Q & A with J.M. Maison, author of Desired to Death

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You might know her by another name. You might see her at another site.

But today she’s J.M. Maison —  and has she got a book for you. DESIRED TO DEATH is a delectable mystery just released on Amazon. Here’s the juicy blurb:

The empty nest can be murder!

Just ask stay-at-home mom Maggie True whose daughter has just left for college—leaving Maggie with a burning question for her husband Joe: “Now what am I going to do with the rest of my life?”

Never in her wildest dreams does small-town Maggie imagine the answer will come in the form of a middle-of-the-night call for help from an estranged friend who has just been arrested for the lurid murder of a much-younger lover: A.J. Traverso, AKA Tattoo Boy—a sexy kickboxing instructor who had captured the fancy of all the women in Halfway Bay, Maine.

But solving this mystery will be no walk in the dog park. For below the surface of her sleepy coastal town, resides a dark world of secret lusts and desires that Maggie has never imagined. And when an anonymous tip to the police suggests that happily-married Maggie was involved with A.J. Traverso, the investigation becomes more than just a curiosity. For Maggie True, the solution to the mystery of what to do with the rest of her life—and the identity of the cold-blooded killer—might be closer than she thinks…

For anyone who has ever faced a life transition and wondered “What next?” Desired to Death answers with an irresistible mix of suspense and intrigue, humor and heart.

Intrigued? Well, here’s more of the inside scoop on this spine-tingling new novel: Continue reading →

Caryatids in Rebellion (A Wing-Feather Fable)

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Fables-30 Noah ran his finger across the grains of stone, the roughened salt and pepper texture. His father was an architect. Noah knew foundations. Just above the granite sat the pilasters, those half-columns wedded to the surface. They were part of the façade, supporting nothing, but their bottoms looked like feet, elephantine, enormous with the punch of something mighty. They gathered where the earth had split, where the girls and women vanished.

Another crack had opened in the night. It ran the length of Humbolt Street, past the dry cleaners and the library where Amy Feldon worked beneath the glow of lamps. She had barely left the building, heels clicking in staccato bursts, when the pavement ruptured. Like all the rest, she fell into a loamy, root-strewn void. No one saw the bottom.

Noah shivered. His mother was the first to disappear, on an errand to buy mousetraps. Six months gone, and he still could see that chasm burst, a giant’s mouth, voracious. No time to shout or say goodbye.

The sheriff had just rubbed his chin. “Wrong place, wrong time, bad luck.” It became the city’s worn-out mantra. After that, more fissures opened — behind the bank, in the alley by the diner, beside the railroad tracks. A wide zigzag crossed the elementary school playground and gulped down Noah’s little sisters. By then, the earth had eaten all the mothers, the grandmothers, and the aunts.

The cracks grew wild and numerous, the city so divided that some places became islands, entire unto themselves. There were areas that a person could not reach. There were rumors of starvation, of people eating dogs and worse.

On random corners, white-whiskered tobacco spitters gathered. Their eyes were flinty slits, reptilian, as they grumbled, ”Them little chits, they aught to know their place. They asked for it, and now we’re paying.” They leaned against the pilasters that looked more and more like feet, ready to step out.

Noah began to think of caryatids. His mother, she had told him stories, legends of stone women holding up the world. ”Imagine, boy, if they walked off.” She’d laughed at that, her voice a sparkler in the night. As the neighborhood compressed, Noah watched the masonry. He was sure now. The pilasters were waiting, gathered, marble effigies of caryatids unformed. At night, he listened for the wrench of stone from stone, the thud of granite feet.

He was not sure how it happened, how the women became earth, how the earth consumed and then transformed them into demons, angels, rank avengers in disguise as simple stonework. The pilasters felt warm. They grew hot enough to burn. They smelled of cordite laced with jasmine. At night, they buzzed like hornets. He heard them in his dreams and in his dreams he saw them loosen from the façade. He saw them step across the gaps. He saw them leave the broken city in their wake, and not one of them looked back.

~ Photo by Brenda Gottsabend; Story by Lisa Ahn

Learn more about Wing-Feather Fables here

Wonder Cabinets, Hippocampus Redirect

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I am fascinated by the old Wunderkammern or Wonder Cabinets of the European Renaissance. These were rooms (and, later, cabinets) filled with an odd assortment of treasures, mysteries, and curiosities.

If you’d like to learn how a Wonder Cabinet can inspire you in the here-and-now, then join me over at Hippocampus Magazine for, “On Mermaid Hands and Bezoar Stones.” What curiosities will you find?

Wing-Feather Fable: Circle-Eyed

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The last Cyclops gave his one eye to the gods on the very day they buried him. It was a strange bequest, since the gods themselves had killed him. I imagine he was flustered, befuddled by the weight of death. Though, given all that happened later, it might have been an act of vengeance, both prescient and preemptive.

When the last Cyclops died, his eye began its second life. The gods placed it in a burnished wall, high on Mt. Olympus. Aphrodite used it as a mirror. For Apollo, it was target practice. The eye could always heal. In fact, it had powers curative and salubrious that extended down and out, onto the children of the earth.

In this second life, the eye sought evidence of mercy. The last Cyclops had found none. He was named Katastrophe, though this was neither by his choice nor through his fault. Offspring of the Earth and Sky in all their clamor, he spent several lifetimes locked in Tartarus until Zeus released him for a price. The Cyclops did his part. He forged the weapons of the gods, the lightning bolts and tridents and Hades’ devilish helmet.

All this earned him nothing but a reputation for brutish, simpleminded strength, brawn without the brains. The gods, all debts forgotten, cast him as the villain, a harsh antagonist. When his brother, blind Polyphemus, died of mange contracted from his sheep, the last Cyclops left the world behind. On a nameless Artic island, he tallied up the stars. At three million four-hundred-thousand and eleven, Apollo slew him with a bow and arrow that Katastrophe himself had forged. The irony went unspoken.

A thousand years went by. The eye found mercy in unlikely places – a penniless nun, an unhappy princess, and the stories of a Holocaust survivor. In the reflection of the eye, mercy seeped down upon the earth, and, slowly, slowly, the gods began to die. They fell to hubris and inertia and a virulent form of measles. When the last god crumbled into dust, the wall that housed the eye fell from Mt. Olympus to Chicago where it seemed always to have been.

There, the eye began its third and final incarnation. It’s burnished metal frame was like a hero’s shield. The eye turned towards compassion. It caught and held the sun, directed it at shadows. It sought the lonely and discarded, soul-children of Katastrophe. It found slaves and prostitutes, the broken, slashed, and seared, hearts turned into lead. Small children, castoffs, and the aged.

In the beam of its own light, the eye sloughs off bitterness and injury. It whispers solace. It bears witness. It melts the hearts of lead. It is primordial and vast, for we have yet to plumb the limits of compassion. Sometimes, in deepest darkness, the eye believes it hears the sigh of it’s last owner, Katastrophe. Then, never short of grace, the eye sings wordless lullabies, and the Cyclops, comforted and solaced, dead these many years, finds peace.

~ Photo by Brenda Gottsabend; Story by Lisa Ahn

Learn more about Wing-Feather Fables here

Judy Lee Dunn on words, maps, and inspiration

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I had three key goals when I started blogging. I wanted a forum for creative risk-taking, writing experiments, pushing myself.  I wanted to gather more readers, build an audience. And, I wanted a “platform,” a place to connect the dots between the various strands of my writing life. There was just one big problem.

I had no idea what I was doing.

I was dipping my toes in the water, making random splashes that never coalesced into concentric rings. It was messy.

At first, that was okay. But if I really wanted to achieve my goals as a blogging writer, I had to make some changes. That’s when I found my fairy godmother, the talented, inspiring, and motivational Judy Lee Dunn.

Judy’s blog is a treasure trove of tips and advice, “For writers who blog and bloggers who write.” She helps bloggers — from newbies to veterans — define who they are, what they want, and how to get there. For me, Judy has been a pivotal influence, both in blogging and in my creative writing more generally.

When I stepped into the blogging pond, I wrote a little of this and a little of that. I had no focus. I had no sense of audience or purpose. I was improvising. Lots of little splashes, no big waves. In posts like Stephen King, Seth Godin and Content Marketing: Who Is Defining You? and The Hollywood Guide to a Better Blog Tagline, Judy gives her readers practical solutions for attending to audience and focusing content. She uses real-world examples, often injected with a healthy dose of humor to bridge the gap between fear and accomplishment.

Judy’s examples and insights often take the form of stories. In a page called “Things I Believe,” she writes, “Story is how we make sense of our world.” Judy enacts this faith in her own writing and inspires her readers to do the same. I love the lessons on creativity she garners from John Cleese. Take your time. Let ideas brew. Don’t be afraid to laugh along the way. Yes, and yes, and yes.

I’m guessing that at least part of Judy’s faith in storytelling comes from her experience working as a first-grade teacher. (I suspect her toughness has roots there too. I have a first-grader. She exhausts me.) In Why Successful Bloggers Always Win The M&M Game, Judy demonstrates how bloggers can find greater success through cooperative learning and teamwork. In Show And Tell: What I Learned About Blogging from First Graders, she explores the benefits of curiosity and innovation. Building a Bloggers’ Community: What I Learned at Recess, shows bloggers how to build a real community through positive feedback and mutual support.

I owe much to Judy Dunn. In the last two years, I’ve changed this space from a large echoing chamber with uneasy resonance to a cozy corner decorated with purple throw pillows, steaming mugs of cocoa, and an orange lava lamp. I’m closer to meeting my goals. But, even if all of that weren’t true, I’d still be in writer’s-debt to Judy. I met my talented, amazing fable partner, Brenda Gottsabend, on Judy’s website — because Judy doesn’t just talk about making connections between writers. She does it. And, for that, I am truly grateful, every day. Welcome, Judy. And, thank you.

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Words and Maps: Reflections on Inspiration, by Judy Dunn

Words and maps. 

For as long as I can remember, I have been enchanted by the power of words to transport readers to a world they don’t yet know. To make them laugh. Or cry. 26 letters, put together in ways that can persuade, teach, entertain, even enrage.

And when I was a child, maps were a metaphor for a world I had not yet seen: all the places that existed far away from Harbor City, beyond the Kress’s Five and Ten on Market Street and the sawmill across the Southside Bridge.

Inspiration is a slippery thing to define. Are we inspired to do our life’s work simply because we are good at it? Or are we good at it precisely because it has inspired us so?

I am a writer come lately. For a long while, other things got in the way: like raising a child by myself. Getting a teaching degree so I could make the rent and put dinner on the table, though the meals were sometimes meager. (My daughter fondly remembers Cowboy Macaroni, but didn’t know until after she was grown the origin of—and reason for— that particular dish.)

But my side trips in life didn’t mean that I had stopped caring about my passions. They were just that: little detours.

I always came back to my two passions: words and maps.

Words

I learned early on that words used in the right way, could make people pay attention.

When I was 5, my parents would haul me out to perform for company. Being a name freak, I could recite, in syncopated rhythm and alphabetical order, the first and last name of every child in my kindergarten class. From Georgia Bushnell to Andy Zimmerman.

My parents’ friends thought it was hilarious. Though I would have preferred their solemn attention to laughter, still, it left me drunk on the power of words.

I began memorizing the dictionary when I was in third grade, after winning my school district spelling bee and advancing to the competition at the Grays Harbor County Fair. I held the Webster’s Dictionary in my hands in the back seat of the car on the way, getting in some last-minute studying. I lost miserably in that spelling bee, fouling out in the third round. But the dictionary became my friend.

I didn’t think about being a writer. Though I was in Honors English, Mrs. Finn, my high school counselor, never suggested I could do that. A goal of writer as a profession for a girl would have been as delusional  as, say, expecting to become a brain surgeon or an airline pilot.

I resisted options open to girls at the time: secretary, nurse, teacher. I signed up for all the French and Spanish classes I could take, setting my sights on a career in New York City as an interpreter at the United Nations.

One day, I snagged a copy of Seventeen Magazine, reeled in by the cover headline: “You Can Work at the U.N.!” I flipped through to the article and was stunned to read that girls like me could work at the United Nations—in the secretarial pool.

Years later, after my marriage ended, I was teaching English to southeast Asian refugees.  By day, I made hallway bulletin boards with a map of Laos, showing other kids in the school the stories my students had written,  complete  with pictures of their beautiful BAH-nah-nah trees.

At night, to make ends meet, I spoon-fed tender English phrases—“does this bus go downtown?”, “where is the rice noodle aisle?”—to their parents in night school.

All the time, in the back of my mind, I sensed that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing. I began writing in journals and placing a few magazine articles. But I was left with little time for my own creative work.

Maps

My fascination with maps started in fourth grade at Robert Gray Elementary School, with the globe, the pull-down maps and the encyclopedias in my classroom. In my mind, if I could point to a city or a country, I figured it was possible to go there someday.

The summer I was nine, the encyclopedia man showed up on our doorstep with his suitcase of shiny red Encyclopedia Britannicas, just like the ones at school.  I loved to read about the places with exotic-sounding names, like Senegal. Turkey. Mo-ROC-co. Minneapolis.

And there were enough maps to fuel my explorer self for months. Years even.

But when the encyclopedia man’s best offer turned out to be the $9.99 monthly plan, Mama shooed him away with her hand, like he was a bothersome fly. And just like that, it was over. I watched out the front room window as his station wagon peeled out, the gravel on the driveway spitting. I was crushed.

Next, I asked my mom if we could get the National Geographic. I had seen my friend’s father read them and I knew that there was a full-color, foldout map in every issue. Mama said we couldn’t afford it, that it was an expensive magazine more suited for grownups.  But she got me a small globe that Christmas.

Maps continue to inspire me. Now, as a gift to my nine-year-old self, I have one of those big National Geographic maps on my office wall, with colored push pins stuck onto all the countries where I have new friends—from Twitter, from Facebook, from my blog. Someday I will visit them.

Words and Maps Together

Whenever my two passions intersected, I was truly inspired.

As manager of Writing Resources for World Vision, words and maps perfectly converged to send me to West Africa as part of a documentary team to tell the stories of projects helping third world families become self-sufficient.

Later, I was a grant writing consultant, creating proposals to convince bankers and CEOs to give money so kids in third world countries would not die from drinking dirty water.

Now, I’ve finally reached the point where I am putting together the pieces of my life, word by word, shining a light on one of the recurring themes of my life.  Finding just the right words to express a life map of sorts: to understand where I started and where I am going.

I am writing a memoir.

I believe that we never really lose our passions. Jobs can come and go, but, in the end, we never forget what inspires us.

Do you have a thread weaving through and around your life? A passion that inspires your work, whatever that might be at the moment?

~~~

Judy Lee Dunn has lived on the west coast of the U.S all her life, but considers herself a citizen of the world. She speaks four languages: English, French, Spanish and Swahili. (Okay, she can only say “Four knives will be sufficient” in Swahili, but she is sure that will come in handy someday.) Judy is currently writing Out Tonight, her debut memoir. She  lives on Anderson Island in South Puget Sound, Washington with her husband and their two adopted cats, Mr. Puffers and Booda. Follow her on Twitter, @JudyLeeDunn, and  on Facebook at her Judy Lee Dunn author page. Judy’s blog is a past winner of a Top 10 Blogs for Writers award.