Author Event: Let there be cake balls and scones

by Joan

Julie Kibler on Calling Me Home

I love book signings. I love meeting the authors of my favorite books, hearing the stories behind the stories and, yes, dreaming of a time when the one at the podium might be me. 

Long before our own Julie Kibler’s book came out I told her I wanted to host a signing at my house. Though I’ve only been in Dallas for eight years, I’ve made pockets of friends here and there and wanted to get a chance to spread the word about Calling Me Home. Plus I love to entertain, especially when there will be sugar involved.

Dallas friends at the Mora's house

We had a nice turnout, great conversation and just the right amount of books. Julie told the rapt group about the seeds of the story, her grandmother’s doomed relationship with a black man in a sundown town, and about her journey to publication.

Pamela's scrumptious cake balls

Pamela made gorgeous cake balls, Elizabeth made decadent scones and clotted cream, and my husband graciously agreed to shoot the photos.

As writers, we gravitate to book events. In fact, over the next month, at least 3 or more of us are going to see Cheryl Strayed, Elizabeth Strout and George Saunders at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Over the past several years, several of us have seen KathrynStockett, Vanessa Diffenbaugh, Chris Cleave, John Irving and Jamie Ford to name a few.

Thanks, Julie, for treating my friends to a great day!

Tell us about your favorite author events. 

photo credits, Rick Mora

The Majestic John Irving

by Joan

Last Tuesday, I went to the grand Majestic Theater in Dallas with my son, fresh from his first year of college, to see an extraordinary writer. After a short detour (to the Horchow Auditorium as noted on the Dallas Museum of Art's website then redirected to the theater—what’s up with that DMA?), we enjoyed listening with a crowd of several hundred fans while John Irving, as in his books, shared wry observation and ironic humor in his humble style.

I scribbled on notepaper in the dark to an onstage conversation between Irving and Kevin Moriarty, Artistic Director of the Dallas Theater Center, who demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of Irving’s novels. Irving shared insights about his creative process, his previous works, and his new novel, In One Person, “a story of unfulfilled love and a passionate celebration of our sexual differences.” DMA billed it as “Irving’s most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. In One Person is a tender portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself worthwhile.”

Irving is aware of “social contentiousness” and “takes a side” and that he’s “sardonic about politics.” It was a bad day to be a social conservative in that audience, but no one seemed to take offense; I didn’t see anyone leave at the politically charged bombs he launched. Perhaps like me, the audience was mesmerized at Irving’s gentle nature, his unfailing honesty and his willingness to share personal background to show he is indeed human.

At one time he wanted to be an actor (his delivery of Owen Meany's high-pitched, warble-y voice was proof he might have done well), but realized he liked and needed to be alone. What better way than to spend days speaking to no one but the characters on your page? A wrestler from age 14 to 34, Irving says wrestlers must also pay “minute attention to details” and run the same drills over and over, as in the process of rewriting. His tales of failed attempts to unite his wrestling and writing friends had the audience chuckling.

He won’t begin a novel until he knows the end, perhaps the exact last sentence, and is committed to hurting a character “as bad as you can.” He learned from Dickens, Hardy, Melville and Shakespeare that a writer can create an unlikeable character, make them sympathetic, then throw them into the grips of tragedy. He’s aware his writing is a bit morbid, but says he has lost several key people in his life and “writes for those who died.”

As Moriarty asked him questions, Irving stared at his folded hands, as though typing the words across his mind to elicit a careful answer. When he was given a stack of audience questions on 3X5 cards, he shuffled through them, choosing ones that brought intense responses, both laughter and shock. Much like his writing. He is indeed a distinguished writer and I feel lucky to have had the chance to hear him. 

It's the STORY, stupid!

By Susan


I had an “ah-ha moment” recently that has made a huge difference in how, and why, I write. It’s nothing new, and I am not the first to figure this one out. It’s no secret, but by making a small shift in my approach, I am able to look at writing in a totally different light.

It’s all about the story.

Now, that may not seem too earth-shattering. Why else do people read, but to uncover a new tale, something fresh and insightful? Yet when I started my first attempt at a novel, I got lost in the words and forgot what I was writing. It went something like this: I had an idea. Then I added characters, built a basic plotline in my head, and started, with furrowed brow and calloused fingers, to write it down.

The problem was that I obsessed about the verbiage and phrasing, the rewriting and editing, instead of focusing on just telling the story. I was paying attention to the words, not the plot. I wanted each sentence to be perfectly crafted, each paragraph a song. I could see pretty little chapters, wrapped like gifts to form a succinct and flawless novel. In my head, it was all about the writing of it, not about the plot. And it was painfully and shockingly bad.

I never finished that one, with all my obsessions about word choices and sentence structure. Somehow I lost the thread of it in all my high-minded literary attempts at ‘being a writer’. It unraveled, turning into a long journey with no destination. It was the perfect example of trying too hard and going nowhere.

I am a member of several writing groups, and I am lucky to get to listen weekly to other writers read their work aloud. All of them are good writers. And by that, I mean each sentence has a subject and a predicate. No one is too flowery with adverbs, and everyone knows about ‘showing not telling’. There is always good dialog to move the story along. The problem, as I see it, is that not everyone has a solid and interesting story idea. And that’s what will make or break you.

I don’t think that that is a matter of opinion or genre choice, because if the writing is gorgeous and the story is dreadful, no agent is going to take it, because no publisher will publish it, because no one will read it. A good story needs to have some basic elements that I forgot about when I got too caught up in writing and not aware of exactly what I was writing.

Here are some basics to keep in mind when crafting a good story.

1) Stay open-minded, but don’t spin off into the stratosphere. I like to follow where my hand takes me and not always chase my pre-decided plotline, because often I end in a much better place than my original plan would have taken me. However, I have also driven off cliffs with my plot and completely lost whatever I was trying to say. Prolific author John Irving says he plots each book entirely before writing it, and then sticks to his plan. Stephen King claims to have never plotted a book in his life. I believe that there has to be a happy medium. Find your sweet spot between structured and free-form, I say.

2) Remember your protagonist and antagonist, and never forget their motivations. Always keep the motive for their actions at the forefront, and stay true to their personality (hopefully you have given them personality). To do this, you have to know your people pretty well. Why is your protagonist acting the way she does? How does she change throughout the novel? What is her goal, and how does she achieve it? Who is trying to stop her, and why? Some call it character arc and it’s a good term to know.

3) Take me somewhere surprising. Please don’t introduce me to people and then bore me with where they go. Teach me something new. Surprise me with their back-story, something delicious that changes everything. Shock me with a decision they make, but make sure I understand why it makes sense. Pat Conroy did this to me in The Prince of Tides. Every time I read it, I am amazed at what those crazy Wingos do. And I love it every time.

All of this is not to say that a great idea and a great plot will hold up terrible writing, because it won’t. By starting with a great story and good characters who do surprising things, your writing can follow their lead. Just don’t attempt it the other way around.