One year, after such a flood, the whole canyon view was changed with most of the big trees gone, those without the right roots to hold on.

With the novella finished, my mind has switched back the novel I had expected to be writing while here. Being out on the desert, wading these streams, seeing the wonderful, lush desert terrain is all part of getting in the mood to do that. One afternoon I will go down to the museums and look for expansions of my thinking, but right now I am more in the mood to go wading.

Nature is a wonderful healer. Whenever the world gets to feeling like it's too much, I recommend finding places out in it. City park, backyard, or a wonderful place like Arizona's Catalina State Park which was set aside by earlier generations. Aren't we lucky there were people like that back then. I hope we can carry on their legacy for future generations!

Sticking to a genre

 Now I am not sure about this, but think it's mostly true and publishers long ago discovered it. If you write, you are better off to stick to a definable genre. Some writers can bounce all around, and it seems to work out. The ones that appear to sell the best-- they stick to their genre.

This isn't just true in writing. A few years back there was a painter whose work I admired for its color, lighting, subject matter, but never purchased because it would not have fit with other work I owned. She did mostly landscapes of wildlife. Beautiful images and romantically traditional. She had an auto accident. In injuring her 'painting' arm, she decided to try painting with the other. The work surprised her as it turned out to be very impressionistic, full of vibrant colors and nothing like the others.

Not long after having read about her change of style, I was visiting a gallery and saw they had her traditionals; so I asked if they had the others. They did and led me to a dark corner of the gallery and there they were. They said it wasn't what the clients wanted. Recently when I checked out her work, it was all the traditional animal paintings. Beautiful but the buyers wouldn't go for the others, which I had thought was great, very exciting work.

Another example of how it works with painting was in Jerome, Arizona. A couple had taken over what had been a school as well as at one time a hospital and turned it into a gallery for their paintings (this is one place that really should have had ghosts). They kept the styles in different rooms, but they did all kinds of work. I said something to them about galleries not liking that much-- and they said it's why they now had their own.

Is this need to fit a niche a good thing? Not so much for the creative personality where many like to experiment with different approaches to depicting their idea. That said, I suspect it's true of many things. It sells best if the creator sticks to something that they can develop, get people to admire, want to purchase, and not disappoint them with something totally different. Basically at some point turn it into a craft instead of an art and voila!

I have not felt that my books, even though they are romances, fit their genre's expectationsy. And they aren't going to. This will be even more true when I begin to bring out the historical romances. Even before that though they simply didn't fit the niches that help to sell a lot of books. Most have some adventure in them, maybe suspense, but also other kinds of interests from art to ranching to detective work and on it has gone.

Although my plots are always going to have a love story at their center, they're not series type of romance. I remember one editor telling me that my writing was good but they wanted the heroine more 'vulnerable' with more angst. Another didn't like the hard issue one of my heroes had to face. I have a story where the hero wrestles with commiting suicide, something I can't recall seeing in another romance.

If a reader loves western contemporary romances, I have a couple... Romantic suspense, some of that (if they don't mind some art thrown in), paranormal, etc. But I can't say these books fit together. The romances have some sex; so aren't 'sweet' but they also don't go far enough to be erotica.

The reason for my plots comes I think because of my own interest in so many different things. Tell me a Libra who isn't like that? I am eclectic in my home decor, interests, and it follows through with my writing.

Maybe someday the marketing world will change or humans will not want 'more of the same.' Maybe someday the cross-genre writers will have their own genre... Except, what would it be?

Image at the top was created from a purchased CanStock photo and then digital painting to play around with possibilities. It was part of redoing a cover. When I do that, I save the stages by different names in case what comes next doesn't work. I liked this one well enough to keep it when the cover was redone. If these had all been oil paintings, I might have a photo of the stages but that'd be all. The ability to save the levels is what I love about digital painting.

Finding inspiration from audio books

Although this week-end was family time down on Klamath Lake in Southern Oregon, I did get some inspiration for the new book from two audio Louis L'Amour short story collections. A few years back I found traveling with audio books as a way to pass the time. It turns out my grandchildren (ages from 8 to 14) are very into these kind of western short stories.

These were dramatizations which I like best but don't always find. For anyone who is looking for inspiration for putting atmosphere into their stories, I recommend these kind of CDs. This particular set had the stories-- Law of the Desert Born, The Trigernometry Tenderfoot, and Horse Heaven on one of the CDs and Four Card Draw, Get Out of Town, and One for the Pot on the other.

They really helped pass the miles for the kids but us too. It reminded me how important atmosphere is to the kind of writing that carries you into the story. It doesn't take a LOT of words. In fact a lot of words would have lost the children. It takes the right words.