HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: What a complicated week, don't you think? So much going on, in so many ways, and so much to think about. And be grateful for. I love this Friday post, it's thought provoking, and cinematic, and great storytelling, and sort of has a twist in the end. Like all good stories do.
I am so honored to welcome Bruce Leonard today! When you read his bio—and do—it brings up one question I bet we will all want to know the answer to. See what you think!
Thirty-Five Years to Type THE END
I grew up in Malibu, California, in the sixties and seventies. The wealth that
many people attach to such an upbringing isn’t universal. The parents in my neighborhood were teachers, cops, stockbrokers, engineers, and editors. My parents bought their house in a canyon in 1967 for $39,000 because they couldn’t afford to live near my father’s aerospace job in Santa Monica, thirty miles east.
However, we lived only about three quarters of a mile from Broad Beach, a private stretch of sand on which many celebrities lived.
After college, I was hired at the weekly newspaper The Malibu Surfside News for $5 per hour. I incorporated that publication into the novel I started to write in 1989.
Hard Exit, my love story wrapped in a private-eye mystery, is set in Malibu and South Los Angeles. Narrator Jack Drake, a depressed private eye to the Hollywood stars, lives in a $30 million mansion on Broad Beach with movie star Amanda Bigelow, but he hates his life.
It took me thirty-five years to complete and publish Hard Exit, the most personal of my five novels. Much has changed in Malibu and in me over that span.
Broad Beach used to have many houses that could be called beach shacks—small, unassuming homes built seventy, eighty years ago that have been torn down so noted architects could build showpieces for rich people determined to outshine their neighbors. More than one house on Broad Beach has listed for $100 million. Although it’s not on Broad Beach, the Malibu “house” that Beyoncé and Jay-Z live in cost $200 million.
And then there’s Billionaire’s Beach, officially called Carbon Beach, to the east, where other entertainment moguls and titans of industry reside.
Decades ago, when I created Jack and Amanda’s fictional home, based on one of the first “oh, wow” architectural wonders on Broad Beach, climate change hadn’t eroded beaches around the world. The public could easily walk along Broad Beach between the houses on the sand and the waves. Today, a lengthy, tall jumble of sharp boulders acts as a seawall, diminishing the likelihood that the mansions will be flooded during storms. Beachgoers are still legally allowed to stroll along Broad Beach, but the boulders make fleeing large waves during high tides treacherous.
Not being rich is also treacherous in today’s Malibu. When I was young, my family and friends ate downtown at Pizza Palace, attended movies at Malibu Cinema, then bought dessert at Swensen’s Ice Cream Factory—an affordable way for residents to spend an evening. But those businesses long ago gave way to boutiques and artisan shops that sell items no one could everneed and high-end restaurants that offer meals at prices that seem to have misplaced the decimal point.
The most significant changes that occurred to me in the last thirty-five years are: I got sober twenty-five years ago; I moved to Kentucky, then Illinois, where I got married; I wrote Quilt City Cookbook and four Hadley Carroll Mysteries, cozies with attitude that take place in Paducah, Kentucky, the Quilt Capital of the World; my father died; my mother’s Malibu home
with everything in it burned to the ground in the 2018 Woolsey Fire; and I published Hard Exit, the white whale that’s haunted me for decades. And I continue to struggle with depression, as Jack Drake does.
Which obstacles have stood in the way of you accomplishing your goals?
If you overcame them and reached your goals, how did you do so?
HANK: What a great question! And who has been to Malibu? And do you have a question for Bruce that comes from his bio?
Bruce Leonard earned a B.A. in English with a creative-writing emphasis from UCLA. He has been a travel writer, a magazine- and newspaper editor, an owner of a bakery, and a guinea pig for the U.S. Government.
He writes the award-winning, bestselling Hadley Carroll Mysteries, the first of which, Quilt City Murders, was named Best Mystery of 2022 in one contest.
The next Jack Drake Private-Eye Mystery will be Stronger at the Break.
Jack Drake shares a Malibu beach mansion with a gorgeous movie star but hates his life. The
depressed private eye can’t shake the death of his wife and can’t end his toxic relationship with
Hollywood heartthrob Amanda Bigelow.
But an at-risk sixteen-year-old who is injured in an inner-city shooting gets Jack unstuck. As a
favor to a friend, Jack sequesters Game in the mansion, keeping him safe.
Their worldviews differ, but they draw from their histories of loss and grief while investigating the shooting and three seemingly unrelated murders, tying Game’s world in downtrodden Oakville to Jack’s in idyllic Malibu.
Fans of wisecracking investigators such as Spenser, Kinsey Milhone, and Stephanie Plum will cheer for Jack Drake, a man in love with two women—one of them dead.
“This is a smart, edgy, state-of-the-art L.A. noir with heart. Jack Drake is a
private eye with grit, a few demons and a semi-glamorous life on the
beach in Malibu. This series is a terrific addition to the modern hard-
boiled genre.”
—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz
Welcome to jungle reds, Bruce and congratulations on your novel. Your characters sound like interesting people.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree! It all sounds very cinematic.
DeleteThank you, Diana. I'm grateful that Hank offered me the opportunity to be a guest blogger. The characters changed a great deal over the years. Initially, Jack was a teacher at Game's school, but I became increasingly aware of how unlikely it would be for a high school teacher to moonlight as a private eye. Plus, the commuting time alone between Malibu and Oakville, the fictionalized town Game lives in, would have been impractical.
DeleteAs for your reference to the cinematic nature of Hard Exit, Hank: You're not the first to make that comment, including by an agent who reluctantly passed on the novel. Hard Exit has since won two awards, and I hope it will at least be nominated for the Shamus Awards, which honor novels that involve private investigators.
DeleteHARD EXIT sounds just as captivating as your story of writing the novel . . . congratulations on its publication.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have to ask . . . a guinea pig for the U.S. Government? What's that about?
That’s exactly what I would like to know, too! How fascinating!
DeleteThat guinea pig thing for the government is what I want to know about too!
DeleteWhen I was wallowing in depression and alcoholism while attempting to write my first novel, I came across an ad in Writer's Digest that asked: "Are you writing the Great American Novel?" I thought I was at least writing a good one, so I looked into what the ad promoted: A stay at the Human Nutrition Research Center in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Researchers there were trying to establish the Recommended Daily Allowance (This was in 1991, if memory serves) for copper, a trace element that humans need to ingest in small amounts to remain healthy. I called the thirteen research subjects who showed up in August guinea pigs because I had little faith that the science behind what we were going to be subjected to was sound. Every gram of what we consumed and what we excreted was measured (you don't want to know). We were on a three-day rotation diet. We had to consume every crumb on our plates at every meal, including the bowl full of mints that someone deemed to be a side dish or a dessert or a form of punishment. We ingested a radioactive pill at one point and wore paper suits that would help the researchers know how our bodies processed the pill. We gave a WHOLE lot of blood. I think twice during my stay I had to be connected to an IV for 48 hours, then to a heart monitor for the same length of time. We were dunked in a water tank to determine our body compositions, we rode exercise bikes to exhaustion, and I'm sure I'm forgetting other aspects of the experiment. I cut my stay short after one of the "local nuts," as we were known in the community, suffered adverse effects from the second biopsy he was subjected to. My first one went fine, but I saw what his leg looked like after the second one, then decided to head home. I waited for the train in wind and temperatures so cold that my beard had icicles formed from my watering eyes, and I could barely pry my hands from my suitcase after I got on the train. The conductor announced: "Sir, if you think it's cold out there, you're right. With the windchill, it's minus-80. Glad you made it aboard." Why in the world would anyone subject themselves to such experiments, you're probably asking. For $35 per day. Yup, that's what we were paid. I haven't finished the novel I had been writing when I saw the ad for the Human Nutrition Research Center, but I started to write what was then called Exit Wound there, which became Hard Exit.
DeleteThat is terrifying.
DeleteBruce, that experience sounds like pretty good material for a novel, too!
DeleteProbably, Deborah, but I don't write horror!
DeleteWhat a completely terrifying ordeal . . . glad to know you survived that horror!
DeleteHello, Joan.
DeleteOne of the best aspects of being a writer is that everything, no matter how awful, can be considered research, if we choose to process our traumas that way.
I read a few of the Hadley Carroll books so am interested in your new series. Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteWelcome! So glad you are a Bruce Leonard fan!
DeleteThank you for your support, Marianne. The Hadley Carroll Mysteries are almost universally considered to improve as they progress. I think that Quilt City: Measure Once, Cut Twice, and Quilt City: Proving a Negative are the best. We'll see whether my beta readers think Quilt City: Safety Second is up to snuff. I hope to publish that in February. Hard Exit isn't a cozy mystery, meaning it has some adult language, a sex scene, and a little violence. Although I'm proud of my other novels and I love the dynamic between Hadley and Brandon, her love interest, I still believe that Hard Exit is the best of the six novels I've written.
DeleteIt's interesting to learn about your life, Bruce, not to mention to find out that Paducah, Kentucky, is the quilt capital of the world. HARD EXIT sounds like a good book! Yes, I have been to Malibu--a distant cousin of mine and his wife, two very nice people (even if they were wealthy) had a house on the beach, and my son, then twelve, and I spent an afternoon with them there. No idea what beach it was, but the house was right on the water. That was twenty years ago, and the cousin has died. No idea if his wife still owns the house, or if it has been sold and torn down to build a bigger, fancier place.
ReplyDeleteYes, I did a double take at Paducah, Kentucky, too. I had no idea!
DeleteHave seen billboards advertising Paducah as the quilt capital of the world on our travels between Minnesota to Florida, but have not visited the quilt museum there like a friend of mine.
DeleteI owe almost all of my current happiness to the fact that Paducah, Kentucky bills itself as the Quilt Capital of the World. After my father died, I was grieving and in a deep depression that was exacerbated by my inability to find work. I had injured myself while working at Lowe's, and I realized that I was simply too old to be standing on concrete-slab floors for eight-hour shifts. I looked on JournalismJobs.com and saw that The Paducah Sun was looking for an arts and entertainment reporter. I had run the previous newsrooms I'd been in, so the idea of tumbling down the masthead to work as an entry-level reporter didn't make much sense. But neither did becoming homeless because I had no income. So, because I love the arts (my father was a truly accomplished singer, my mother was an editor, my brother writes for Hollywood and the theater, and my sister teaches high school theater), I applied for the job. The editor literally asked me one question: "Why in the world would you want to move from California to Paducah, Kentucky?" I put a good spin on "Because I like to eat," and I soon found myself buying a trailer, then packing. I knew within two days of working at the Sun that I'd made a mistake. I had been accustomed to being the last line of defense as an editor (frequently reading behind the copyeditors and proofreaders to catch the errors they had missed), so watching typos, inanities, and factual errors land on the front page time and again elevated my frustration to dangerous levels. If you read the opening paragraph of Quilt City Murders, you'll get a sense of my frustration, although, of course, The Paducah Chronicle, for which Hadley works, isn't based on any specific publication. I lasted only six months, then cast my resumes around the country to no effect. But I had interviewed many quilters while on the A&E beat, and I now had time to write a novel, unencumbered by daily newspaper deadlines. I hadn't been able to complete what would become Hard Exit, but I sat down and banged out Quilt City Murders in an outpouring of grief, determined to process the loss of my father and to prove to myself that I was a novelist. Quilt City Murders was named Best Mystery of 2022 in one contest, so I think I accomplished what I set out to accomplish, despite hundreds of agents and publishers passing on the novel. And then I met Sedonia on Match.com, and that wonderment never would have happened if I'd stayed in Los Angeles and hadn't taken a chance on Paducah.
DeleteI'm with Joan. I want to know about the "guinea pig for the U.S. Government" part of Bruce's life!
ReplyDeleteAgreed! And there is certainly a story behind that! Xxxx
DeleteThank you for your interest, Annette. I apologize for my late start this morning, but I answered the guinea pig question above. Please feel free to ask any other questions you'd like me to answer.
DeleteCongrats, Bruce! Count me in the group for wanting to know about the "guinea pig for the U.S. government" club. LOL
ReplyDeleteBruce will be here soon!
DeleteThank you for your interest, Liz. I've answered the guinea pig question above. Please feel free to ask any other questions you have for me. I'm enjoying this process, although I may step away for a minute to get another cup of coffee.
DeleteI've seen so much of the kinds of changes you describe in various parts of Southern California, including my childhood home in the San Gabriel Valley and houses in the Newport Beach area where I went to college (UC Irvine) fifty years ago. I've driven through Malibu many times taking the scenic route to my late mom's in Ventura but never really stopped.
ReplyDeleteMy writing-related obstacle was not having enough time to write the books in me, so I quit the day job and have been able to write 3+ books/year since. Congratulations on your new one!
Sounds like you made the perfect decision!
DeleteHello, Edith. I've lived in various sections of Ventura. My mother and I used to own The Blues Bakery there, in the Oddfellows building downtown, next to Tip's Thai. I included all of the recipes we used there into Quilt City Cookbook, narrated humorously by Hadley Carroll. I also created many other recipes, and my wife added about a dozen savory recipes.
DeleteI'm glad you made the decision to go all in with your writing. You're incredibly prolific. Do you write under your own name, and what kind of novels do you write?
Thanks, Bruce! I wish I had visited your bakery when I was going to Ventura several times a year.
DeleteI write mostly as Maddie Day, cozies and historicals (late 1880s and early 1920s).
Hello, Edith.
DeleteSmall world. I read and enjoyed Murder on Cape Cod.
BRUCE: Congratulations on publishing HARD EXIT. Was it like revisiting old frenemies when you started working on it again?
ReplyDeleteAnd I also want deets on that US government situation.
Agreed! A person would be so different on the 35 your journey…
DeleteThat's a great question, Grace. For decades, I tied my self-worth to my successes or failures as a writer. Therefore, because I couldn't finish the novel that at the time was titled Exit Wound, I felt lousy about myself most days. After typing "The End" on Quilt City Murders, however, I had officially completed a novel. So, with the support of Sedonia, whom I'd met and moved in with, I sat down to revisit Hard Exit.
DeleteI read the first half, which I'd read and tinkered with at least a hundred times, and I found the error that had subconsciously been holding me back. I had inverted a plot point. I don't know how I hadn't noticed it, but once I did, I wrote the second half of the novel in a month. Of course, I revised it, but the difference in timeframe between the first half glacial slog and the breakneck sprint of the second half shows how important believing in ourselves is. I've written my other four novels at a more measured pace: I do my best to meet my daily word count, but if I don't, I try not to berate myself over this shortfall, then increase my word count slightly the next day.
From what I have observed, any place in the country that boasts beautiful views and waterfrontage are soon taken over by the very rich, who build their outrageous mansions. Locals are pushed out because they cannot afford the taxes, let alone any available real estate.
ReplyDeleteBut your book definitely is one I want to read, Bruce!
The way of the world… Some of it, at least! Xxxxx
DeleteHello, Judi. You're correct. Sedonia and I live in Southern Illinois in a large hundred-year-old craftsman bungalow that is valued at what a parking space would likely sell for in Malibu or Santa Monica. I miss the ocean a lot, and I do my best to bodysurf in it when we visit my mother. However, L.A. in general and Malibu specifically are far out of our financial reach. Both the Hadley Carroll Mysteries and the Jack Drake Private-Eye Mysteries would have to be sold to Hollywood, then prove to be runaway hits, before we could afford to pay for a vacation in a beachfront hotel, let alone to buy a home on the sand.
DeleteBruce, the story behind Hard Exit is really interesting. Since you began writing it 35 years ago, what is the time-frame setting?
ReplyDeleteAt the end of second semester of my freshman year, my aunt invited me to spent a couple of weeks at her home in Beverly Hills. She also invited my cousin Ellen who was just finishing her sophomore year at U New Mexico. Waiting for us, was a 1962 white Chevy Impala convertible that my uncle, my dad's youngest brother, a fighter pilot, had left at her house while he was stationed overseas. With The Wolfman playing the sounds of The Beach Boys on the radio, you bet we went to Malibu. We may have been the only brunettes on the beach. Lol
Many Malibu excursions, all in the 1960's and '70's, but I can't claim to know any more about it than my shallow ventures. The changes you talk about, that feeling of nostalgia for a place that is so dramatically different from your memories, is not unique to Malibu.
“The only brunettes on the beach!” What a great book title…
DeleteThat's a great question, Judy. Although there were periods of time when I wasn't working on my manuscript, I frequently revisited it, updating the details as time passed. The most significant one that comes to mind is the use of cell phones. I had to change the plot in various ways to accommodate that.
DeleteI'm not sure I should admit this here, but I'm enjoying these interactions, so I will: For decades, Hard Exit started with a school shooting. I conceived of the inciting incident while I substitute taught in Lynwood, CA, where gangs were a significant problem in 1989-90, when I taught there. I wrote the shooting scene, but then the murders at Columbine happened, and I didn't want to appear to be exploiting a tragedy, so I set the novel aside. But, horribly, Columbine spawned many other shootings, and other authors and nearly every television drama at least hinted at school shootings. I made peace with the fact that I wouldn't be exploiting a tragedy, at least not any more than any of the other writers were. Eventually I completed the novel, only for something on the order of 400 agents and publishers to either ignore my queries or to reject my submission. An editor at a small publisher that at the time I had respect for told me she liked the idea of two characters from distinctly different worlds interacting, based on the cover copy I'd provided to her. She said she'd consider reading the novel if it didn't have a school shooting in it.
I wrestled for three days with this dilemma. Should I remove the inciting incident from the novel, the motor driving the action, on the chance that a publisher (not a Big Five publisher) would consider the novel? It seemed like a REALLY big ask, but I decided to spend a week carefully splicing and dicing. I realized that the novel wasn't worse for the fact that it didn't include a school shooting (I moved it to a city park) because the strength of the novel is its relationships and the emotional struggles (mostly grief) that Jack works through to save himself, with the help of Game and Jennifer, the neighbor he's loved for years, although he hasn't allowed himself to admit his feelings to her, and maybe not to himself.
I'm glad you enjoyed your excursions to Malibu. One of my favorite novelists, John Gregory Dunne, who was married to Joan Didion and lived in Malibu in the seventies, said much the same thing about the beaches there: That there weren't any brunettes on them.
So what happened with the publisher, Bruce?
DeleteThank you for asking, Deborah. I dropped the ball on that story.
DeleteI resubmitted Hard Exit, after I'd revised it, but I got ghosted by the editor. She didn't respond to two follow-up emails.
It turned out the publisher wasn't as distinguished as I'd thought it had been. I know a writer who published with it, and it never published a paperback of her first novel, and the ebook price is FAR too high for an author without a bigger name.
It may all have been for the best, because the publisher might not have liked the cover, which I like, and the audiobook of Hard Exit will be released on April 29, and who knows if that would have happened if she'd gotten back to me.
Bruce, wow! Just wow! Congratulations on finishing and publishing HARD EXIT! I'll be searching for it, as well as your Hadley Carroll mysteries--can't believe a mystery series set in the quilting capital of the USA escaped my attention! And thank you for your honesty--I too struggle with depression every day. It's one of the reasons I decided to self-publish my own work this late in life--what depression stole from me was time.
ReplyDeleteAgreed! I am so intrigued by the quilt capital!
DeleteThank you for your kind words, Flora. I'm very sorry you also suffer from depression. It's a persistent beast that's always trying to rehash the past and to diminish the present, if not annihilate it. This post only touches on depression, but I explore it more fully in the post that will run on CareerAuthors on January 6. If you subscribe to my newsletter on my website, https://bruceleonardwriter.com, you'll be able to read my musings on various subjects, one of which is mental health.
DeleteGood luck to you, and I hope your books sell well.
Congratulations Bruce! Hard Exit sounds fabulous. I'm glad you were able to bring it to light after 35 years. I too have struggled with depression, although I'm now spending a lot more time in a peaceful place.
ReplyDeleteLove you so much!
DeleteThank you, Gillian. I'm sorry to hear that you suffer from depression. One of the aspects of depression that I don't think most people understand is that it may darken our days and terrorize our nights even when our lives appear to be going well.
DeleteWhen I was at my worst, if a publisher had offered me a three-book deal and a whopping advance, I would likely have felt something approximating joy for about twelve minutes. Then the darkness would have closed back in, reminding me that the first book in that deal could fail, making me feel worse about myself, and if it succeeded, the pressure on me to deliver even more successful sequels would have been unbearable. And then there would be the tax burdens, the time commitments, and all those hours aging at my desk, rather than getting my steps in to try to ward off the inevitable.
It not only can be difficult to face our fears and feelings of depression on our own but to come forward and share those emotions with others takes courage. It often becomes the elephant in the room and many will look for the nearest exit rather than confront or give comfort to the person in pain. Many don't know how to respond and others may choose to not get involved. I can well understand the idea behind expressing one's feelings in the form of writing and to write about what we know. Hurrah for you, Mr. Leonard, for coming full circle in completing Hard Exit and facing your own demons. Obstacles for me have always been a combination of upbringing and lack of believing in myself. Growing up in the 50's and 60's when there were a separate set of "rules and standards" for women vs. men I was always aware that being taken seriously as a female pursuing certain careers would most of the time result in doors being shut in my face. So my dream of being a writer or achieving other goals felt far fetched to me. One thing I have learned over the years is that being timid and unsure of one's abilities just makes it that much harder to push back and open those doors. If your roar is more like a kitten than a lion you are doomed. It takes so much courage and hard work to achieve what you want in life and a dose of chutzpah sometimes as well. Even though some folks make it look easy many people have no idea what it took to accomplish those achievements. The light at the end of the tunnel, however, for those of us who lack confidence and believing in ourselves, is having those warriors and champions in our corner who persistently support and encourage our dreams as well as help us realize that we do have the gumption to make our dreams come true; that is, if we want it hard enough.
ReplyDeleteYou are so wonderfully articulate and thoughtful, Evelyn! Xxxxx
DeleteHANK PHILLIPPI RYAN ~ I am most grateful for that wonderful "dose" of confidence booster! You are so graciously supportive and I thank you for your kind words.
DeleteVery well stated, Evelyn. Believing that the words we add to a blank page or screen will intrigue, entertain, or educate readers takes a certain audacity or delusion.
DeleteHowever, I will make a case that lacking confidence can improve our writing significantly. I am a better editor than I am a writer, and I've edited far too many writers who were so convinced of their superior writing skills that they failed to rewrite, or even to proofread, their work. The best writers I know are the ones who are the hardest on themselves, or at least who are the hardest on their copy.
Faulkner said that writers have to kill their darlings, but I think many writers are so proud of themselves, so enamored of their efforts, that they don't apply the rewriting and editing rigor they should apply. Self-publishing allows people to push out first drafts that people who lack confidence in their writing would likely rewrite at least three times before they showed their work to beta readers, let alone published it.
Despite publicly declaring my desire to become a novelist at nineteen, my first novel wasn't published until I was 57, and it was initially published by a "publisher" who proved to be far out of her depths and who owes me thousands of dollars, which I will never see.
So, if you want to write, it's never too late, as your well-written response indicates.
Good luck.
Thank you so much for your interesting response about confidence, Bruce! Even responding to these blogs I am constantly rewriting my comments as if I were writing the great American novel. :-) So what you stated above makes sense to me and I love that you shared your thoughts about how feeling uncertain can have a positive effect on getting results. Although I sometimes think of myself as being as "old as dirt" I have never stopped thinking about writing. So with great appreciation I have grabbed onto your last two sentences of support as proof that it is never too late. I also admire your honest approach about mental health and am happy you have found a champion and supporter in life who has made the journey for you one of "wonderment". I look forward to reading Hard Exit.
DeleteI wonder also if being a "guinea pig for the government" is the same concept as feeling like we all are playing pieces on the chessboard of life. The government through legal channels can easily move us around and change the rules of the game whenever they want and we are bound by the laws and regulations put into place.
ReplyDeleteBesides the govt thing I am also interested in that bakery owner gig. What was your best seller?
ReplyDeleteHope your new book gets best seller accolades too.
Oh, what a great question!
DeleteThank you, Brenda. I addressed the guinea pig question above.
DeleteAs for The Blues Bakery: It was a 210-square-foot hole in the wall under an Oddfellows sign on Main Street in Ventura. When my mother and I bought it, it was seedy and needed a top-to-bottom-to-top scrub down. I'd always liked blues music, and there was (and maybe still is) a famous music venue in Los Angeles called The Jazz Bakery. So, I thought I'd riff on that and display various musical instruments and posters at The Blues Bakery. I threw out all but one of the recipes we bought from the previous owner, then worked very long hours (a few 100-hour weeks) to turn what had been a hobby for the few previous owners into a business that would be successful enough that I could step back from the day-to-day operations and write my novel, the one that rode on my back like a monkey. I came very close to accomplishing my goal, but I developed tendonitis in both wrists, preventing me even from being able to prepare an egg wash. The doctor I saw for my pain didn't believe I was right handed because I'd lost so much strength in my right arm. But it all worked out for the best because I added baking to the skills that Hadley possesses, and, in a bit of meta writing, she is writing Quilt City Cookbook while trying to solve the mysteries that occur in Quilt City: Measure Once, Cut Twice. The cookbook hasn't sold tremendously, but I've heard from many people who have loved more than a few of the recipes therein.
Our best sellers were the lemon bars, pumpkin muffins, and peanut butter cookies, all of which I included in Quilt City Cookbook. However, the recipes I developed for the cookbook but that weren't featured in the bakery are, debatably, the best recipes. The panna cotta, pecan biscotti, espresso biscotti, Audrey's Wedding Cookies, and Paducah Cheesecake are my new favorites.
Bruce, your story about the bakery and the cookbook is amazing! I hate to hear about the tendonitis as I suffer from it also. You have certainly made the best of the worst life throws at you! Now we all can't wait to read your books...
DeleteThank you, Lucy.
DeleteI've given attributes and backstories that I possess to both Hadley Carroll and Jack Drake. More than once, people have referred to Hadley as being resilient. It is one of the most important traits we can possess.
I hope you enjoy my books.
Bruce, I have often felt that the most interesting stories come from authors with the most varied backgrounds. Sounds like you fit that bill. I'll check in later to see what you say about the big question of the day!
ReplyDeleteKathy Reel will no doubt join me in saying that Paducah, Kentucky is well known as one of the best places to see and buy quilts, as well as to purchase all things related to them. I've long wanted to attend the week-long Paducah Quilt Festival. Classes, quilt and fabric vendors, and lots of crazed quilters all in one place!
Thank you, Karen. When I was young, I read that aspiring writers shouldn't spend forty years working for one corporation. If I told you how many different jobs I've had, you probably wouldn't believe me.
DeleteAs I stated in an above answer, I owe most of my happiness to Paducah. I've attended QuiltWeek a few times, and my favorite part is meeting quilters who love my books and tell me I got the quilting aspects correct.
Karen, I've never been to Quilt Week either, and I live just two hours and 7 minutes from Paducah. Maybe we should go sometime. Bruce, it must have been quite satisfying for the quilters to let you know you were on target with the quilting aspects of your books.
DeleteJungle Red field trip!
DeleteHello, Kathy,
DeleteYes, it was satisfying, but the story's a little richer than that.
As I was frantically and desperately writing Quilt City Murders during a Paducah summer without air conditioning because I was too poor to risk a high electric bill, I thought the best I could hope for with the novel was that one day I would be able to sign copies of it in the National Quilt Museum during QuiltWeek.
To my delight, I've achieved that goal three times and have enjoyed interacting with readers far more than I'd thought I would. In addition, the museum has sold hundreds, if not thousands, of copies of my books, so, yes, the Hadley Carroll Mysteries have delivered satisfaction on many fronts.
Kathy, I'd love that! It's too far from Cincinnati for a day trip, and I don't know the area well, and would love to be there with a "local".
DeleteI'm not sure if I'll be signing during QuiltWeek this year, but if I am, please stop by to say hello, Karen. I don't live in Paducah now, but I'm only about an hour and a half away, so I visit at least four times per year.
DeleteAfter reading today’s blog post, I know that I must seek out all your books!
ReplyDeleteIt’s really sad what happens when beach areas are “gentrified”. I live in a beach town in a neighborhood that’s about a ten minute walk away from the nearest beach, which is private. The nearest public beach is a couple of miles from it. Back in the fifties a lot of young couples just starting out bought tiny beach cottages, which at the time were among the most affordable homes in the area. They raised their families there, retired, and discovered that they could no longer afford the taxes on their homes because many neighbors sold out to people who tore down the cottages and built huge mansions on the waterfront. All the property values soared, which is great if you want to sell your home. Many of the people who wanted to live out their remaining years in their homes found themselves having to apply for help in order to pay their real estate taxes. I worked for the city for many years, and one of my responsibilities was to help people apply for real estate tax benefits, based on income. I was shocked when I saw how little some people’s income was, and how high their real estate taxes were. Some owed more in taxes than they received in Social Security. A couple of people told me their children helped out with their expenses.
I used to think it would be nice to live on the water, but not anymore.
DebRo
Wow, Deb, that's eye-opening about the property taxes. When I lived in Los Angeles, I rented. As a hand-to-mouth freelance writer, I used to joke that I'd have to win the lottery twice to be able to afford to buy a house even in a distant suburb.
DeleteThank you for your support, and I hope you enjoy my books.
Wow, that is heartbreaking..
DeleteWelcome, Bruce! What fascinating stories--and plots! I wonder if there was ever any published conclusion to the government study?
ReplyDeleteGreat question, Deborah. Although I never felt compelled to verify this information, I heard that the data was thrown out. The study called for fourteen "local nuts," but only thirteen showed up, and a few of us dropped out. It wasn't a significant sample size to begin with, so I tend to think the info I heard about the data being useless was correct.
DeleteTruly, so scary. "The Human Nutrition Research Center" sounds like something out of The Twilight ZOne. :-)
DeleteI'm too familiar with depression so you have my sympathy, Bruce. I hate how lovely towns are ruined by "progress" and greed. I thought about living in a beach town but real estate taxes and insurance would probably make it impossible.
ReplyDeleteHard Exit sounds like a winner!
Thanks, Pat. I'm proud of Hard Exit.
DeleteI think there's a corollary about living in a beach town and the adage people say about owning a boat: The best kind of boat to own is someone else's, and the best way to experience a beach town is to visit people who own houses in them.
Perfect!
DeleteBruce, as I have lived my whole life in Kentucky, and for 48 years only a couple of hours from Paducah, your quilting mysteries sound especially interesting. And, your talking about Malibu and Hard Exit made me realize that Malibu isn't all glitz and glamor. The question that I am wondering about most concerning your family's connection to Malibu is this. How much did the property where your mother lives or lived increase over the years? How much was it insured for when the house burned to the ground? And, I'm really hoping for a good answer to this question. Did your mother have the property insured at its current value when the house was destroyed?
ReplyDeleteAs with most everywhere else, don't believe the hype about Malibu. Although the wealth there now is staggering (and, depending on your constitution, nauseating), Malibu has its drawbacks, independent of the extraordinary costs.
DeleteThe fear of fire is almost constant, or at least it was for me. Most Californians near the coast are at least subconsciously aware of the possibility that an earthquake could wipe them out at any moment, or the resulting tsunami could. And the fires burn all of the vegetation, then make the hillsides prone to landslides, which close roads and wipe out houses.
Thankfully, my mom had good insurance and lives in a more beautiful house than her old one, but she had to pack her car with her important documents and favorite possessions a couple weeks ago because a fire raged and burned homes not all that far away.
So, no, it's not all glitz and glamour.
Congratulations, Bruce. It was a log journey to Hard Exit but how magnificent to finish it. My Hub was born in the 60's in California - he's going to LOVE this!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Jenn. I wouldn't recommend my protracted writing process, but living with characters as long as I have with Hard Exit certainly enriched them.
DeleteI hope your husband enjoys the novel, and thank you for your support.
You had me at "a man in love with two women, one of them dead." What a terrific concept.
ReplyDeleteAtlanta
Thanks for telling me.
DeleteIt took me many drafts to come up with cover copy that worked, but when I finally stumbled upon those words, I knew I'd found "a keeper."