Natasha Alexander » holidays

Peace on Earth…please?

Natasha — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 17:43:52 +0000

Cross-post: Inside the Writers’ Studio Interview with Craig Lancaster

Natasha — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 13:20:44 +0000

Kris and Kel, the fabulous Paper Rats from Inside the Writers’ Studio, asked a number of bloggers to cross-post their holiday interview with Craig Lancaster today. Craig sounds like an interesting guy and the interview provides a wide-spread opportunity to support a worthwhile charity at the same time — how could I refuse an offer like that?

So I am pleased to introduce Craig Lancaster and the Inside the Writers’ Studio interview.

::drumroll::

Craig Lancaster, author of the widely praised 600 Hours of Edward and the forthcoming novel The Summer Son to be released by AmazonEncore in early 2011) wanted to do something for others this Christmas season, so he wrote a fantastic holiday-themed story, “Comfort and Joy,” to sell on Amazon and Smashwords for $1.

However, that he plans to donate 100% of the proceeds to Feeding America, whose 200+ food banks distribute to all fifty states, wasn’t enough for us at Inside the Writers’ Studio. When we learned of his plan to write some short fiction, he hadn’t yet begun “Comfort and Joy,” and we were more than happy to catch him early enough to challenge him to find a way to incorporate a few random words.

The words: snowman, hot chocolate, and jingle balls.

LANCASTER: I thought my “Jingle Balls” solution might have been a little reach, but I was 12 years old once, and it’s something I might have come up with.

He managed to write the (approx.) 5,500-word story in just 24 hours.

LANCASTER: The idea has been bouncing around in my head for a while, and it’s easily adaptable to a holiday angle. Short-story productivity, for me, comes and goes, and for whatever reason, I’ve been in a fertile period. I’ll sit down in the next couple of days and knock it out. The funny thing is, I’ve never really written fiction on a deadline, but I have one now: I’ve pledged to send this story to the in-boxes of donors by Dec. 15.

He made good on his pledge; “Comfort and Joy” is available at Amazon and Smashwords right now (click a link to buy a copy – you can always come back here when you’re done), and it will stay there indefinitely with the proceeds continuing to benefit Feeding America. And, as promised, it’s only $1. “But why not charge more to give more?” we wondered.

LANCASTER: Two reasons. The first is the greater-volume-at-a-lower-price idea. The second is that I hope this isn’t the be-all, end-all of people’s giving. A few folks have written to me and said, “I want to give more than a buck,” and my response has been this: “Send me a buck. Send your local food bank, or some other charity there at home, as much as you feel like you can give.”

INSIDE THE WRITERS’ STUDIO: What made you choose this particular charity?

LANCASTER: I’ve been reading a lot about how stressed food banks are. Times are hard, and charitable giving is down. And since (I hope) donations will be coming in from all over, it didn’t seem quite right to roll whatever money is generated toward the food bank where I live, though it certainly could use the help. So I figured that Feeding America, with its national focus, made sense.

One of the things that put this at the top of my mind was seeing a plea from my friend Carol Buchanan on Facebook that people not buy her books as gifts but instead donate to their local food bank. She said she’d eat whether the books are bought or not. Others — many, many others — are not so fortunate.

This effort is nothing like the NPR fundraising drive—there’s no dollar amount in mind, no set goal (“I have no expectation here,” Lancaster says. “If it’s five bucks, it’s five bucks.”), but he does hope to turn this into an annual effort, one that involves more writers contributing to a holiday-themed anthology.

LANCASTER: Say, 15 or 20 holiday-themed stories, from a wide variety of genres, all with the aim of putting some food on the tables of people who badly need it. Wheels are already turning for next year: an anthology, from writers across the traditional and indie spectrums. Zombie Christmas, romance Christmas, bizarro, whatever. I think if I were to get people on board in, say, July, we’d be able to offer all kinds of options: individual stories, the entire collection, e-book, short POD run.

IWS: Do you think you might choose different charities in the future?

LANCASTER: I haven’t even thought about that. I’m pretty passionate about food banks. They’re chronically understocked, and it’s one form of charity that is completely without political overtones.

IWS: Have you ever donated to/worked in/needed a food bank?

LANCASTER: I’ve pulled a few shifts stacking boxes and such, and I’m a reliable bring-a-canned-good-to-whatever-event guy, but I’ve never done it on a consistent basis. One of the things I hope to do, beyond the holiday season, is become a lot more involved with that sort of thing on a local level.

IWS: That sounds like a perfect New Year’s resolution. Speaking of the new year—your upcoming novel, The Summer Son, will be released in January. Tell us about it.

LANCASTER: It’s a multi-decade father-and-son story. Mitch Quillen and his father, Jim, have been largely estranged for nearly 30 years, and the breach stems from a violent summer when Mitch was 11 years old. In the present day, they’ve been thrown together again and they try to work through the distance between them. All the while, Mitch is reliving that long-ago summer in the form of a note to his wife, whom he’s kept away from that part of his life, in an effort to reconcile his own failing relationship with her. It’s a story about the things we experience and how those things shape us — and how those same things get interpreted in different ways by other people who were there.

IWS: Final question. Fruitcake: yay or nay?

LANCASTER: You know, I’d love to say yay, just to be the contrary bastard I tend to be. But I cannot. Fruitcake is a nay. It’s a nay to the 100th power. It’s a nay that pushes at the outer edges of the space-time continuum. It’s the nay that keeps on giving. Let’s face it: Fruitcake sucks.

Thank you for allowing us to post our interview on your blog site and spread the word about Craig Lancaster’s effort. – Kris & Kel, IWS

Random Act of Culture: Hallelujah!

Natasha — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:21:21 +0000

…Just in case you missed this. Enjoy! (No, I’m not one of the singers here — but I sure wish I had been!)

Also, tomorrow I will be cross-posting the latest interview (with Craig Lancaster) from/by Inside the Writers’ Studio, so check back then. It’s interesting in a bunch of different ways.

And have a nice week-end, ya’ll!

How was your week-end?

Natasha — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:02:38 +0000

Friday morning, the hurricane-formerly-known-as-Earl had wimped its way out of North Carolina — without leaving us so much as a drop of rain or a gust of wind. But at least the surf was up at the end of the island and I got to watch a little wave action.

[Double click on any of the pictures to see them in all their full-screen glory!]

Saturday was the local farmers’ market and art fair, held every Saturday morning during the summer around Carolina Beach Lake, which is supposedly the closest fresh-water lake to salt-water in the world. How close? Damn close: cross the street, walk through a parking lot and you’re in the ocean. In years we’ve had ‘real’ hurricanes, you can get to the ocean from the lake via kayak; they’re pretty much the same body of water.

I came home with a bunch of vegetables and some neat shell/bead/dragonfly earrings. And, obviously, lots of pictures.

We are graced with GREAT local musicians and we got to hear lots of them this week-end at my favorite venue: the local Tiki Bar — plunked on an old pier jutting out over the ocean. Here is Root Soul Project performing Saturday night.

Yes, that is the ocean in the background. I’ve watched the moon rise over the ocean (not this week-end, of course) while listening to great music (with a hint of surf in the downbeat) and drinking a good NC craft beer. Really, what could be better? Heard three good groups and did LOTS of unabashed people watching Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings. Too loud to eavesdrop, unfortunately.

Finally, here’s the Boardwalk and our own Carny Town. This is the second summer we’ve had a summer-long carnival along the Boardwalk. The carnival has had its friends, its foes, and it has revived the local Redneck Riviera title just a bit, for both better and worse.

I haven’t been to many carnivals since my son finished middle school, so I’m not that into the latest rides — most of them don’t seem to have changed all that much since the Olden Days when I actually went on all of them. But this floating bubble thing — this was new to me.

It was new to our carnival, too. Earlier in the summer this little spit of real estate held the bungee jump. But a carny worker was reportedly inappropriately groping young females as he was ‘helping’ them into their bungee harnesses — though I’m not sure what constitutes appropriate groping. So he and the bungee jump were run out of town and in came the bubble. (Did I mention that some folks were not too excited about having a summer-long carnival in their back yard?)

This bubble thing creeped me out, though the little kids bouncing and rolling around looked like they were having a blast. You get pushed into this giant flat beach ball and then they inflate it — and zip you up so you’re waterproof/airproof and roll you into a big pool of water. It’s almost impossible to stand up and you bump and bounce around until, I guess, you pass out from lack of oxygen or the bubble guy decides it’s someone else’s turn. Couldn’t help it; I kept hearing Paul Simon singing in my brain.

One final, sweet note to the Island tour: just-made tiramisu gelato. Mmmm, good!

And that is the way we — at least one little sliver of us — looked to a distant constellation this Labor Day week-end.

How about you?

Road Trip 101, or the Wasatch Dairy Farm

Natasha — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:06:56 +0000

I’m back…..

A and I took a 2 ½ week road trip, during which I intended to post occasional nuggets from the road that wended its way up through North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, and then back down to North Carolina.

Well, the road trip to anywhere is paved with good intentions, I guess – but the funkiness of our travel laptop and the quirky, slow Internet access we encountered along the way blew the likelihood of blog posting right out the car window.

But here’s the real deal: I didn’t write one. single. word. during our entire trip. Not one. (Except for mileage logs and where and when we stopped along the way.) The closest I came to a literary experience was spending two days in Maine a half-mile from where Stephen King’s Pet Sematary was filmed.

While all the definitions of vacation fit the trip – seeing new places, visiting old friends and family, changing the pace and rhythm of life – this describes my vacation mindset the best: the act or instance of vacating.

That’s it. Old thoughts, ideas and words vacated my mind. They fled the premises and left all this empty space in my brain for – what?

New thoughts, new words, new directions. Paradigm shift? Planetary alignment? I’m still figuring out what happens when your brain empties out, hits ‘re-set’ and comes up with something different, something unexpected.

Yesterday I was telling a friend about our trip and she projected, “And I’ll bet it felt good to get home, too.”

Well, no, as a matter of fact.

We’d run out of clean clothes, so we were happy to use the washer and dryer. And Polly and Lola had stayed home with a house sitter, so it was great to see the furballs. But if we could figure out a way to travel with them comfortably in the summer, we’d be on the road again as soon as the clothes were dry.

Antsy. Restless.

So, uh, isn’t Tap Dancing at the County Fair supposed to be about a road trip toward self-knowledge? Am I living my novel right now, but without the distance or perspective to write it, or know how it should end?

I was emptying one of the travel bags I’d taken on the road, and found a pile of change in the bottom of one of its zippered pockets: four quarters and three pennies.

Plus this: a funny little metal coin with scalloped edges and a star cut out of the center. WASATCH DAIRY FARM it says on one side; “Good for *1* Quart of Milk” on the other.

Huh? I never heard of the Wasatch Dairy Farm. Neither did Google. The closest a search came up with was a town in Utah. I haven’t been to Utah since a road trip in the early 1970’s, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t visit any dairy farms then. And I bought the bag maybe ten years ago at a Crate & Barrel outlet store in Massachusetts. Where did this rural talisman come from?

So here I am, a couple of days after our road trip, filled with extreme wanderlust, thoughts and words careening around the empty caverns of my mind, waiting to be arranged or re-arranged into something approaching sense, or at least amusing nonsense.

Maybe it’s time to start writing.

And then head off again in search of that free quart of milk.