Angel Sometimes Speaks Up

  I started writing Angel Sometimes a couple of years ago. She came into my head and wouldn't leave.  I had finished the first of many drafts of her story when I was awarded a four-week scholarship to the Vermont Studio Center.

For four weeks, I wrote, walked, met other authors, wrote, listened to lectures, wrote…. Did I mention that I wrote? Then I came home and edited and wrote some more. I gave Angel the job of swimming as a mermaid because I knew she could do it. I swam for four years as a mermaid while I was getting my B.A. and M.A. 

It took a while before I felt the book was done. Not long after it was published, Angel Sometimes was awarded a USA Best Book Award.  As you might guess, I was hop-around-the-office happy. But what was even more fun was talking with readers who emailed me.

I can't speak for other authors, but for me, my days are mostly spent typing on the computer, re-reading what I typed, catching grammar mistakes, and re-reading some more. An email from a reader or a "hi" on my Author Facebook Page is great. For a few minutes, I'm connected to a reader.

What this all boils down to is: listen to the voices in your head. Write down what they say. If it's a character talking to you, pay attention. 

Hi everyone. Thank you for dropping by.

I'm not here today because I'm over at The Writers Lens. Come over and say hi.

I'm answering questions in the post:

How much fact is in your fiction? 

What's the highest compliment someone could make about your writing?

What movie star would be perfect for (your main character) and why?

Would you share a bit about your next project?

Where to Find Angel Sometimes and Helen

If you have other questions, leave them in the comment section. I'm happy to answer them.

http://www.thewriterslens.com/2014/11/helen-ginger-mermaid-career-link-to.html

Mermaid Helen Ginger

Come over and talk with me today on Jennifer Modette Perry's blog: http://madameperryssalon.blogspot.com/2014/08/mermaid-picnics-computer-gaming-and.html

I'll keep checking her blog all day. If you have questions, I'll do my best to answer.

In case you're asking if I was really a mermaid, the answer is yes. I really did eat and drink underwater as well as do a mermaid ballet. (I'm the tall girl on the left.)

Just head over to Madame Perry's Salon: http://madameperryssalon.blogspot.com/2014/08/mermaid-picnics-computer-gaming-and.html

Your Character's Character

When you write, do you put snippets of yourself into your book or story? Is that a good idea? Would you give one of your characters aspects of your life or your own viewpoints?

Personally, I think most writers put bits and pieces of themselves into their books. Some do that purposely and some do it without consciously meaning to do so. For example, a lawyer writing a legal thriller puts himself, his knowledge, his experiences in his writing. The same could be said for a doctor writing a medical mystery.

This past Sunday, I spoke at the Heart of Texas Sisters in Crime meeting about this very subject. I chose the topic because I put "pieces" of myself into my latest book, Angel Sometimes. Probably the biggest "chunk" of me in Angel Sometimes was that I gave the protagonist the job of swimming as a mermaid. Partly, I gave her that job because I know it since I swam as a mermaid for three years while I earned my BA and MA. But mostly I did it since it was a job that she could do without having a high school diploma. (Angel was abandoned to the streets when she was twelve.)

Do you write what you know? Or do you create characters totally different from you? Or do you do both?

Mermaid Tales: Mug Shot

Quite a few of you asked and now you shall receive -- and most likely you will regret asking.

For anyone new to Straight From Hel, I used to be a mermaid. I swam for three years at a place called Aquarena Springs. If you’ve heard of the resort, then you know mermaids were secondary stars to Ralph the Swimming Pig. I occasionally tell tales from those days.

Today is not so much a tale as it is a show and tell.

 You asked for pictures. I found a couple. Most of you wanted one of me in my tail, but, alas, I haven’t found one. I did find one of me sitting on the lily pad picnicking, but it’s pretty blurry since it was, of course, me underwater. I did, however, find postcards with me in it. This postcard features five swimmers standing on the volcano. It’s difficult to tell, but the guy on top of the volcano is blowing the conch shell horn. Swimmers would also climb to that top position and dive into the water at the beginning of the show.

The volcano housed the two warming rooms (one for the guys and one for the girls). Between the two rooms was a hole cut in the volcano floor for swimmers to enter the water, sight unseen, and swim to the staging platform to await their cue to enter the show area. The warming rooms were kept very hot so swimmers could come out of the cold spring-fed waters and warm up quickly. I don’t remember ever being sick during my three years there, probably because of those warming rooms.

At water level, you’ll see two girls. Ronina is on the right and I’m standing on the left (I’m the taller one).

So, there you go. Me on the volcano.

Mermaid Tales: Cold and Hot

I realized it’s been almost a year since I told a Mermaid Tale. (Plus, a few people have started asking when I would do another one.) So, today, I’m telling you about the Cold and the Hot of being a mermaid.

Mermaids at Aquarena Springs swam 364 days of the year. The resort park was closed only on Christmas Day. That means we swam on the blazing hot Texas days and on the days when the catwalk to the volcano was iced over. The water, however, stayed the same. The show area was spring fed so it stayed a constant balmy 74 degrees. (That’s what the visitors were told, anyway. We measured it a few degrees lower.) We didn’t mind swimming in the winter, though, because the water was warmer than the outside temps.

Inside the volcano were two hot rooms, one for the males and one for the females. As soon as the mermaids finished their ballets, they swam up and hurried into the warming room, which was kept at about 130 degrees. Trust me, you dry and warm up fast in that heat. Then we’d go back in the show area to do our picnics…then back into the warming room.

In the summers, we’d change into bikinis and go lay out on the training platform in the sun (I don’t recommend sunbathing now that we know the damage that can do, but back then we didn’t know about it.) Not long after I left, they apparently stopped sunbathing on the platform since there were complaints from folks gliding overhead in the gondolas about our lack of dress (as in, bikini tops untied so we didn’t get strap marks across out backs). In the winter, we’d hurry across the catwalk, steam rising from our bodies since we were hotter than the outside air.

Once a girl entered an area where she could be seen by the public, she had to be in costume. That meant in a one-piece bathing suit with a sarong, lei, plastic flower in her hair, and a smaller lei on one ankle. Once again, warmer in summer than in the cold of winter.

While we jumped in really cold water every day, multiple times, I rarely came down with a cold. Looking back, I’m not sure I ever had one cold during my years as a mermaid. I credit that to the warming room.

Telling Mermaid Tales

Story Circle Network invited me to read something of mine as one of their monthly podcasts. I didn’t think anyone would be terribly interested in a chapter from TechCareers: Automotive Technicians … so I chose three Mermaid Tales that I’ve posted here on Straight From Hel (y’all can thank me later for not choosing the Automotive Technicians book).

So, if you’d like to hear some Mermaid Tales, you can click over to the Story Circle Network podcast site and hear Pigs and Piglets, The Great Flood, and Swimming with the Swans. I believe the podcast will be up all this month.

Mermaid Tales: Picnicking

Been a while since I told a Mermaid Tale, but yesterday’s post on cookbooks and food made me think of mermaids picnicking. And we did. Every show.

Before the show, we’d pack our picnic bags with fish food, salt shaker, celery, and a drink. The bag had a draw string that we looped over our wrist. And the draw string had a bottle opener tied on.

When we heard our cue, we’d swim out to the show area, sometimes in our tails, sometimes not. (We didn’t always wear the tails. That’s another story for another day.) We’d swim to the lily pads, which were fixed atop a metal pole. The poles were lying on the ground, so we’d use our air hoses to inflate the contraption and raise the poles upright. Then we’d swim up and sit on the lily pad.

As you might imagine, though, sitting on the lily pad and trying to eat our picnic would be hard since we’d keep floating up, what with breathing from the air hose and the buoyancy of the tails. Never fear, each lily pad had a L-shaped bar that we would slide our legs under. Being anchored was important because the first thing we did, after waving to the audience, was remove our face masks.

We then could see nothing. Squat. Everything’s a blur.

But that didn’t matter. What was important was that the audience could see our lovely faces.

First, we pulled out the fish food and crumbled it in our palms. Hundreds of small fish swarmed us. We waved our hands and released the food. The fish darted and gathered, eating the food as it floated down. Once they disappeared along with the food to the bottom of the show area, we began our picnic.

With great showmanship and flair, we pulled out our celery and the salt shaker. We salted our delicious meal. Okay, it wasn’t actually salt. It was sand. Salt kinda disappears when it gets wet. Then we waved our celery around so the audience could see it (and so we could wash off the sand). Then we ate. And in case you’re wondering about those pesky veins in celery that tend to get stuck between your teeth…we stripped those before going in the water. We stored the leaves back in our picnic bag.

Then pulled out our colas. Okay, they weren’t actual colas. We filled the bottles with Hawaiian Punch. Hey, before you condemn, have you every burped underwater? Using our bottle opener, we pried off the cap. When you remove the cap, you have to be fast in putting your thumb over the opening. Drinking a cola under water is actually easier than you might think. It’s just like drinking on land. Take a breath of air, put bottle to lips, exhale air into the bottle which causes the liquid to go into your mouth. Remove bottle from lips, quickly sliding your thumb over the opening. Swallow. Take a breath of air. Repeat until cola is gone.

Then, holding the empty bottle upside down, we twirled it so it went upward, then tipped and, filling with water, began to sink. We caught it in our picnic bags. People, of course, clapped, so we grinned and waved.

Then we cleared our face masks and put them back on and waved some more. Then we released the valve on our lily pads and, as they began to collapse and float back to the bottom, we gathered our picnic bag and swam back to the volcano.

You’d be surprised how filling a celery stick and Hawaiian punch are. Three to four times a day. Three hundred and sixty-four days a year. For three years. Wish I could stick to that diet now.

Mermaid Tales: Screaming Underwater

If you’re new to Straight From Hel (thank you for stopping by and following), you probably don’t know about the Mermaid Tales. Every random once in a while, I tell a tale from my years of swimming as a mermaid in an underwater show at Aquarena Springs. Today, it’s summer shows, winter shows and screaming underwater.

Aquarena Springs was open 364 days a year. The only day we were closed was Christmas day. In the summer, there were probably 5 or 6 shows. Each show had three mermaids performing, sometimes four. The submarine would be packed for each show, probably a hundred or a hundred and fifty people. In the winter, the crowds naturally slacked off, so we didn’t schedule as many shows and there were usually only two mermaids, occasionally only one.

Summer: more people, more swimmers, tighter schedule. Winter: smaller audiences, less rush, fewer mermaids per show.

As you might guess, that led to some antics in the winter shows. One thing we mermaids liked to do was sit on our lily pads during picnic and talk to each other. Of course, the lily pads weren’t close together. They were spaced apart so that no matter where someone sat in the submarine, they could see at least one mermaid picnicking.

So…we didn’t actually “talk.” We screamed at each other.

I imagine the audience thought we were nuts. But, come on, the water was 76 degrees. It was winter and we were freezing our tails off for ten people. So we yelled back and forth.

I’d take a breath of air, yell something like, “Are you going to the keg party tonight?”

Ronina would yell back, “Which one?”

Me: “DU.”

R: “DU, as in, We do, do you?”

Me: “Yes.”

R: “Not gonna hang with a bunch of frat boys.”

Me: “Where you going then?”

R: “Party at the Hillside.”

What? You thought maybe we would be exchanging formulas for science class?

Mermaid Tales: Pigs and Piglets

Been a while since I told y’all a Mermaid Tale. Today, I thought I’d tell you about Ralph the Swimming Pig.

Google Aquarena Springs and odds are a picture of or story about Ralph the Swimming Pig will pop up. He’s even been on TV. Now, when I say “he,” I don’t mean he as in one pig. There were lots of Ralphs over the years. There were always two on the grounds at all times. If you were a visitor and you visited Ralph in his home, you saw Ralph. There was another Ralph hidden away in another home behind the one on display. We called one Ralph and the other one…Ralph. Why two Ralphs? Because the pigs were not allowed to swim two shows in a row. It was in their star contract. Mermaids and Glurpos (more about Glurpos in a future post) had no such clause.

Did Ralph do synchronized ballet? No. Did he eat an underwater picnic? No. Did he blow air rings? Nah. Did he actually swim? Yes.

Each year, we’d get a new batch of possible Ralphs. Little baby Ralphs that we kept in the girls’ dressing room in a big box with towels for them to lay on.

In case you’re wondering, baby pigs are soooo cute. They really are. Little white piglets with pink snouts. They’re so adorable, you just want to pick them up and hug them. ‘Course when you do, you learn they are also hard as rocks. They are not soft and cuddly. But they are cute. To this day, I still love baby pigs.

Why did we get them as piglets? Because they have to be trained to swim. Training takes a while since they’re not exactly natural water lovers. You start when they’re little and get them into the water, holding them with one hand to help them float and learn to use their legs and feet (paws, hoofs, whatever) to swim. You entice them with a baby bottle of liquid piglet food. You keep working with them until you no longer have to hold them up. You just show them the bottle and they’ll swim wherever you lead them. And they get bigger. And bigger.

When they’re quite big, you teach them to dive. Okay, dive is a wishy-washy term. Ralph didn’t dive like the human divers who climbed to the top of the volcano and dove as the submarine was sinking. Ralph would be led through the volcano out to the water-level platform by, usually, a Glurpo. One of the mermaids would be in the water with a bottle. She’d hold up the bottle and Ralph would leap into the show tank and follow her. She’d make a couple of turns around the tank then lead Ralph out of view of the submarine to the shallow area where Ralph would walk out on the shore, be put back into his comfy home to get big pig food, oink at kids coming by to look at him, and wait until it was his turn to be in a show and get the yummy bottle food. All in all, Ralph had a pretty cushy life.

Eventually, he’d get too big or old and be retired and a new Ralph would take his place. When Ralph retired, he moved to a beautiful farm with lots of mud, green grass, water so he could relive his glory days, and tons of corn on the cob desserts.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Hey! It’s what we were told.

(Before you ask, that’s not me in the picture with Ralph.)

Am I the only one who thinks piglets are cute?

Swimming with the Swans: A Mermaid Tale

I’m back again with the third installment of The Mermaid Tales. As a mermaid, I swam with fish, clowns, other mermaids, pigs, ducks and swans.

Okay, I hear all of you oohing, swans, they’re so pretty. And they are. You see them floating like white clouds, long necks dipping for a sip of cool water as they swim along. So beautiful. So peaceful.

Clearly you have never been a mermaid. Swans are mean little buggers, maybe not intentionally, but I tell you, the mermaids did not like the swans.

During one part of the show called the Picnic, the mermaids would swim out from the volcano and use their air hoses to raise the lily pads. The lily pads, once upright, were about ten to fifteen feet tall.

Then each of us would sit on a lily pad, wave at the audience in the submarine, and take off our face masks (so they could see our lovely faces). Keep in mind that when you take off your face mask under water, you can’t see squat. And that’s when the swans would come. Silently paddling, watching us from above. (Can you hear the shark music?)

Now, I don’t know whether they were looking for fish or worms or algae or what, but they loved to settle in above us, reach down their long necks and try to rip the floating hair right out of our skulls.

We’re trying not scream (yes, you can scream underwater), keep our face mask on our lap, hold onto the picnic bag and the air hose, and smile. All while ducking and trying to stop our hair from floating upward to within reach of the swans.

Now, I like swans, just not above me.

Management eventually moved the swans out to the river.

And my hair eventually grew back.

The Great Flood, A Mermaid Tale

Back in early November, I told the tale of The Tail, the first mermaid tale. I promised I’d occasionally tell other tales. So today, I’m telling the tale of The Great Flood.

Early one morning, I came into work, expecting it to be just another day of picnicking underwater, doing ballets and waving from the volcano at guests. When I got backstage, though, I discovered it was not to be just another day. Although we were having overcast weather, elsewhere, days ago, the weather had been stormy and rain had fallen in giant buckets. That “elsewhere” was where the springs at Aquarena Springs got its water. It rains there, filters down into the sub-levels and eventually rises in the hundreds of springs where I swam.

We were expecting a huge amount of water -- so much that all workers were assigned jobs to save the show area. The volcano and submarine could float, although they might lose some anchors. But… heavens to Betsy… Ralph(s) was in danger. Ralph, in case you’re just joining in on these tales, was Ralph the Swimming Pig, the most famous performer. (Don’t tell anyone, but there was always at least two Ralphs since, unlike human performers, Ralph wasn’t allowed to swim two shows in a row.) So Ralph and Ralph had to be moved to high ground.

At the time, we had two swans in the show area (someday I’ll tell a tale about them). They can swim, but since management didn’t want them to be able to swim right out of the show area in the high water, they had to be corralled and moved to high ground. Have you ever tried to corral a swan?

All kinds of stuff had to be tied down. Management wanted us to move the catfish that was older than sin and bigger than a zip car to a more secure place. If you think swans are difficult to wrangle, try moving a big ol’ bottom dwelling catfish. We got the swans moved, but not the catfish.

They wanted us to move the ducks, but, come on, ducks can fly.

Finally, the Ralphs, the swans, the volcano were all rescued or tied down or set free.

Then, we, the performers, were told to get in and swim the late morning show. (Shows you what the pecking order was.)

Being spring-fed, the waters in the show area were always crystal clear. That day, the water was so murky it was almost like trying to see through a wall. I could put my hand up about a foot in front of my and not be able to see my fingers. The girls moved ballet up close to the sub, did our moves, then held out our hands, hoping the guys holding the air hoses would spot our palms and give us air. The water was so cloudy the audience inside of the sub would not have been able to see us picnicking on our lily pads, so we took our picnic bags, swam right up to the sub windows, held on to the window frame and ate our celery and drank our punch. Then we turned and swam back toward the volcano, hoping we weren’t wandering off in the wrong direction.

After the show, we headed up top to wave goodbye to the audience as they exited the submarine. An audience that consisted of one man and his dog.

Me, Me! All Me!

Emma Larkins over at her blog, Emma Larkins, Emerging Author, tagged me with the Six Things You Didn’t Know About Me meme. (By the way, when you read her post, check out her #3 thing you didn’t know about her.)

Let’s see, I’ve done this meme before, I’ve been blogging for two years and I’ve been doing my newsletter, Doing It Write, for nine years. Is there anything you don’t know about me already?

Let’s see…

1. I have a picture of me in graduate school doing a reading. I’m dressed in black hot pants and wearing black suede lace-up knee high boots. My daughter was shocked to see that picture.

2. In high school, I wrote and performed in the school VOE play – I played the rabbit hopping around mumbling, I’m late, I’m late, for a very important interview. The play was a hit at lunchtime.

3. I’m been an extra in several movies. I usually played the woman in the back of the courtroom.

4. Somewhere I have two postcards from my mermaid days. One of me on top of the submarine and one of me perched on the volcano. Some may think that being able to drink and eat underwater and swim in a mermaid tail are what made me famous. It was actually swimming with Ralph the Pig.

5. There was not a Ralph THE Pig. There were several pigs. Each Ralph rested and did not swim two shows in a row. The human swimmers did, though. One time the show was expecting a huge wall of water to come because of rains elsewhere that would be feeding the springs. The swimmers helped to move the pigs to high ground. We moved the swans. We even moved the ducks. We helped move equipment. Then we were told to get in and swim a show. I literally could not see my hand held up in front of my face, the water was so murky.

6. I remember the day JFK was killed. (Yes, I’m that old.) I was in elementary school. They called us all into the cafeteria where the TV was on. The teachers were crying and they eventually dismissed us. I walked home, climbed into a tree near the house, and wrote Blue Moon Fairy stories.

And that’s it, folks. I have no more secrets. Well, actually one more from my mermaid days, but I’m not telling.

I hereby tag:

Mark Troy of Hawaiian Eye: Crime in Paradise

LJ Sellers at Write First, Clean Later

Susan Cooke at Sanctuary Home
(Susan has several blogs. I chose this one so you’d go see this site. Just looking at the opening picture will calm you. If that doesn’t work, listen to the music. I sometimes leave her site up just to listen.)

Okay, Mark, L.J. and Susan – tell us something we don’t know. And then tag other friends.

I've Been Tagged!

Today I planned to finish up the discussion on editing your manuscript. It’ll have to wait, though. Yesterday I got tagged.

That doesn’t mean my husband put me in a yard sale for fifty cents. Not yet, anyway.

David Bowles of Writing the Westward Sagas tagged me. In blog-talk that means I’m now “it” in an online game of tag. I have to write five things that you may not know about me. Then, I have to tag five other bloggers. And the game spreads across the internet.

Here are the rules of the game:
Each player of this game starts with the “5 little known things about you”. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 5 unusual things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 5 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says “you are tagged” in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

This was not an easy assignment for me. I’ve been writing a weekly e-newsletter for 8 years now and started daily blogging last year. I’m a fairly open book already.

1) I grew up in a household of women: my mother and four girls. Actually, though, it was three girls. I don’t really remember my oldest sister living at home since she left when I was five and that was about the time my youngest sister was born. As kids, the three of us did not get along. We fought and argued all the time. My sister, Cathy, once told me to shut up. I didn’t, of course. She told me to shut up or she’d knock the snot out of me. I didn’t. So she did … knock the snot out of me. Another time we were fighting and somehow in the scuffle I bit the metal rail on the bunk bed. Cracked my tooth. It’s still missing the corner. Surprisingly though I don’t have that many childhood scars. And the three of us get along fine now.

2) I’ve lived in Texas most of my life. My mother moved us here when I was ten. You ask people overseas or even New Yorkers and they’ll tell you Texans ride horses or drive pickups with gun racks. So not true. Sure, we have cowboys and gun-toting pickup drivers, but we’re also city-fied. I’ve never shot a gun. I did go deer hunting with my husband once years and years ago. He left the blind for a few minutes and let me hold the gun. With the safety on. Across my lap. Turned away from his direction. Did I mention I was not to turn off the safety?

3) Friends know I have curly hair. But I didn’t always have curly hair. It used to be straight. Seriously. Straight as a board, as they say. In high school, I was always putting my hair in rollers or sleeping on wet hair in pin curls. Within an hour of styling it, it’d be flat. My sister was always ironing her hair to try to take out her curls. Then, something happened. I had kids and my hair began to curl. First waves, then curls. Tighter and tighter. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but there are still times when I miss my straight hair.

4) One time in a screenwriting class, the assignment was to write a short scene about something that happened in your life. When I finished reading mine aloud, half the group looked shocked as if they wanted to cry; the other half looked skeptical as if they thought I’d made it up. The reactions surprised me because I thought the story was really funny. When I was seventeen I left home for college. Not long after I did, my mother left Lockhart and moved into a trailer. I would go home on occasional weekends. One weekend, I drove into the trailer park and discovered that the only thing left was the steps that used to lead up to her trailer. She’d moved. I had no idea where she or my younger sister had gone. They’d just pulled up stakes and left. Without a word. Now, that’s funny, right?

5)Lastly, if you’ve read my bio, then you know I was a mermaid for three years. What you may not know is what that entailed. For three years (the place was open every day except Christmas day) I jumped into 68 degree spring-fed water. Even when the catwalk iced over, I swam. I could do synchronized underwater ballet and hold my breath for two to three minutes. You could always tell who were the rookies and who were the seasoned performers: the rookies would flash through the ballet moves and grab their air hoses before the rest of us could finish our first reverse split. I can eat and drink and blow air rings underwater. I can swim in a mermaid tail – and that’s not easy folks. I can talk underwater. The mermaids used to sit on our lily pad perches during picnic and talk to each other. I’ve swam with a pig, with several pigs, actually, and I’m not talking about the guys in the show. And I have a couple of postcards to prove my mermaid days. In one I’m standing on the volcano in the show area. In the other, I’m on top of the submarine in which the audience sat to watch the show. Being a mermaid didn’t pay much, but it was fun.

That’s it. My secret talents and stories. Well, not all of them. But enough for now.

Speaking of “now.” I now tag the following bloggers:
Robert Giron at Chez Robert Giron
Todd Glasscock at Exile on Ninth Street
Susan Wittig Albert at Lifescapes
Cynthia Leitich Smith at Spookycyn
Sherry Thomas at Plotters and Manipulators United

Tell us five things we don’t know about you.