My mother fell. While visiting for the weekend, she missed a step at my house and broke her left hip and her right knee.

It was open mic night for our literary guild at a local art gallery, and I was fighting my usual stage fright at the podium, reading a chapter from my essay book when the gallery phone rang. I tried to ignore it as well as the flurry of activity at the back of the room that turned out to be my husband taking off to meet the ambulance at our house.

Because this is such a small town, when my mother called 911 and said we were at some literary thing and not answering our cell phones, the operator knew just how to find us. Mom knew the name of our street, but not the street number, so my husband found the EMTs outside and went in to corral our big scary dog. I arrived moments later, just in time to hear Mom screaming as they loaded her onto the gurney, our dog matching every scream with a howl of sympathy.

Two surgeries and a stint in rehab later, my mother has recovered beautifully, and now curses the step in my house.

Who knows when I’ll be able to read aloud again. Not exactly comfortable with public speaking to begin with (yes, I realize I’m an actor-- it’s a long story), I was fully traumatized by the interruption of my last reading. I’ll always be known here as that lady who read on open mic night while her mother lay in the floor at home.

My writing, along with the rest of my life, took a back seat to daughterly duties and a great deal of worry. I was at my mother’s side every day she was here in the hospital and then in rehab, and focusing on anything else was out of the question.

But I’m back now. Mom’s doing well. She headed home, and I got back to work.

What have I learned? Life knocks you down. Get back up. Keep going. And watch your step.

Happy 2013!

So, apparently, this is the year Snake Plissken saves the President and Kevin Costner delivers the mail. Both Escape from New York and The Postman take place in 2013 in much drearier circumstances than our actual ones. So, even if you suspect this year might be a tough one, it could have been much worse. The President could be trapped in a pod among lawless thugs rather than simply hampered by Congress. And we might all be sporting tattered rags in dull earth tones that only the likes of Kevin Costner can pull off.

Kev's still a hottie in rags

The best thing about 2013: Arm porn

 

 

I, for one, am feeling pretty good about the New Year. You’ll think me mad, but I’ve already entered a photography competition, two writing contests, and am hoping to get a pottery project in to an exhibit by the deadline on Tuesday. I’ve also completed the first draft of my essay book. I don’t necessarily expect great success with any of these, but to quote a writer friend of mine, “I like to get my rejections in multiples.”

Honestly, rejection doesn’t faze me much after 29 years in the modeling and acting business. Good thing, too, because writers face the same stuff.

At this point in my life, I’m just happy to be doing, playing, creating, having fun. I highly recommend it.

And since it seems the Mayans were as mistaken as John Carpenter about the current state of our world, I suggest we keep frolicking forward for at least the next 6 years. Then, it’ll be 2019--time to race the Governator in Running Man. Apparently, Stephen King and director Paul Michael Glaser had a pretty dim view of the future as well. They might feel better if they threw a pot or took a pretty picture once in a while. I know it works for me.

Oh Ahnold! Lighten up!

 

 

Christmas is coming. This will be our second holiday season in our new home in Tryon, so we know what to expect and look forward to it.

The Christmas Stroll happens this week when all the businesses in our tiny town open their doors one evening and people literally stroll from one to the next for a cup of punch or a cookie (or a glass of wine and some brie in the fancier places). Santa’s there as well as street musicians. It’s as quaint as you’d expect from a small town and rivaled only by our New Year’s Eve festivities where we drop a disco ball from the clock tower with a fishing pole at 10:00 because midnight is just too late for most folks. It’s such fun that we raise and drop it a couple more times for good measure.

Have I mentioned that I love it here?

By the way, I had an amazing experience at that writers’ conference in Raleigh last month. It was my first. I learned a lot, but the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. It’s a fascinating business.

My weekend was filled with workshops, panel discussions, and open mics. I met so many interesting writers and editors and agents. It’s a whole new world for me and I’m soaking it up.

I got some great feedback about my novel (what I call my “book book”). And I got an amazing suggestion from an editor for another book, which of course, I loved and have already started working on. She saw me at an open mic reading a funny monologue I’d written for Meanwhile Back at Café DuMonde a while back and asked for more. One thing led to another and now I’m writing funny essays while I continue to edit my book book.

It’s too chilly to work on the front porch, so I’m in my office with a perfect view of our backyard. The birds flock to our little feeder right outside the window and the Chihuahuas flock to the heating vent at my feet.  

Happy holidays.

We’re heading into fall, and I must say, I’m looking forward to it. After living in L.A. for a few decades, I had almost forgotten how beautiful the change of seasons can be. Don’t get me wrong—I love L.A. and its weather is at the top of my list of reasons to love it. But I also love where I live now—the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. This place knows how to put on a show when it comes to fall color, and now I have a front row seat.

I’ve really been enjoying my life here since my move last September. There’s a reason this place has been a haven for writers and artists for many years.  Every time I turn around, I meet a painter or sculptor or writer. They flock to this place and flourish.

I’ve been very busy myself working on the sequel to It Seemed Funny at the Time. For now, I’m calling it No Worse for Wear. The title might change before the book sees a printing, but it came to me in a dream and it fits nicely. I’m workshopping No Worse for Wear in a writers’ group online, which has been fun.

I’ve also been doing some freelance writing for a website about dogs. Animal rescue is a cause near and dear to my heart, so it seemed fitting to write about it.

I haven’t been shopping It Seemed Funny at the Time because I’ve been tweaking it a little as I write No Worse for Wear, making sure the two tie together well. I’m planning to take it to a writers’ conference in November though, and it should be ready to shop again by then.

In the meantime, you’ll find me happily working on No Worse for Wear on my wide covered front porch with a big yellow dog lying at my feet, just waiting for the leaves to turn.

I have some more books for you! These are all available now. I didn't have my blog when they were released, so I'm pimping them now.

Fritz, the Count of Aglie by Michele Dalcin Botts is a tale for all ages narrated by a cat living in the small Italian town of Aglie. It's Michele's own love story and a tribute to her husband, Michael Botts, who lost his battle with cancer in 2005. Michael was the drummer for Bread, and also played with Linda Ronstadt and Dan Fogelberg, among others. I'm fortunate to call Michele my friend, and we're all lucky to be able to enjoy her adorable book now.

How to Make Love to Adrian Colesberry by Adrian Colesberry is for adults only, as its title and cover indicate. It's Adrian's very bawdy and unique sexual memoir, disguised as a manual to please him in bed. My personal relationship with Adrian is purely platonic, so I can't attest to the book's accuracy, but I can report that it's very funny and nothing like you've ever read before.

When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win: Reflections on Looking in the Mirror by Carol Leifer is a collection of essays by one of the funniest women in the world. I've known and admired Carol for decades (in spite of our youth), and knew her book wouldn't disappoint. She's smart, warm, honest, and funny, and this book shines among her many achievements.

Today, there are two new books I want to tell you about. I have a connection to both, but they're very different.

The first one is Kristin Harmel's The Sweetness of Forgetting.

Marie Claire magazine recommends it on its 2012 summer reading list. Here's how they describe it:

“Hope, a divorced mother who runs a bakery on Cape Cod, reconnects with her grandmother, whose onset of Alzheimer's spurs the revelation of a family secret about the Holocaust.”

Kristin is a very popular and prolific writer of women’s fiction. This is her seventh novel and she’s only 33 years old!

I had the privilege of taking a writing workshop taught by Kristin, and I found her to be a wonderful teacher as well as writer.

Watch for The Sweetness of Forgetting, coming out on August 7^th.

My second recommendation is for a coffee table book called Meanwhile Back at Café Du Monde, created and edited by my dear friend, Peggy Sweeney-McDonald.

Peggy had the brilliant idea of producing a show comprised of an evening of food monologues accompanied by actual delicious food. There have been many such evenings in New Orleans, Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and Los Angeles.

Most monologues are written by their performers—chefs, restauranteurs, and other foodies who have an interesting tale to tell. I was fortunate to have two of my monologues performed in several shows by the talented Caroline Fogerty in Los Angeles and Nancy Litton in Louisiana.

The shows were a huge success and prompted what promises to be an equally fabulous book. It’s number one on Amazon’s Hot New Releases: Best Louisiana list and comes out on September 15^th.

I hope you’ll check out both of these books, enjoy them, and tell your friends.

Write what you know.

We’ve all heard this, and while it’s true that it’s fun to explore things you don’t know, I am a firm believer that the closer you can get to your real voice, the better your writing will be. And if you stick to your own experiences, you’re more likely to use your own voice.

I heard a songwriter once say in an interview that the more personal he made his song, the more universally it was accepted. That stuck in my mind and so when I write, I try to make it as personal as possible.

I have a writer friend who lives in Norway and she says there’s a Norwegian word for this kind of writing that can’t really be translated. The closest English word she can find is “skinless.” It’s essentially when a writer exposes his or her inner self.

Anyway, I’m starting to babble now. My apologies. I just wanted to explain a little why I wrote It Seemed Funny at the Time the way I did. It’s fiction, but it’s also personal.

I took real experiences with real people that I had as a young woman and fictionalized the people and some of the experiences. I did this for a number of reasons, the main one being it made a better story. I could skip over the boring parts and condense the time frame and not agonize over the fact that I’m unable to remember every detail perfectly.

I based the main characters on people I knew, but sometimes I combined two or more people into one character, or gave an experience I had with one person to another character. And sometimes I just made stuff up. I wanted the book to be good and a fun read, not just a chronicling of my life. I doubt many would be interested in that no matter how “skinless” it was.

Some of the people in my life at that time—the late 80s—are still in my life, I’m happy to say. I’ve told them about the book and some have read it, or at least one draft of it or another. Several have been extremely helpful in discussing our past together, jogging my memory and adding their perspectives.

One friend said I could write whatever I wanted as long as I made him handsome (easy to do—he was and is very handsome). Another asked that I not make her a gold digger, which I found interesting since I’d never thought of her that way at all. I could see she was nervous though and I made sure there was nothing written that could make her seem gold-diggery.

I understand what it feels like to be written about. I had an ex once who wrote a little TV show about his life—you might have seen it. Sometimes, I’d recognize a scene or an element in a character as mine, just as I’m sure many of his friends and family did. But the story wasn’t about me. It was about him.

And my book is about what happened to me. My intent isn’t to make anyone uncomfortable or look like a gold digger or less handsome. I’m just telling my story in a way that I hope people will enjoy. I just happened to have had some very funny, sexy, amazing people in my life, and they’ve made my personal story interesting. So, I’m sharing it. I hope you’ll like it.