What struck me first was the fantastic use of imagery. As a writer I struggle to find images that are neither cliché nor distraction; all through this book, fresh images made me smack my lips in the satisfaction of tasting something new that was just exactly right. On page 1, we hear of “the thick humidity of death.” On page 3, we learn that for middle school girls, “Their eyes were their weapons now.” This steady stream of analogy ties the book together, giving it a literary power that never slows down the page-turning.

The story is told by Dana, a suburban mom whose husband has recently left her for a younger woman. Dealing with her own anger and disappointment is hard enough without also trying to do her best for her two kids, a seven year old boy and a twelve year old girl. Dana is a good mother, but I was grateful she wasn’t too good or too perfect. She makes her mistakes too, which is what keeps this story from becoming too sweet.

Best of all, the ending was the perfect combination of nice and not quite finished. We are left with the feeling that while the characters have grown and improved, they will keep leading somewhat imperfect lives. And with just the right unexpected twist, Juliette also manages to sum up once again the theme of adulthood as glorified middle school. Well done!

It usually bothers me to read the acknowledgements before I have read the book, but in this case learning about where the inspiration for the book came from (and where some of the best teenage lines originated) deepened my appreciation of the characters.

If I’d known such great writing could originate in the town where I grew up, I might not have bolted right after high school.

To view the book trailer or buy this book, visit Juliette Fay’s website.

As a writer, I try to create a few new stories a year. Let me tell you, reading is a lot easier. So for all of us readers, it’s a good thing there are so many talented authors out there.

As my final 2010 blog present to you, here’s my list of recommended reads—to give to yourself, or to someone else.

And no matter what format you consume fiction in these days, I urge you to support your local independent bookstore this holiday.  That’s the only way to help assure it will still be there for you in 2011, and beyond!

Lipstick in Afghanistan (Roberta Gately)
Roberta is one of my writing friends so I may not be totally subjective on this one. But anyone interested in Afghanistan will learn something from this book, a story about an American nurse whose year in Bamiyan helping the Afghans changes her forever. The best crowd pleaser I read in 2010.
Read my review, Loving Lipstick

The Forgotten Garden (Kate Morton)
Quite simply the best book I read this year. Three generations of women tell an interlocking story about their past, which turns out to affect the present—and future. The book starts off in Morton’s home city of Brisbane, but events take all three characters to the coast of Cornwall in England. Enjoy getting lost in this one, as I did.

The Velvet Room (Zilpha Keatley Snyder)
Originally published in 1965, one of my favorite childhood reads is back in print thanks to the Author’s Guild Back In Print initiative. The story is simple, about a girl who finds a secret room that she makes her own (and eventually saves from destruction). Like most of my childhood rediscoveries, I was amazed how many details I’d forgotten about plot and scene; what I remembered (and which grabbed me all over again) is the atmosphere of safety and comfort the author creates by encircling a window seat in velvet curtains.

Diamond Ruby (Joe Wallace)
Although I’ve never met Joe Wallace, I’ve enjoyed getting to know him via word spurts of 140 characters (Twitter’s @Joe_Wallace). Diamond Ruby will be opened under two Christmas trees in my family this year, and hopefully both my nephew and niece will enjoy this story of a young girl growing up in 1930’s Brooklyn who strikes out Babe Ruth. Joe says that many male friends have complained this wasn’t realistic, but Diamond Ruby is based on a true character (Jackie Mitchell) who really did strike out Babe Ruth—shortly before the commissioner banned women from playing baseball “for their health.” Like all authors, Joe has mixed history with imagination to create a wonderful tale.

And in a seasonal toast to e-books, here are two available only on Smashwords:

Sentence of Marriage (Shayne Parkinson)
The first of a series about a young girl growing up in rural Australia in the late 1800′s.  I read this one and couldn’t wait to read the next three books.

The Wrecking Crew (Mark Chisnell)
A gripping ocean-based thriller by a well-known British sailing writer.  Great airplane read!

Other books I reviewed in 2010

The Murderer’s Daughters (Randy Susan Meyers)
An intensely dark but still hopeful novel about two sisters whose father murders their mother. This will be out in paperback in early 2011, and hopefully that edition is just as beautiful as the hardcover. Read my review

The Sea and the Silence (Peter Cunningham)
A page-turning novel (with a beautiful cover) about the life of an Irish woman who comes of age during the 1940’s. Read my review, Savouring The Sea and the Silence

The Swimming Pool (Holly LeCraw)
My “much more than just a beach read” of the year. A surprisingly intense look into a family who summers on the Cape.
Read my review, Diving into The Swimming Pool

Sea Escape (Lynne Griffin)
A fictional escape into the lives of a family trying to cope with the past through letters and memories. Read my review, Escaping to the Sea

Wishing you happy gift giving in 2010, and more time to read in 2011!

Scrivener |ˈskriv(ə)nər|: A clerk, scribe, or notary.

Back when the luscious and literary word “Scrivener” was popular, there was no choice of how words were recorded. Some sort of writing implement was used to etch or draw letters on to some sort of (hopefully) flat surface. Good light was expensive, and so was good paper. Just transferring ideas into readable form was a huge challenge.

Today’s authors have a choice of media for capturing our stories:
1. Longhand pen/paper — a must for some, hopelessly old-fashioned for most.
2. The typewriter — a dust-covered icon of the good old days (back when authors were starving in garrets, seldom interacted with readers, and never—heavens no—had anything to do with hand-dirtying sales.)
3. The word processor — which allows us to move pieces of text around like so many icefloes in a winter harbor, hopefully stringing together a readable narrative.
4. Scrivener — “The biggest software advance for writers since the word processor.” (That’s according to author Michael Marshall Smith.)

My grandmother, the novelist Daisy Newman, spent most of her fifty-year career tapping away on a series of typewriters, grudgingly switching to a word processor for the last book she published. Even after she adopted the word processor, her method of editing remained the same: type out a fresh paragraph, scissor it down to a small strip, and then paper-clip it over the offending text on an existing page. Even to my eight year old eyes it looked cumbersome, but it worked for her; she produced numerous novels (and one sprawling non-fiction history of Quakers in America). Four of her books are still in print, almost twenty years after her death.

When I started writing typewriters were the tool of choice, but their spelling was terrible and editing seemed cumbersome. What a joy to discover the blinking green cursor of that first word processor! Now my typing could keep up with my thoughts, and I could go back later to edit my thoughts into something that would be understandable to others.

And two decades later, I’ve discovered an even greater joy: the ultimate flexibility and mind-expanding potential of Scrivener.

According to its website, Scrivener was designed for managing large writing projects and is “particularly suited to writers who don’t always think in a linear fashion.” Need to access a photo or website that captures the flavor of a particular scene? Have a shimmer of an idea that needs to be written down, long before it will be obvious where it belongs? Want to capture a snippet of dialogue that comes to mind when imagining a character?  Scrivener makes it all easy. After using it for just a few months, it’s completely revamped my approach to big writing projects.

I’ve never been a good outliner. Oh I’d start off by writing an outline, but once I had the barest sense of a story I would turn the characters loose. This has led to some great scenes and two published books, but I’ve also followed barely-formed characters down a lot of dead end streets—and hung on through many a wild goose chase.

Thanks to Scrivener, I’m test-driving a different approach. Now I write ideas on electronic “note cards” and then group them together by character name or subject or scene. These note cards can easily be reordered on the corkboard, and there is room for as much detail as necessary on empty “pages” that lurk in the background. Click on the note card and bing! The details pop up in a different window.

Research ideas (even those as vague as “talk to Cathy” ) can be collected in a special unstructured section that accepts URL’s, photos, PDF’s—almost any file form. No more searching my desk and pockets (and washing machine) for that one wrinkled receipt with the most important link ever written on the back.

I’m really enjoying the freedom of this new approach, but I’ve had to do some brain rewiring. Though I’ve never been a slave to daily word count I have found comfort in the pages piling up, even if half or more of those pages will eventually be winnowed out. This time around, at least in the planning stages, there is no buildup of text to reassure me that my story is coming together. All I see is ideas that may or may not fall into place in a story that may or may not turn out as planned.

Writing is much more than just putting words on a page, and how that “page” appears even in first drafts can be hard to separate from how we view the entire project. Scrivener is teaching me how my brain works, and that’s leading me to a new way of building a story.

Will it work? Just like with longhand, typewriters, and word processors, there’s still only one way to find out.

Much as I’d love for my sister to be wrong (sibling rivalry never dies), I’d really appreciate someone proving this particular theory. Wouldn’t it be great to have a scientific explanation for such a universal experience? And it makes sense: when we come into the world, we assume the current rate of spin is normal. As our globe twirls faster and faster, the next generation climbs on and self-adjusts to the accelerated rate—the new normal. And so on.

I was twelve when Nancy first explained this to me, two years younger than her older daughter is now.  In those days, waiting for the next Saturday was just one step short of sheer torture. A decade later, months went by at a reasonable clip. A decade after that, seasons began to change well before they dragged into dull. Last year, even winter seemed too short. And then a few days ago I realized—hey! Where did this first tenth of the 21st century GO?

One of the many reasons I enjoy losing myself in the pages of a good novel is that time often slows down. Sure, a good action scene goes by in a flash, eyes chasing forward across words and paragraphs to make sure a favorite character survives with no lasting scars. But a great writer can also slow time to a turtle crawl, allowing us the luxury of time to smell, taste, hear, and savor the world the writer has created. (And maybe as a result, better understand the time-pressured one in which we live.)

When I get lost in my own writing I can even reverse time, turning the clock back to a world that was gone long before I was born. I sniff a distant harbor, trim the luffing sails overhead, feel the bow plunging into waves bigger than I’ve ever imagined before. Even as I edit, I luxuriate in bringing to life a scene that, up until now, existed only inside my head. Did it really happen? Well, no. But could it have happened? That’s the important question.

The non-linear aspect of creative writing adds to this time warp. In order to tell the story I know is hiding within the first draft, I have to spend more time than can really be justified to figure out the best possible word or phrase. Does it need another scene, or one less piece of dialogue?  The only justification is the end result.  So the hard work of telling the story—the actual wordcraft—reinforces the time-stretching too.

Is it any wonder that the faster our world spins, the more people discover the luxury of writing and reading?

And this, for me, is why books will continue to be valued as we rush ahead into yet another decade. Whether we choose to read on recycled paper, on a screen large or small, or on some not-yet-invented substrate, the stories we experience on the biggest screen of all—the one between our ears—allow us to adjust the passage of time to our own preference.

Even if my sister’s theory isn’t true, that will be a real comfort in the shorter and shorter decades that lie ahead.

Update:  Listen to an NPR story on this same subject.