North of the Tension Line is on the Target website. Would you please give it a four or five star review?
And if you haven’t already done so at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, would you be so kind?
Books that receive good reviews get noticed and re-ordered.
I’d be grateful if you’d bring along a friend, too.
Thank you.
Support your local author!
Some fan letters are particularly meaningful.
I wanted to tell you how much I have enjoyed your first book, although have not yet read the second. It’s always interesting to read something set in a beloved location….although one runs the risk of feeling betrayed. That isn’t the case, here!
I just wanted to tell you that Fiona’s house was owned for a time by my husband’s family, and his Aunt Helen, who was disabled, stayed there for a summer….
I, too, am in exile, south of you in Racine. My family is from the Island, as is my husband’s. The lighthouse on Rock is restored to the time of my great grandfather’s tenure there. My grandmother taught in the Detroit Harbor school and ran Central switchboard for a time. My grandfather was a ferry captain, and my son is the 4th generation in our family to work for the Richters. My mom lives in the home my great grandparents bought after retiring from the lighthouse service, and our cottage is on my husband’s family’s land…over 125 years….
Thank you for bringing the Island to life for others to see, in a way that preserves the spirit and respects the people who live there…and tells a fabulous story. It’s not easy to do all three.
Thank you.
Kari Gordon
Thank you, Kari.
Nine days to due date! We’ll see whether Moses evinces the same enthusiasm for his new brother that Pete felt for him.
2012: Pete is thrilled about baby brother, Moses.
I have been procrastinating. It is a well-known, but little understood phenomenon of the writing process.
Every writer procrastinates differently. My method is cleaning and de-cluttering my work space, and finishing up little tasks that distract me. Having a clear, open space, and no little worries helps to clear my mind, and then the ideas that are spinning around my head in an inchoate mess suddenly coalesce into plot lines and sometimes into complete scenes. I know this process, but it is very hard to accept that I need to do it when I feel a deadline looming, and time slipping away from me.
The other night I was driving home from some evening event and suddenly an entire sequence for the new book entered my mind, and I couldn’t get my coat off fast enough to write it all down. It is an odd sequence–a departure from my usual style–and after a few days of musing over it I put it down. It was risky, and it didn’t fit the book. Maybe another book.
Then everything stopped. I couldn’t write much. I couldn’t catch the wind that sails me through my writing. I sat at my desk, restlessly, unproductively, staring out the window, looking at YouTube videos, researching mammals and explosives (not together), and periodically going downstairs to see if I could alleviate my boredom by eating. 
Fortunately, knowing myself, I have purged my kitchen of these kinds of foods, and even though I am a novelist, drinking in the middle of the day does not normally appeal to me. I consumed a lot of tea, and far too much coffee.
So, finally, I gave up. I stopped worrying about it and just got on with other tasks. I cleaned out a closet in the kitchen. I rearranged my office, and made plans for new bookcases. I dusted under beds. I threw a small dinner party, and took the dogs for walks.
This morning I began my day pre-dawn standing barefoot on the patio, loudly and frantically calling my dogs in–no doubt to the amusement of my neighbors who were recovering from their New Year’s Eve revelries–while a fairly large contingent of coyotes barked and yipped and howled somewhere very nearby.
Dogs safe, I sat drinking coffee and watching the turkeys begin their new year from their treetop berths, their big bulbous shapes silhouetted against the pink and orange sky.
All at once, the spinning stopped, and the words began again in my head. My refusal to accept the strange sequence as part of the novel had shut me down. I suddenly knew that it did belong, and that it had to be the beginning of the book. And then everything began to fall in place in my mind, like the tumblers in a lock falling into place.
There it is. Not all of it. But the main points of it.
Time to write.
I have many gaps in my education, and I do not spend as much time as I ought to in filling them. The list is long and daunting.
Last night, when I walked with the dogs for the last time before bed, I looked up with wonder at the many more stars that are visible here on the Island, and, for the thousandth time, I felt ashamed that I could not name more of them. I have often meant to learn more of the constellations, but my progress is slow and I am easily distracted by daily life.
Tonight, after much nagging from the dogs, I interrupted my reading to take them out into the night. On All Saints Day, with Pete and Moses joyously romping around me, I walked in the dark, speaking the names of my beloved dead. My mother, my father, my grandmother whom I knew, my grandfather whom I did not; the grandfather whom I knew, the grandmother whom I did not. My cousin, Keith; my Uncle Bill; my Uncle Ken; my school friend, Dawn; my friend Bill; my mother-in-law, Kay; my honorary parents, Tom and Carol, and many others.
The dogs, who know my moods, but not their meaning, ran to and fro, happy merely to be outside and with me. The sound of the waves on the lake was slow and steady. The winds are still after yesterday’s wild weather.
Coming back up the path to the house I looked up, and realized that along with Ursa Major, there was another constellation I thought I knew, in the shape of a W. It was, I think, Cassiopeia, located almost above our heads. The crescent moon, which must be waxing, was large as it was setting into the Lake below the crest of the bluff.
The dogs were as indifferent to the stars as the stars are to human lives. But knowing things is both a burden and a gift.
Tonight, when the souls of the dead are closest to us, may they rest; may they find peace; may the momentary beauties of their lives enhance eternity. World without end. Amen.
We went for a very long walk today, and I took these photos. These are the days I dream about all year.
Now I am sitting outside to write because it is so perfectly splendid that it would be a waste to be indoors. The dogs, having had their multiple walks, are content to sit quietly on the grass (Moses) and at my feet (Pete). The sun is streaming from the west and casting a golden light through the leaves that still hang onto the birch and maple trees nearby. All is tranquil and warm, and lovely.
But it is raining. There must be one cloud drifting overhead in the crystalline deep blue sky, and the drops are hitting Moses on the head, making him flick his long ears with irritation. I am happy to sit on the porch with the roof protecting the computer–and me–and to be aware of the sunset while I write.
Meanwhile, in book three, Elisabeth is working on something new, and Fiona is chafing at all the public meetings she has to attend. Peter Landry is being his usual enigmatic self, and that is causing some problems. Many new developments in the works. Stay tuned.
Look carefully to discover dogs.
Greetings from Washington Island:
Life has been moving at a screaming pace, and I have not been keeping up. We (Pete, Moses, and I) are on the Island this week, cloistered for the purposes of writing Book Three in the North of the Tension Line series. I do the writing. They take me for walks and keep me from sitting for twelve hours straight. Meanwhile, the books have been gaining quite a bit of media attention, and if you haven’t heard about it here first, I apologize.
Now that we are here on the Island, there have been a few setbacks, including some extremely nasty chigger bites (I am not used to coming here when the temperatures are above freezing), but I am otherwise making progress. This is the fast part of writing, when everything is fresh, and the ideas are pushing themselves out onto paper (computer). The slow part comes later, when the plot needs to be knit together, and the loose ends keep popping out.
But I interrupt this time of retreat to mention that I do have a new website, www.jfriordan.com. This blog will continue to exist here, but you will also be able to access it from the website.
You will be able to find details about my next public appearances, to read, watch, and listen to media events, to hear interviews and readings from the books, and to buy the books, as well. In a day or two, my half hour television interview will become public, and you will be able to see it there. (As an aside, if you want incentive to stick to your weight loss plans, watch yourself on television. It’s a kind of horrifying reality check.)
The stats here at North of the Tension Line: Reflections on a Life in Exile have been rising steadily, and I am deeply grateful to my readers. Thank you, and I hope you will stay with me as the story continues.
Please take a moment to check out the website, and, if you would be so kind, to pass it on.
God willing, and if I get my work done this week, I leave for the Island on Friday. It will be such a busy week that I will be packing today.
These escapes are not technically vacations, since I usually work twelve to fourteen hours a day. It’s all writing and walking. But this time reconnects the pieces for me so that I can keep going. It’s a renewal.
We’re having an odd fall here in Wisconsin. October 2nd and the trees are still green, and I am a bit disappointed that the full autumn glory will be missing on the Island–that golden light that suffuses and saturates. But we have to go now, before bow season, since I don’t want big dogs crashing through the underbrush with hunters about.
We will bring the essentials ( in no particular order): the computer; the brown paper bag plot map that hangs on my office wall; the particular black spiral notebooks I cannot live without; colored sharpies for plot lines; The World’s Best Thesaurus; several books of poetry; several pairs of glasses; food for the first few days so I don’t have to interrupt my solitude; coffee; wine; dog food; dog equipment; Essential Dog 1 (Pete); Essential Dog 2 (Moses).
We’ll also bring all the accoutrements for long all-weather walking.
I have a few friends on the Island, now, and toward the end of the week, I will hope to see them. But for the first half, it will just be the Island, me, the words, and the essential dogs.
We’re heading north of the tension line.
Joy.
We are expecting a new puppy: a companion for Moses, and a respite–and new pupil–for Pete. My husband has misgivings about a third dog, and–although I generally keep it to myself–so do I. But, sadly, we won’t have three forever, and I want Pete, the elder statesman, to help train the puppy.
The puppy will be a special one, like Moses, carefully bred to be healthy, smart, even-tempered, gentle, and sweet. Also long-lived. These German Shepherds often live to be 13 or 14 years old, which is long for a big dog. Every day I check the breeder’s website, to see the current puppies, and look for news of the coming event. But today I found out it won’t be late fall, but early spring.
I am a little disappointed, but it gives me time to continue my ruminations on names. Leading contenders for now are Marcus Aurelius (guess why); St. Augustine (remember Augie Doggie?); Herodotus (I know); and George.
Official dog names are usually kind of pompous, with the kennel name in the possessive first, followed by the particular dog’s name. Still, it’s always possible to have fun with the form. With Peter and Moses we have New Testament and Old Testament represented. But the truth is that Moses’ name, although he is officially Moses, Prince of Egypt, was actually the result of my watching The Ten Commandments too frequently in my youth. I wanted to be able to shake my head sorrowfully and say, “Moses, Moses, Moses.”
I’m kind of leaning toward George. But I am open to suggestions. Drop me a line if you have a perfect name for a big, beautiful, new German Shepherd puppy. Did I mention that he’s expected to be 150 pounds? He’ll need something he can grow into.
If I pick your suggestion, I’ll send you a copy of my latest book.
Moses, left, and Pete on Washington Island.
J.F. Riordan 