Hotels?

I love staying in hotels. It's one of my very favorite experiences. Not bed and breakfasts, not motels (although the good ones might do in a pinch), not other people's houses, but hotels. Anything from mid-range to very upscale.


I admit that I don't often get to stay in the really upscale hotels (finances, you know), but occasionally I have done so. In France I've stayed in 16th century chateaux, in Italy, 18th century hotels on Lake Como, in Atlanta and New York and Miami and Seattle in expensive hotels when I've been at conferences. In Banff at the Banff Springs Hotel. But it's not really about the price, as long as the room is clean and the room service is good, that's what really counts. Oh, yeah, and location!


What is it about hotels I love so much?


I think it's a bunch of things. First of all, it means that I'm away from home and no one knows where I am. Okay, someone usually does know where I am, but they don't usually call me. And I don't travel with a laptop so they can't even email me. It's time out of a time in a way. Second, I love the tidiness of hotel rooms - the perfect linens, the perfectly clean and usually white bathroom, which is always bigger than mine. I like the way the room gets cleaned every morning, the bed gets made, the new towels get hung on the towel racks. I like the newspaper outside the door and that I can order a half bottle of wine any time of the day or not.


Plus, I'm always away from home - and I don't have much that I absolutely have to do. I can stay in bed until 11:00 reading my book, I can come back in the afternoon for a nap after sightseeing, I can do whatever I want.


I'm spending a whole bunch of time over the next month in hotels - four of them, I think. I'll keep you posted about them.



Kate

Conference frenzy

I'm into a month of conference frenzy - and I'm not complaining, not at all. I love going to conferences,



I love seeing old friends, making new ones, I love sitting at the bar with other writers and talking about writing, I love sitting at the bar with other writers and talking about life.



I love exploring new cities - this year Dallas, last year Atlanta (those weren't the only cities I went to, just the only cities I hadn't been to before).



I love going to workshops (not a lot because I get overwhelmed) because I always, no matter how many workshops I've been to, I learn something new.



I love buying books by writers I've met and discovering new writers I love. I love talking to writers I've enjoyed for years and realizing that not only are they wonderful writers, they're really nice people.



I love airports - I know, I know, it's kind of a sick love, really kind of a creepy love, but I can't help myself. I love the stores, the bookstores, the restaurants, the people rushing to meet someone or rushing to go off somewhere. There are a million stories in an airport and I'd be happy to sit there for hours just watching those stories unfold.



I love packing my suitcase, getting ready to go, thinking about what to take and what not to take, and always taking either just a little too much or a little too little. I can't seem to hit the exact right balance - maybe because sometimes I'm going for two days and sometimes I'm going for ten.



I love the anticipation of the trip, wondering who I'll meet, what wonderful things will happen to me, who will sit next to me on the plane, what great new food I'll get to try.



I love the trip itself. I don't work in the airport or on the plane, and I love that time where there's nothing I really have to do. I can have a glass of wine and watch the people go by, I can read a book or a newspaper or simply do nothing. I find that incredibly satisfying.



So, yes, I'll be busy, yes, it'll be frantic, but I know I'm going to have a wonderful time and I can hardly wait.



Kate

Summer Dreams

We all have summer dreams, I bet. I always do.

I dream about those lazy, hazy, crazy dreams of summer - I mean, I dream about having them myself, not singing the song. I never have them, not really, but I do dream about them and one of my dreams is that one summer I'm going to have absolutely nothing to do for the entire summer. I'm not going to travel, I'm not going to work, I'm just going to spend the summer enjoying the beach and the city and reading a thousand books.

I dream about spending the summer traveling. Traveling without all the tourists who are also traveling along with me. I dream about spending the summer in Europe, just me and the natives. I dream about spending the summer in New York, just me and the New Yorkers. I dream about spending the summer on a road trip all over North America, just me and the people who belong on the roads, not all those other tourists.

I dream about having enough time - and money - to go and spend as long as I want in all the places I love and have been to and all the places I'm sure I'll love and haven't been to. That means I need three or four months in each place - and there are dozens of them.

I dream about the perfect summer romance - you know, the ones in the movies or the books. It doesn't even have to be my perfect summer romance, I just want to see one happening. I want one of my friends to have one and I want to know all about it.

I dream about the perfect summer wardrobe, the one that never wrinkles or stains, that I can throw in my suitcase and it comes out looking like new, that fits me perfectly and makes me look like a million bucks (even right out of the suitcase).

I dream about the perfect summer evening - sitting in a cafe with someone I really care about (friend or lover), drinking that perfect summer rose (Cotes du Provence, by preference), eating a lovely meal and watching the sun set and then walking home along the beach, the sun gone but its light still lingering in the water.

What are your summer dreams?

Kate

My hero, Jane Austen

Many, many women writers will tell you that one of their favorite heroines is a Jane Austen heroine. Many of them, maybe most of them, will tell you that Elizabeth Bennett is their favorite heroine. And who can resist her? Or Mr. Darcy?

I like Elizabeth Bennett and I like Mr. Darcy, I very much like Pride and Prejudice. I like all of Jane Austen's heroines - but I do have my favorite. Anne Elliot from Persuasion is my all-time favorite heroine. She's older, she knows what it's like to make mistakes, she understands that life isn't perfect. She, like many women, made decisions when she was younger that have changed her life. She gives up what she wants and needs because her family (mostly her surrogate mother, Lady Russell) ask it of her. She sacrifices for her sister, for her father, for Lady Russell and puts herself second to all of them.

All of these things make her real to me but it goes even farther than that. Anne Elliot sounds like a martyr but she isn't. She knows - at the beginning of Persuasion - what it is she wants. And she wants Captain Frederick Wentworth, the man she gave up at Lady Russell's urging 8 years before the book begins. She wants the man he was, but as she grows to know the man he is, she realizes that he's even better than he used to be, and he realizes the same thing about her.

This is what makes Persuasion a great love story. Two people, separated by circumstances, go away and become better people and then ... come back together and realize that they still love each. How can you get a better love story than that?

Jane Austen is my hero.

Kate

Here it is!

The picture of the summer so far - I walked out my front door the other night and this is what I saw. So in case you're wondering why I live where I do, this is the answer.

The sun setting over the water and the way the ocean is the last place to lose the light, still holding the sun's last rays deep inside itself so it shines even in the dark, as if hesitating to release the last of the day.

The way the sunset changes places over the year. I can chart the course of the year by where the sun sets, moving further and further north, further into the mountains as the winter wanes and the summer rises. I guess because I live right where the ocean meets the horizon, it's easy for me to see the sun move (okay, okay, I really do know that it's the earth that moves, but it looks like the sun moves - really).

Kate

Neil Gaiman - AMERICAN GODS

I've read this book probably four or five times - maybe more - since it came out in 2001 or so. I spent yesterday, when I should have been working, reading it one more time.

It's one of those books that gets better with each re-reading. I love the characters. None of them are perfect, but you can't help but have sympathy for them, even when they're wrong. Even when they do terrible things. Gaiman is such a terrific writer that you can't help yourself - you fall for all of his characters.

The other thing for me is that this book really feels all about mythology and how important it is. How important simply believing in something really is. These gods from all over the world come to America with the waves of immigrants - Irish, Norse, English, Hindi, African, Egyptian, Eastern European, Asian, Native American, German - every kind of god you can think of comes to America. But as the communities of immigrants get assimilated, and forget their roots, so too are the gods forgotten and new gods rise in their stead.

These new gods - media and technology gods - want to take over the world. They want to be the only gods. So you can imagine what happens -

But what I love most about this book? These gods, these failing, unloved gods, are as human as we are. They want to be worshipped just like we do. They want to be part of someone's life just the way we do.

This book works on so many levels, the literal, the figurative, the metaphorical, the lyrical.

It's a wonderful read and I really envy those of you who haven't yet read it. I almost wish I could read it again for the very first time.

Kate

My favorite learning tool - movies

I admit it, I’m a movie addict. I LOVE movies. My friends go to movies and they’re much more discriminating than I am. I love ‘em all (with a few minor exceptions, mostly teenage boy movies). But other than those movies? I love being in the theatre in the dark, the sound everywhere, the big screen, the atmosphere – with or without popcorn.

Every movie I’ve ever seen has taught me something about writing –

I just saw MRS. PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT and thought as I watched it that the spare writing style of Elizabeth Taylor (who if you haven’t read, you should) translated beautifully onto the screen. Not too many characters, no big special effects, just a lovely and intimate personal story. I wish I’d written not just the movie but the book.

Check it out when you get a chance and see how to write an unusual, simple, relatively straightforward story in a way that makes you laugh, makes you cry and tugs at your heartstrings.

Then there’s my favorite Hitchcock movie – NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Oh, there’s Cary Grant for a bonus, but this movie is all about humor and sex. Really. The thrills and chills are just a way to get Eva Marie Saint and Cary Grant together. Goal. Conflict. Motivation. Perfect.

This movie – we never see anything overt because even in the sexiest of scenes they're wearing pajamas – but the dialogue between the two of them is some of the sexiest movie dialogue ever. This is how you write about sex. This is how you create sexual tension.

The humor starts with the typical mistaken identity which is funny, but even the most suspenseful scenes have humor in them.

THE PIANO – those of you who’ve read my May book LAST NIGHT AT THE HALFMOON will already know just how much I love this movie. Another subtle movie – the setting is incredibly sensual, wet, tropical, steamy. The characters are complex but they’re not beautiful, not in the way we see them so often in Hollywood movies. They feel, at least to me, like real people, people with complicated lives who are doing the best they can. So this movie taught me not only that the smallest touch can be incredibly sensual but that setting has power to bump up the heat.

And then there’s THE ENGLISH PATIENT – I’m not a giant fan of tragic love stories. I want a happy ending – but I can’t resist this movie.

What I love the most is the way it moves seamlessly from the past to the present, from Tuscany to the desert, from one story to another. I love the way it uses images to do this. My favorite example is the way the ridges on the bedsheet turn into desert sand dunes.

I love the way people aren’t perfect – they do what they need to do but they’re not black and white, not always confident in what they’re doing, so they make mistakes. And even with those mistakes, they are still loved.
I love the high stakes in this movie. War, death, love. All those things that we, as writers, want to write about and want our readers to understand how difficult it is to live in those complicated times and how, sometimes, we just put one foot in front of another and do what we have to do – never being quite sure whether it’s right or wrong.

And then there’s my favorite movie ever – WINGS OF DESIRE, Wim Wender’s great German movie about Berlin, about love, about desire. (City of Angels – a very bad remake was made a few years ago, don’t see it, see the original).

So what is it about this movie? There are many things that work in this movie but here are a few to start with.

Angels in trenchcoats watch over post-war Berlin and its shaken inhabitants. But Daniel (the wonderful Bruno Ganz) believes that maybe being an angel isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe, he thinks, human beings have something, know something, that angels don’t. And he’s right.

He falls in love with a trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin) and she (along with Peter Falk playing himself) teach him that he needs to take the bad with the good. Yes, human beings have the pain of reality but they also have the joys of being human – like the combination of coffee and cigarettes and love – and Daniel finally decides that he’s going to choose the pain so that he can have the joy.

He takes a huge risk - giving up angelhood to become human - without knowing whether that risk is going to pay off. He jumps off the cliff and right into the midst of the human world. Whether he gets what he wants or not, the movie is about taking the risk, taking the leap. It's about hope in a situation that doesn't seem to have any, about courage, about love and desire and pain.

This movie is about everything.

Kate