North of the Tension LIne

A Long Time Coming

/ J. F. Riordan

I began this novel seven years ago. I didn’t know it was a novel then, and there were many times between then and now that I doubted it was anything at all. But here it is, a published novel, and tomorrow I will leave home–without dogs,and I haven’t explained that to them yet–to begin a book tour.

First autograph ever

I am nervous, excited, and have a certain wry awareness that the life I abandoned as an opera singer–living out of a suitcase in strange cities–has come back to find me. Why? I wonder. There are peculiarities about fate at work here.

Nevertheless, here we go. At least there will be no one with bulldozers to ask me about the water lines.

So:

Saturday, September 20–Shelby Township, Michigan–Book Signing

2:00 pm

Barnes & Noble

14165 Hall Rd, Shelby Township, MI

Sunday September 21 Northville, Michigan–Book Signing

2:00 pm

Barnes & Noble

17111 Haggerty Rd, Northville, MI

Tuesday, September 23–Muskegon Michigan–Talk, Reading, Book Signing

Hackley Public Library

6:00 Pm

316 W. Webster

Muskegon, MI 49440

I have to admit that I am using this as an excuse for a four hour ferry ride to Michigan. Who wouldn’t?

 

Happy Launch Day!

/ J. F. Riordan

Gratuitous Dog Picture

Regular readers of this blog (both of them) are familiar with my distaste for Facebook. However, as a sop to Cerberus I knew I had to have a page to promote my book, North of the Tension Line. My editor and publicist at Beaufort Books, lovely people that they are, having heard of my misadventures, assigned an intern to set up a page for me.

Interns, of course, are college students–mostly English majors–hoping to gain experience so that they may beat the odds and find a job in their field after graduation. So, when they were asked to enter my birthdate on Facebook, they cleverly put in today’s date–the official launch date of NOTTL, and the most likely year for an adult to have been born–which is, obviously, 1993.

I woke up this morning to three different birthday greetings, all from people who know perfectly well how old I am, and who, therefore, were rather smirking in tone.

So, yes. Today is the birthday of North of the Tension Line, now officially out in the world. So please go purchase a copy. (Gratuitous cover shot to follow.)

Novel poster

For my part, I will alter my daughter’s suggestion of the traditional 21st birthday shot of tequila and celebrate instead with some nice champagne.

Although I may wait until after noon.

(Photo of Moses and me by Manning Photography)

What’s Under My Desk

/ J. F. Riordan

What's under my desk

There are all kinds of interesting ways for authors to communicate with their readers and with one another, and on one site authors are asked to post photos of where they write and compose a little essay about it. Don’t tell my publicist, but I haven’t done that yet. Still, I couldn’t help feeling as if I should post this edition, not of where I write, but  of what’s under where I write.

At the moment we are in the midst of  post-construction landscaping, and maybe the sound of the bulldozer is scary. For whatever reason, Moses, who is always nearby anyway, is unusually close. I am writing with his head on my feet, and his ears pressed up against my knees. It’s kind of nice, actually.

 

The Countdown

/ J. F. Riordan

Tension_Line_rd4

Any day now I am expecting a package from Beaufort Books filled with first editions of North of the Tension Line. When it comes, my friends will be receiving a spur of the minute call to come for champagne. Megan, Felicia, Michael, Eric–my team extraordinaire: I wish you could be here!

Love and Grief

/ J. F. Riordan

IMG_4810

My husband likes to say that Moses is a tuning fork. He is our German Shepherd who loves by pure concentration. His every focus is on those he loves, and he trembles when he senses our stress. The night I left to go to my mother in her last crisis, he fought to be with me where he could not come, even as Charlie lovingly urged him to stay at home.  In his distress, gentle Moses put his teeth on Charlie for trying to stop him from getting in my car. It was a protest, not an attack. But my leaving Moses behind was a betrayal to us both.

As a comfort and a way of drawing out my stillborn sorrow, I have been re-reading Madeline L’Engle’s adolescent novels which are explorations of faith and mortality. They will provoke my grief eventually, if not immediately. My own faith, so relatively new and untested, is approximately the same as the novel series’ teenager as she encounters death for the first time: in a friend’s father, in a friend’s illness,  then in her grandfather. At the same time in the story, a dolphin’s baby dies, and the teenage protagonist writes a poem. Maybe it isn’t great poetry, but I like it because it expresses the value of life and love regardless of the boundaries of species. In it the angels weep because every life matters even in the span of the universe.

I am in a place where I am gathering all the love I can find. And the love of Moses, who sleeps now at my feet, is a treasure as deep as any I can claim.

The devotion of dogs is not new. Homer acknowledges the love of Argos, the dog of Odysseus, who, waiting twenty years for the return of his master, is neglected, flea-ridden, and sleeping on a pile of dung. And yet, when Argos at last sees his master–even though no human creature recognizes him–Argos wags his tail in greeting to the one he has always loved, and dies. Odysseus, who has endured the battle of Troy, Sirens, Circe, the Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis, the deaths of all his companions, and the wrath of Poseidon, nevertheless weeps for the love of his old dog.

Moses is a dog. And his deep love for me is as real and palpable as any other love I know. He grieves when I grieve, and he is filled with joy when I am. What is love, if not this? And what greater comfort in grief than this deep devotion?

His soul reaches out to me and, gratefully, I answer.

 

 

An Editing Cautionary Tale

/ J. F. Riordan / 1 Comment

We are in the final edits–the galleys–of North of the Tension Line (Beaufort Books, September 2014; Available now for pre-sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Sorry. Had to be done. ) just at the very moment that things are intense at work. Although a professional proofreader and my editor have been through the book, as the author, I, too, need to review it, and time is pretty crunched. My good friend, Mary Beth, aka “Impromptu Librarian”, offered to be an extra set of eyes, and I gratefully accepted. In less than a day she had read the book for probably the third time,  and returned the proofed documents for me to pass on to my editor. But the next morning she called and we had an odd conversation.

Mary Beth: “What is hapcedarss?”

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Mary Beth: “Hapcedarss.”

Me: “I hate your bluetooth system.”

Mary Beth: “It’s in your book. Hapcedarss.”

Me: “Hapcedarss? It’s in my book? Are you sure?”

Mary Beth: “I’m sure. The proof reader has many notes about it.”

Me: “In my book?”

Mary Beth: “She had been commenting on it several times, and then pointed out that she had googled the word and checked with OED, but cannot find any such word.”

Me: “That’s hardly surprising. I don’t think there is any such word.”

Mary Beth: “Well, it’s in your book.”

Me: “Hapcedarss is in my book.”

Mary Beth: “Right.”

Me: “Hmmm. Very odd.”

It was a busy day of meetings and preparations for meetings at work, so it wasn’t until quite late that, now having forgotten about hapcedarss, I was able to finally sit down with my manuscript to begin my own proofreading. Not far into the manuscript light finally dawned.

I sold my book much more quickly than I had expected, so submitting my manuscript for fact-checking had therefore also had a much tighter timeline than I had expected. Among the more essential things was sending the book to my friend, Captain Bill, the ferry captain, to make sure that I hadn’t committed any egregious ferrying errors. He called me, and in one of the more delightful moments of this whole process, left a message telling me that he had read the book, and that he had liked it. I still have his voice mail on my phone and listen to it when I’m feeling blue. Anyway, when I called him back, I anxiously enquired whether I had made any mistakes about the ferry, or said anything stupid about the lake or its navigation. He assured me that it was all fine, but he had one correction. The trees at School House Beach, he pointed out, were not pines, as I had written. They were cedars.

Armed with this information, I sat down with my manuscript and created a “find and replace”. Wherever P-I-N-E appeared, it should be replaced with C-E-D-A-R. For some reason, I have rarely used find and replace, even though I have been using Word at home and at work for a pretty long time. What I hadn’t realized was that find and replace doesn’t just find and replace words. It finds and replaces the interiors of words.

It was late in the day, but I called my editor in New York. “I’m so glad you called to tell me this,” she said. “I had a terrible day, and this makes it so much better.”

Apparently, there is a great deal of happiness–or at least the talk of it–in my book. And it’s likely that hapcedarss will forever be a part of Mary Beth’s and my, and my editor’s vocabularies.

Our cups overflow with hapcedarss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

North of the Tension Line Debuts at Book Expo of America in New York

/ J. F. Riordan

This past weekend, at the invitation of my publisher,  I traveled to New York to sign advanced reading copies (formerly known as galleys) of North of the Tension Line. I couldn’t imagine that anyone would want an unknown author to sign an unknown book, but I was wrong. Maybe it was the lure of the free book, maybe it was the beautiful cover designed by Oliver Munday, or the lovely interior design by Jane Perini, or maybe it was the charismatic salesmanship of the delightful intern Kate Prince. But whatever the reason, people lined up for an autograph, and before I knew it we had run out of books.

It isn’t every day that you hold your first book in your hands. I am so grateful to my friends at Beaufort Books and Midpoint Trade–Eric, Megan, Felicia, Michael, and everyone–for two of the happiest days of my life.

And now, a brief word to my friends and readers: Pre-ordering is really important. Please go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble, or your favorite local bookseller and place an order for North of the Tension Line. If you write to me here, I’ll be happy to sign it for you.