ELEMENTS OF STYLE...

Today, my husband, John, replaced an old pair of French doors in our family room with a new pair. The old pair were original to the family room---however, they ought never have been installed in it. They were simply too overpowering in scale and too dark. Because they were oversized, they took up virtually one entire wall, and because they were stained a deep oak, they soaked up all the sunshine that would otherwise have beamed cheerily into our family room, as well. For all these reasons, I had never liked them, and I was glad to see them go.

The new pair we picked out to replace them are in proper proportion to our family room and very light and airy; and as I periodically watched John work to get them into place, it occurred to me that the installation process was very much like constructing a novel.

First, he had to have a good frame for the doors, the same way I need to have a good basic plot structure for my books---because, obviously, doors hang on a frame, in the very same way that novels hang on their basic plot structures. Start with a poor frame or structure in either case, and eventually, the whole project will collapse. So John carefully built a good frame, strong and sturdy, then hung the doors, just as I fill out my own basic plot structures with pages of thoughtfully chosen words.

After that, all the tweaking began. Shimming, squaring, sawing, gluing, hammering, nailing...I had no idea there was so much involved in hanging a pair of doors---except that, on some level, I actually did. For it was just like my sitting down to revise and edit my own work, trimming down some pages, shoring up others, and ensuring that everything I've written hangs together correctly and that all the loose ends are satisfactorily tied up at the conclusion, that all closes perfectly---just like our new French doors.

But that still wasn't the end of the whole process. Because of course, after John had got to that stage with our doors, there was still the plasterboard to put into place around them, followed by the paint, and the wood trim. This was the equivalent of my own novel "polishing," the time when I select lines of poetry for chapter headings, decide whether or not to include a map or maps, a cast of characters or a family tree, and yes, once even a floorplan for the manor house in one of my books. Are all these elements of style truly necessary? Perhaps not. But then again, I don't think our new French doors would look nearly as fine without all their little finishing touches, either.

No doubt, some people don't care what their own doors look like, as long as they close, lock, and keep out drafts and burglars. But in our house, we use our family room a lot. It's where we eat our supper, where my son, Shane, and his friends do their homework, and where John and I unwind together after a long day. So we want the doors in our family room not only to function properly, but also to be as attractive and pleasing to the eye as possible. I suppose I'm the very same way about my novels. I spend countless hours writing them, so I like them to meet all my own criteria in all respects. If a map or a floorplan helps me envision something in a book, then I think it will probably help my readers do the same.

THE NOVEL IS DEAD!

The novel is dead---or so I keep hearing! In fact, I've been hearing and reading about it quite a lot lately, in newspapers and magazines, in trade publications, in online writers' groups and blogs, and from editors and colleagues.

The hard, cold fact is that young adults don't read much literature anymore. Rather, they watch movies and television, surf the Internet, and play video games. I know this is true of my own teenage son, Shane, and his friends---that most all the literary reading they do is confined to what is required for school. I still hope that this is a passing stage, that Shane will eventually discover and appreciate the thought-provoking flights and engrossing delights good novels have to offer; and every now and then, I see glimmers of that happening.

Still, it's an uphill climb---because unfortunately, young adults are not the only segment of the population whose reading has greatly declined in the last decade. According to a recent National Endowment for the Arts survey, reading is actually in a troubling state of decline among all segments of the population, with fewer than half of all American adults now reading literature.

What are the reasons for that, I wonder, and what does it mean to novelists now and in the future? Will there even be any novelists in the future? Well, probably not, if people stop reading literature entirely, because for one thing, publishers simply won't keep publishing books for which there is no longer any market.

If that day should indeed ever come to pass, it will truly be tragic. For there is nothing quite like curling up with a good novel and losing oneself in its pages. Good novels speak to us and to our minds and imaginations in in-depth ways that no other media really can. Yet, if the NEA and others forecasting doom and gloom for literature are correct, it seems that spending hours with a good novel is, like so much else, becoming a quaint, charming, fading pastime of yesteryear, no longer enjoyed by today's society, with its hectic lifestyle and its resulting increasing reliance on visual media and sound bites.

What do you think? Is the novel really dead---or dying? If so, why? Do you still read literature, or have you turned to other forms of entertainment instead? Why do you think literary reading is in such a disturbing state of decline?

HOW'S ABOUT SOME HOT STUFF?

My husband, John, and I got more hot stuff than we bargained for this week when our house caught fire! A faulty light switch shorted out, and unfortunately, the switch turned out to be jammed up against an old dryer vent. The vent hadn't been used in years, but it was apparently still full of old lint, which ignited from the electrical sparks. Smelling smoke, we realized we had a fire of some kind inside our wall. John quickly began tearing the wall out, while I ran to call the fire department.

By the time the firemen arrived, John had ripped open the wall, cut open the vent, and yanked half of it from the wall, so that we had the fire out. But the firemen tore the rest of the vent out later just to be sure, since it continued up between the ceiling and floorboards of our first and second stories---right under our bedroom! I had visions of being toasted alive later that night by smoldering embers blazing up, and the firemen said they didn't want me worrying about that all night long!

I thought it was too bad I wasn't writing a Silhouette Desire right now, because I could have used any of those guys as a model for a fireman hero! They were all wonderful---and also full of praise for my own handsome hero, John, at acting so swiftly and fearlessly to prevent the fire from erupting into a major blaze that might have burned down our house. So thanks to all the firemen of Fire Engine #14 here in my hometown, and to John. Now, you know some of the reasons why I married him! *g*

Speaking of hot stuff, in a recent survey, women voted the dashing Mr. Darcy, from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, as their #1 dream date! Mr. Darcy beat out such other fictional contenders as James Bond, Heathcliff, Rhett Butler, and Prince Charming. Read all about the survey here. Mr. Darcy was also selected as the most desirable guest for a dinner party, and Pride and Prejudice was chosen by women over 40 as the top book by a woman. Women under 40 picked Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary as their own favorite. What does that say about the generational gap? In my own survey here at Ravenscroft Castle's Jousting Field, Wuthering Heights is currently leading as the greatest romance of all time.

A WEEK AT THE "BARBERSHOP."

Many years ago, I bought an antique barbershop chair. I thought it would be a fun conversational piece to have in my house. Unfortunately, however, for a number of different reasons, I never did much with it...just stuck it in a corner of one room and pretty much forgot about it.

But all that changed this week, after my husband, John, asked me what I intended to do with the chair. For one thing, it's big. And heavy! So it was taking up space we wanted for something else, and neither he nor my son, Shane, wanted to move it repeatedly around our house. I explained to John that when I'd originally bought the chair, I'd had some vague notion of eventually using it somehow in the powder room at my old house, but that the powder room in our own house was just too small to accommodate the chair.

"No problem," John said.

And with that, he proceeded to knock out two walls to increase the size of our powder room. So instead of a separate powder room, utility room, and a shades-of-the-70s! wet bar (that was "dead space" to us, since we never used it, and that was previously part of our family room), we now have one large powder room that is in the process of being transformed into an antique "barbershop." I even managed to find a Victorian-style wallpaper border that has antique barbershop chairs and other barbershop paraphernalia on it---all on a background the exact same shade of burgundy as my own chair's leather back and seat. I couldn't believe my good luck!

While our washer and dryer will remain, they'll be tucked away out of sight behind a small half wall and beneath a countertop---all a far more practical arrangement than what we had previously. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that once our antique "barbershop" is all finished, Shane (a typical teenager) will be a bit more cheerful about doing his laundry! *g*

WELCOME TO MY BLOG!

To blog or not to blog? That seems to be one of the hottest questions among writers these days, and as you may imagine, some writers are all for it, while others are against it. Having no real position one way or the other myself, however, I decided to ask my newsletter subscribers what they thought. All those who responded to my question about my starting a blog were all for it. I found myself both flattered and bemused by that---flattered that my newsletter subscribers, at least, wanted to read a blog written by me, and bemused as to why they would. You see, for the most part, I actually live a relatively quiet life, so I can't think what I'm going to tell you in this blog. That I spent several hours writing today (or simply staring at my computer screen, waiting for my muse to waken)? That doesn't sound very exciting, does it? So this probably won't be a blog that's updated daily, but, rather, one I'll post to weekly for the time being, just to see how it goes. At any rate, I've managed to get this blog up and running. So here it is. Welcome, and enjoy!