Author: Ashley Harris

After several sketches and much discussion with the artist and publisher, today my editor (Judy Geary) and I selected the final concept sketch for the cover of Naked and Hungry. Thanks to Melissa and Sarah Beth for their helpful insights; there will be some minor adjustments before it’s all said and done but I thought you’d like to see where this is going. The next step will be for the artist to create an actual painting based on the sketch you see here. I’m assuming the title will go in the blank space that’s currently the sky. I hope you like it as much as we did; here’s hoping the final piece lives up to this sketch!

When you’re deciding whether or not to buy a book, do you consider the cover? These days I primarily buy books from familiar authors, so the cover is less important. However, when I was at the National Book Festival, I overhead one attendee say to another: “I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by the cover, but I always gravitate toward books with a compelling cover.”

What about you? Think about it and let me know!

 

Just returned last night from a weekend trip to D.C., where we honored Robert (Bob) Behrenshausen, my husband’s stepfather and a true WWII hero. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy at just 16 years of age, survived two shipwrecks and participated in nearly all major battles in the South Pacific, including the Battle of Midway. Although he fought with his trademark bravery, Bob lost his battle with cancer in July, and on Friday, Sarah, his beloved wife, interred his ashes in the Columbarium in Arlington. We were privileged to be part of this ceremony, which included a service in the Ft. Myers Chapel and a 21-gun salute on the revered Arlington lawns. Fittingly, we crossed paths with another WWII hero, Vernon Baker, an African-African veteran who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism and who was also interred in Arlington that day.

It was a short and brutally hot weekend but full of activity. As my husband enjoyed a private tour of the National Air and Space Museum on Saturday, I camped out under the “Fiction and Mystery” tent at the National Book Festival on the Mall where famous authors such as Isabel Allende, Diana Gabaldon, and Elizabeth Kostova held court. They spoke at length about their work and spent an equal share of time offering advice to writers. The latter two were asked how they found time to write. The answers amazed us all. Both Diana and Elizabeth were mothers to three (that’s three each!) children under the age of 10 when they began their masterpieces. Elizabeth also worked full-time as a university professor and free-lance writer and spent ten meticulous years researching The Historian, which I look forward to reading.Her painstaking attention to detail and love for Victorian authors is reminiscent of A.S. Byatt, whose novel Possession was a favorite of mine.

I missed historian and biographer Stacy Schiff, who spoke after we left. She is the author of Vera, a biography of the wife of Vladimir Nabokov, one of my all-time favorite writers. I loved Lolita, of course, but my model for short stories has always been my dog-eared (quite literally because it bears the teeth marks of my puppy at the time) copy of Spring in Fialta.  How a man whose first language is Russian could pen such a lyrical and evocative short story in English has always amazed me. In Vera, which I eagerly devoured some years ago, Schiff paints an interesting portrait of the woman who stood beside Nabokov and may have helped him a little more than we knew in his Harvard lectures. Anyway, that’s another story, but the reason I bring up Schiff is to say that I learned at the Book Festival that she has also written a biography of another complex man, Antoine St. Exupery. Ever since reading The Little Prince, I’ve been fascinated with the French aviator-philosopher known simply as Tonio to his family. You might remember that St. Exupery’s plane mysteriously disappeared during WWI and was recently discovered in the Mediterranean. I look forward to folding over the pages of this rich biography for clues and perhaps an answer to the mystery…..

What mysteries will you seek to solve this weekend? Whatever they may be, happy hunting!

Some of you are writers yourselves and have been curious about my journey as a writer. Naked and Hungry, my first completed novel, was preceded by years of reading and dissecting short stories. This work paid off in the end because I later learned to write them. And I still love writing short stories. They can be drafted in the space of a weekend, edited by the next and finished within two weeks. Some writers can do it faster, of course, but this is my way. First piece of advice: Read short stories!

Short stories are mini-novels. Just like a novel, they are structured in three acts: the setup, the development and the climax, followed by a brief “denouement” which isn’t really an act but a scene where all the loose endings are resolved.

Now, the differences. Unless you’re incredibly prolific like successful commercial writers, novels take much longer to produce. They require enormous amounts of patience and the willingness to put the work aside without resolving all of your loose ends. Argh! This is very difficult for me, because I like to shut down my computer knowing that every writing goal has been crossed off the list. Sorry, Type A’ers (and this is my tendency.) Novel writing belongs in the Type B world! It’s a journey that’s as full of obstacles as rewards, and you must teach yourself to love the difficult times as much as those times when the words simply seem to flow on their own.

Now firmly into my second book, a sequel to Naked and Hungry that is tentatively titled Born Again, Dead Again, I am experiencing this pleasurable turmoil all over again. Although I wrote the synopsis over a year ago, I’m finding myself pulled in slightly different directions. And I’m reminding myself that it’s okay to do this, to let recent events inform my writing and to let the story flow naturally. While adhering, of course, to the three-act structure. Argh! There is the paradox!

Although I could ramble all day, I’d rather leave you with a Final Piece of Advice: Read Write A Book in A Month by Victoria Schmidt. This book not only explains the 3-act process better than any other (literally laying bare the winning formula of books like Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula) but also gives practical and inspirational advice throughout. Although it took me much longer than one month to write Naked and Hungry, my pace definitely increased once I stumbled upon Schmidt’s book. And had I read it first, oh, the time I could have saved.

Technical points aside, the Type A’ers among you will love this quote from the book, which is attributed to Peter F. Drucker: “What you have to do and the way you have to do it are incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it is another matter.”

Enjoy writing? Then you should plan to attend the annual conference of the North Carolina Writers’ Network in Charlotte from November 5-7. Learn from the masters such as the state Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers and Robert Inman, journalist turned screenwriter. You can also network with other writers and peruse the state’s latest literary offerings. And….if you’re interested in learning how to develop a website, plan to attend a very special session titled “From Writer to Entrepreneur: How Building a Theme-Based Web Site Can Take You There” by yours truly!

Here is a description:

Tired of waiting weeks or months for responses to your query letters? Fill up the time by creating your own website for fun…and for profit. No matter what your passion—whether pets, travel, cooking, gardening, you name it!—Ashley T. Memory will teach you how to create a high-traffic and profitable website with little to no knowledge of technology. In this informative and fun workshop, you’ll learn how to select a site concept, create high-value content pages, and build the kind of relationship with your visitors that will turn your website into a successful online business.

For more, check out the entire Conference Brochure. Hope to see you there!

Thanks to everyone who participated in my poll to identify the culinary traits for which Viking Pizza, the local hang-out in my fictional town of Yatesville, is known. And as the majority guessed, the correct answer is….All of the above! Those of you with an emotional connection to Sir Pizza, the legendary pizza restaurant in my hometown of Asheboro, had a definite edge because this place is the model for Viking Pizza. I haven’t seen a Sir Pizza menu in so long that I couldn’t swear that the wine-baked ham sandwich is still offered. Can someone confirm? At any rate, what’s important is that the sandwich will forever live in my heart, which is the true vessel of truth.

And on that subject, today I was sifting through quotes by Joyce Cary, who I’ve mentioned before and is the author of one of my favorite novels, The Horse’s Mouth. He wasn’t the kind of person who could just spit out witticisms like Winston Churchill or Cicero. Instead, like a true writer, he saved his best lines for his characters. However, I happened to stumble upon a quote that is simply a gem. It’s a rare reflection of his on the writing process.

A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

Doesn’t that just sing to you? Not just among my writer friends, but to fellow readers as well. The novels that have made the most impact on me deal less with exacting descriptions or plot, but with an emotional truth. I realize that this is sort of deep for a Thursday night but I promise that it does go back to the pizza. What makes a little place like Viking Pizza or Sir Pizza so special is not the type of pepperoni or shape of the slices, but the emotions it evokes in its patrons.

The same goes for novels. Take The Horse’s Mouth, for example, whose main character is a down-and-out painter trying to revive his career. The plot is interesting and comic, but the emotional truth is what lingers: Gulley Jimson’s tragic obsession to make himself immortal. Take a much more recent novel, Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. The book’s technique is unusual in that it has a ghost as an integral character. The author does a brilliant job of describing how the ghost moves and her physical sensations. But what really brings the book alive for me is the ghost’s emotional state of mind, particularly her refusal to be forgotten. And like Mr. Jimson, isn’t this a universal emotion? The desire to live forever in some way?

What universal truths have you uncovered in fiction? Think about it, and share it here!

Being a fond eater and a “wanna-be” chef, one of the things that I enjoyed most about bringing the community of Yatesville to life was creating the culinary scene. After all, the eateries of a small town make up its lifeblood, the kind of places where people gather for more than just food: fellowship and gossip! So, of course there’s a biscuit place or two, an old-fashioned diner, and a Mexican restaurant, El Gato Gordo, which is a popular spot for lunchtime business meetings.

But in my view, and you know I’m not biased, no respectable small town should be without a signature pizza restaurant. And fortunately, I had a wealth of great memories to draw upon in the creation of Viking Pizza, Yatesville’s most famous pizza joint. For fun, try to guess which of the following attributes makes Viking Pizza so popular.

Hint: My fellow Asheboroians will have a definite advantage here!

Guess what? More than 70 percent of you chose the original Krispy Kreme doughnut as H.T.’s favorite treat…and you were right! While a respectable number chose chocolate-covered, the truth is that H.T’s version of heaven is the plain glazed variety! He’s a no-frills guy when it comes to his doughnuts, and as it turns out, so are many of my guy friends, including Heath, who actually transported a batch of Krispy Kreme across state lines over the weekend. My hero!

This week has been a heavy travel week for me, first going to Chicago for a marketing conference and then to Knoxville for the wedding of my dear nephew, Christopher, but as we drove back last night and passed through Winston-Salem, it was so comforting to see that familiar red and green neon sign for the KK headquarters among the skyline. After I finish up some work here today, I plan to go to the grocery store and I do hope that I’ll be able to score another batch of the Cheerwine variety.

Another task today is to continue to polish up the manuscript, which is due to my editor in a couple of weeks. She is a terrific lady who is very excited about this project and I look forward to working with her. She is kindly giving me a little time to re-read and make small changes to the manuscript that we agreed upon in an earlier meeting. And at this point, I’ve been toying with the idea of adding a short quote to the beginning of the book to help set the stage for the action. Throughout the novel, poor H.T. finds himself in one predicament after another, and I thought that the quote below from Joyce Cary in the comic novel, The Horse’s Mouth, summarizes it well:

“Things are never so bad that they can’t get any worse.”

This is also what I’m trying to tell my husband today. We came home from our travels to find that our dryer doesn’t work AND that our satellite TV is out. So my question to all of you is when is the last time you had to tell yourself: Well, it could be worse!

Tell me about it and let’s commiserate!

The goodwill sent my way yesterday was simply amazing. Nearly 300 people viewed this blog and a good many lent their very kind comments. For the very latest news, please sign up for updates on Naked and Hungry. To do so, scroll down the right-hand column of this page and select “Sign me up!” under “Email Subscription.” By providing your email address, you’ll receive the latest news about the book, including information on events, signings, advance copies, and much more!

Now back to the matter at hand….Krispy Kreme doughnuts. My confession about my hankering for the Cheerwine-cream-filled variety inspired a virtual pilgrimage on the part of my friend Walter, who was determined to sample them for himself. Sad to say, he did not share my enthusiasm. Like my son Dashiel, he is a purist and prefers his Cheerwine straight up. Fair enough.

My main character, H.T., fancies himself a bit of a gourmet cook. As a native Tar Heel, however, he nurtures a passion for these yeasty treats. For fun, I invite you to vote on his favorite type of Krispy Kreme.

We’ll announce the results in my next posting. Until then, again, thank you, dear family and friends for your support. Hugs, kisses and Krispy Kreme!

Yesterday I signed a contract with Ingalls Publishing Group in Boone, N.C. for the publication of Naked and Hungry, my first novel. I did it with very little fanfare, my husband Robert as the witness, as we leaned over the counter in the kitchen. My main character would have been most proud of me because my very next action was to polish off the rest of my Krispy Kreme doughnut with Cheerwine cream filling. If the contract arrives in Boone a little stickier than before, I hope Mr. Ingalls will forgive me. (Pure heaven, by the way, the doughnut!)

The act of signing the contract is the not quite the end of the story–another very interesting adventure is certain to lie ahead–but it did symbolize a major stepping stone along the journey of writing the novel. Writing is a solitary art, by necessity, but it’s never been a lonely one. There are many, many people to thank, starting with my wonderful family, Robert and my son Dashiel, who graciously allowed me the luxury of all those sequestered Saturdays spent in front of the computer. To my Dad, who served as the catalyst and motivator, and to my Mom, for encouraging my love of reading all these years. To Christy for her meticulous proofreading, (by the way, you rock, sister-in-law) and to Sarah Beth, Kelly, George, Jen, and a kind gentleman named John Maxwell with the Wake County Sheriff’s Office for their early reads and wise counsel. And a special thanks to my beloved carpooler Missy, who tolerated my daily musings on the matter!

And last but certainly not least, to Mr. Bob Ingalls himself, whose phone call that Saturday morning I’ll never forget. Of course I was flipping crepes, and I remember fumbling across the stove as I reached for the phone. His first words were magical, words that everyone ought to have the chance to hear just once in their lives. “Wait, wait,” he said. “Before we talk about your work, can you tell me a little about yourself?  I want to know who you are.”