New Ebook Release!

The Outlaw’s Secret Bride

L.G.C. Smith

A Teacher and An Outlaw in an Untamed Land

Emily Parker came to Dakota Territory to escape an unwanted suitor so the last thing she wants is to get married . . . and certainly not to the rough-mannered Drew Rutledge, whose illegal dealings with renegade Indians make him a less than ideal choice of husband. But when Emily's brother and Rutledge's adopted Lakota family team up in a matchmaking effort, the unexpected fire Drew ignites in her threatens to rage out of control, threatening her respectability. For all his strength and resolve to protect her, Drew can’t resist his feelings for Emily. As conflicts between the Black Hills settlers and the Lakota flare, Emily and Drew are caught in the crossfire. A secret marriage could save them both—or carry them into ruin.

This week marks the ebook release of my first backlist title, a historical romance originally published by Avon Books in 1990. Now titled The Outlaw’s Secret Bride, it’s available as an ebook from Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and Smashwords. This is an unabashedly big romance from the heyday of the historical western. I tidied up some of the extra adverbs and adjectives, but as I read it through again I was pleased with how well it holds up—aside from that little problem with pheasants in Dakota Territory in 1880—WRONG, they weren’t introduced until 1882, and I do believe every single person in South Dakota knows that and made sure I did, too. I got it, folks. No pheasants this time. Still lots of meadowlarks and eagles, but no pheasants.

Writing The Outlaw’s Secret Bride was the most joyful thing I’ve ever done. I’d wanted to write since I was in elementary school. I’d tried lots of things. Poetry. Short stories. Literary fiction. Then one September night shortly after I started my doctoral program at Cal, I couldn’t sleep, and I found a historical romance on my mother’s coffee table. I devoured it. I’d read romance in college, then stopped, mostly because I lived in Switzerland and was so poor I couldn’t buy many books. I read what my friends passed around. There weren’t a lot of romances in the mix.

As soon as I finished reading that big historical, I knew what I was going to write. I lugged three giant backpacks into the stacks at Cal and gathered enough books and journals to damn Bear Butte Creek in a rainy June. I spent most of that semester researching and plotting. I don’t know how I got any course work done, but I did. I also read every bestselling romance I could get my hands on and analyzed the stories and the language. By winter break I was writing. By the end of March, I had a 150K draft. There were days I spent ten hours in a folding chair at a kid-sized desk in a dumpy family-student housing apartment, and never took my head out of my story or my eyes off the tiny screen of my Mac SE. I didn’t eat. I lost track of time. For me, that was unprecedented.

I loved this book. I loved writing it. Some might quibble with my stylistic choices, but I made them carefully. Every freaking word. I didn’t take no for an answer until I got an agent (not a great one, as it turned out), and then an editor (who was pretty great) and a publisher, and I have been writing romance ever since.

Here’s a sample:

Bear Butte, Dakota Territory, 1861

The small flags of colored cloth snapped against their poles like wild ghosts in the night as the west wind lifted them. The wind brought the scent of new grass, damp earth, and promised rain, yet there were no clouds. A waning crescent moon dipped toward the horizon, and the boy sitting on a bed of sage, enclosed by the four poles, shivered as the breeze rippled over his bare, sunburned body. Goosebumps rose on his arms and stomach, but he didn't notice them. His eyes were fixed on a small, dark speck far away in the western sky, beyond the pale buffalo skull atop the cottonwood pole before him, beyond the dark humps of Mato Paha, or Bear Butte. Without blinking, the boy lifted the pipe that rested in front of him and raised it to the four winds, to the earth and the sky, and finally to the dark shape approaching him.

He stood motionless. Tiny sounds began to fill his ears, growing until they were almost deafening in the predawn stillness. He heard the grass stems bending and shifting in the wind, and the insects marching upon the moist spring earth. He heard the horses at the camp whinnying and snorting. And though the camp was far from him and beyond his sight, he heard the even breathing of the sleeping people, the small cries of babies, the snores of old men, and the creak of the lodge poles in the gusting wind as if he were present in each lodge.

The sounds spilled into the night. Then there were new voices, and harsh, metallic noises coming from the east. Noises he remembered from his childhood encroached on the prairie night: crowds milling, engines churning with cranking gears and hissing steam, wheels screaming against steel tracks, and heavy wagons thundering over uneven roads. The roar built in his ears until he could no longer hear the earth and the people, but only the chaotic din of machines and white men's shouting voices.

Suddenly, the rush of beating wings drowned out all other sound, and the boy stared in wonder as the dark shape above him descended, wide wings blocking out the stars. Instinctively, he held his pipe aloft, and a sob escaped his lips. Tears streamed down his face, and he thought he would faint from the excitement and fear that coursed through him. Then the great bird dropped onto the buffalo skull and looked curiously at the boy. It was an eagle, strong and powerful, his dark feathers touched with lighter spots that glinted in the faint moonlight.

The boy ceased trembling and forced himself to meet the eagle's gaze. Should he ask a question? Overwhelmed, he waited, saying nothing.

The eagle continued to regard him. Finally, the boy felt words forming in his mind and heard his own voice in the silence.

"Welcome, Tunkaśila, Grandfather. I am honored that you have come. What can I, a man born to the white eyes, learn from you, Wambli Gleśka, the Spotted Eagle?"

As soon as he had spoken, he wished he hadn't. He sounded so young, so weak. But the eagle seemed pleased and answered the boy.

"Wakantanka, the Great Mystery, knows you, Iśte Śkan Niyapi, you who have eyes that are alive with the sky, and I have come as a messenger. I will show you things you will need to know to serve the Lakota. Come with me."

The words died away, and the boy felt himself drawn up into the air with the eagle, sweeping ever higher into the night sky, until he thought they would brush the very stars. High and far they flew, into the east. The boy saw the great rivers below them shimmering like ribbons. As the sun lifted over the distant horizon, throwing a pale yellow light into the sky, they reached a land of rolling hills and low mountains covered with dense forests. Among the trees were farms and fields, and along the rivers were towns, white people's towns, and many, many white people. The boy had seen these places years ago, when he had traveled through them with his father, before they had met the Oglala. Yet something was different about the hills and towns. Looking closely, the boy saw an ugly pall of smoke overtaking the land and flashes of fiery light glinting red through the trees. The eagle drifted downward on the wind currents, and soon the boy heard terrible sounds. People were crying everywhere, and explosions and gunfire erupted all over the land. Then the noises faded, and he and the eagle kept flying toward the east, finally reaching a city that the boy recognized as the place where the White Grandfather lived, the laws were made, and the white councils met. He had visited this city with his uncle once when he was very young, perhaps five or six. It seemed very strange and frightening now. He wondered why the eagle had brought him here.

In answer to the boy's thoughts, the great bird swept low over the city, so close that they could hear people talking. There was talk about the war, and about the need for land, more land in the west. People talked of cattle and railroads and gold. And they spoke of the Indians.

The boy listened hard to hear what was said about the Indians, and his heart grew cold at the words he heard. Savages. Animals. Murdering heathens. Let the army take care of them after the war is over. They're sitting on land we need. Push them off. Eliminate them. Make room for good Christian people. The boy was ashamed that he was of the same race as these callous men, and he was shocked by their ignorance. Indignation and fear burned his spirit. Their own country in war-torn ruins, they calmly spoke of taking the Indians' country and carrying their ugliness onto the plains, bespoiling them forever. There were men who defended the Indians, but they were few, and even they did not seem to understand the horror of what the others said.

Then he heard the eagle's voice in his ear. "You will be able to help the Lakota. You know this world, and they do not."

The eagle bore him high above the city again, and they turned back toward the west. The boy thought about what the eagle had said. He didn't feel as if he knew this world at all. He knew the prairies and hills of Dakota and the Powder River country. He knew horses and hunting and how to survive on the high plains. He had been a child in the white man's world, but he didn't know it any longer. He was becoming a man in the world of the Lakota, and he was happy there. He didn't wish to return to his old life. Would he have to? Was that what Wakantanka wanted him to do?

The dawn caught them again, and the eagle carried the boy back and forth above the earth between the Missouri River and the Bighorn Mountains. He showed the boy the bands of people traveling with their horses and their travois from camp to camp, from south of the Platte River to the Canadian border. The land was wide and lovely, full of game and wild fruits and herbs. Buffalo blanketed the prairies, moving like a dark cloud through the broad valleys and across the hills, and the people were happy.

But each time the boy and the eagle crossed the land, they didn't go as far as they had the time before. Soon they didn't go as far south as the Platte. They didn't go as far west, or north or east, either, and the people didn't travel as much from place to place. There were large camps along the Missouri that never moved, and the people were not so happy. The buffalo and the other animals began to disappear, and the people grew weary. When the boy and the eagle flew only between the Black Hills and the Missouri, the people were starving. Then the boy caught his breath.

There were white people in the Black Hills. The Lakota were being chased away, sent to the river to die of white men's diseases and grief. Everywhere now there was the sound of mourning. Hunters returned with empty hands, and children and old people cried because their stomachs were empty and their hearts remembered better days. The land itself sighed with sorrow for the people and all the relatives, the buffalo, the elk, the birds, and all who were disappearing.

The eagle flew back toward the Hills, where the boy saw a single buffalo cow below on the prairie, trotting toward the Hills. The eagle followed it.

The buffalo picked its way through the trees, sometimes lost to sight in the narrow gulches it followed. After a long time, it disappeared into a thick grove of pines and spruce beside a meadow and did not reappear. The eagle soared above, and the boy looked down on a small waterfall and a pool. A tall pine rose like a spire next to the falls. The eagle glided down to perch in its uppermost branches, and they waited, looking for the buffalo. It was so beautiful and peaceful in the meadow that the boy forgot the suffering he had seen.

There was a sudden movement below. The boy and the eagle looked down immediately, but instead of the buffalo, a woman walked from beneath the trees. At least the boy thought it was a woman. He couldn't see her clearly; a cloud of mist from the falls obscured her from view. The eagle lifted his wings, and they dropped to the earth before the woman, yet still the boy couldn't see her. Then the mist cleared, but only for an instant. All the boy saw were her eyes, the most beautiful, mysterious eyes he had ever seen, as brown as the moist earth below his feet, and as green as the dark pine boughs above him; eyes that beckoned him with expectation and the warm promise of invitation. His heart leapt into his throat as he instinctively reached toward her, his hand grasping for hers through the tattered wisps of clouds and fog. Then the mist wrapped around her once again, as quickly as it had cleared, and he felt the powerful thrust of the eagle's wings as they rose into the air together. He strained his eyes, hoping for another glimpse of her, but he was too far away. She was gone.

Soon he saw the familiar shape of Bear Butte below, and he was falling, falling back to the ground, back onto the bed of sage within the square marked out by the four poles and colored flags. He hit the earth facedown and knew no more.

Friends , Glorious Friends

I frequently say that I would write without my friends, but I wouldn’t work very hard at publishing. It’s not the friendliest process. Lots of rejection. Submitting novels to agents and publishers can feel a lot like unrequited love. A writer may have to go for years on a sliver of encouragement. I like your writing, but this story is weird. Interesting premise, but it needs work. I can’t market this, but if you have something else, let me know. If pursuing publication were a relationship, friends would advise moving on. Stop wasting time on a hopeless endeavor. You can’t make someone love you. Among the greatest gifts my writer friends give, and that includes all of the Pens at the top of the list, they never give up on me. They may be annoyed with my ambivalence and chicken-heartedness when it comes to submitting and promoting my work, but they nudge me along anyway. “Want me to nag you this week?” Lisa asks. I usually say yes. “I love your books,” Rachael says as she delivers the best hugs ever. Adrienne patiently shows me how to use Twitter. Sophie, Nicole, Gigi, Julie and Martha dive forward with energy and skill, showing me over and over how to write with unflagging commitment. With all this support behind me, I take slow steps forward. It’s working. I’m delighted to announce that I’ve sold Warlord, my time-travel MI5/Spooks meets Outlander romance thriller in which a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon king is brought to the present-day to help fight terrorism in Britain to Debra Dixon at BelleBridgeBooks. I would never have finished this book without the friendship and support of my writer friends, first and foremost my critique group and the Pens. Warlord was hard to write. It is a complex and detailed thriller and an epic romance. The book demanded a science fiction-inspired contemporary British world, and a thorough understanding of early medieval Britain. There were a lot of times when I stalled, afraid I couldn’t pull it all together. But my friends were there with encouragement and nagging when needed. Even better, they gave me the example of their own writing journeys. There isn’t a tougher, more determined, harder working bunch of writers anywhere than the Pens. At the same time, they are also kind, generous-spirited, and compassionate. It’s a glorious thing to be surrounded by friends of this caliber. Selling Warlord is fabulous. Having the amazing friends I do is pure grace. Nothing would move in my writing career without you all – Pens, Goat Rock Girlz, Goalies and so many more. Thank you. You’re the best. :)

Dream Writers

L.G.C. Smith

I asked my sister, the organic farmer, about her images of writers. She knows writing isn’t glamorous because she sees me every day. She frequently deals with celebrities so she isn’t impressed when I mention that I have met and spoken with dozens of NYT Bestselling authors, and at least three of them might actually know my name if I said hi at a conference. Nevertheless, she has a clear image of what she imagines a writing life should look like.

A writer, she says, should live Alone on a hill with a good view from her desk. She should be surrounded by nature and gardens where she can walk for inspiration and mild exercise in between scenes. She lives within walking distance of a small town or village (I’m guessing Stars Hollow would be about right). Everyone knows and respects her, and they are so darned impressed with how she comes up with all those exciting stories. They never ask rude questions about how she does the research for the parts with sex and/or violence.

This writer has dogs, cats, maybe a horse, and a housekeeper. She has someone to help out with the garden during those times she is immersed in her work and forgets to cut the grass and deadhead the roses. She spends most of her working time in her library/office, surrounded by thousands of her favorite books and the speediest Internet connection known to humankind. She works there Alone.

The part about being Alone is very important, she believes. She might not be as annoyed by Jonathan Franzen as some of us are.

This writer works diligently, but her life is not hectic. She is blessed with editors who are entirely sane and so well-organized they never throw the work plan for her entire year into chaos because they need “just a few minor revisions, you know, like the beginning, that middle bit there, and this little part of the ending” back by the end of this week. She has time for coffee with her friends and walks into the hills with her dogs.

This writer spends at least a month in Paris every year, two weeks in spring when the tulips are blooming, and two weeks in the winter to visit the museums. Other trips are fitted in as research needs dictate. Oh, and let’s not forget the December shopping trip to New York, which can be nicely combined with a bit of business (this writer is traditionally published, though she may dip a toe into indie publishing with some of her backlist titles).

And, the greatest felicity of all, this writer makes enough money writing to afford this grand house with extensive grounds, the people to care for it (and the gargantuan vet bills) without ever, ever, ever having to worry about money.

I snort ('cuz I'm elegant and glamorous that way) and ask if organic farmers eat granola and smoke weed in their overalls while celebrity chefs accompany them through the fields under the indulgent eyes of Food Network camera crews as Whole Foods helicopters drop bags of money from on high.

Yeah, we agreed. Not so much of either one, but enough to keep us dreaming.

Pick up This Book Now

L.G.C. Smith

If anyone has ever spoken a pick-up line to me, I missed it. I came into the world with a filter feature than renders all spoken and eye contact flirtation null. I think it’s genetic.

Once during a three-week sojourn in Paris, I trailed through the streets, museums and gardens behind my tall, athletic brother and my lithe, Nordic-looking sister. I was stunned at how many women checked out my brother and how many men’s eyes followed my sister. Neither of them noticed any of it, and my brother, dubbed ‘Thor’ by one of my friends, frequently bemoaned the sad and sorry fact that women did not seem interested in him at all.

Pathetic. All of us.

Books, on the other hand, whisper the most seductive pick-up lines imaginable, and I am a sucker for more of them than can be good for a body. They don't have to be grammatical or clever. Sometimes all it takes is a single word, and I’m lost—dragon, druid, artifact, disguise—or a well-used phrase—marriage of convenience, time-travel, history and romance.

Publishers work hard on crafting pick-up lines for readers via covers, titles, blurbs and back cover copy. I will admit that all too often romance covers don’t cut it for me, even though romance in its myriad iterations remains my favorite type of fiction. But I pulled a dozen books (by non-Pens because there is no book written by any of the Pens that doesn’t tempt me—even Sophie’s scary ones) I’ve read or re-read recently to analyze what it is about them that makes me want to pick them up.

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley. Ancestral memory. Scotland. Past and present mystery and romance.

The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley. Cornwall. Time-travel. Smuggling.

Always a Temptress by Eileen Dreyer. Regency-era military hero who’s not a duke. Kidnap. Eileen Dreyer!

Dangerous in Diamonds by Madeline Hunter. It’s Madeline Hunter, people. That all I need to know . . . even if there is a duke.

The Smoke Thief by Shana Abé. Dragons—from Cumbria.

Spirit Dances by C.E. Murphy. A shaman in the Seattle PD. Joanne shapeshifts. Coyote. Morrison.

Tender Graces by Kathryn Magendie. A West Virginia holler. Childhood memories. Growing up takes forever sometimes.

Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning. Fae. Dark. Dangerous. Kick-ass characters. Great cover.

The Landscape of Anglo-Saxon England by Della Hooke. The title says it all. Pure bliss.

The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society by John Blair. Seventh century monasteries!

Place-Names in the Landscape: The geographical roots of Britain’s place-names by Margaret Gelling. British place names = Magic.

Place-names, Language and the Anglo-Saxon Landscape edited by Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan. Three of my favorite things in one book. Whisper the title again. Come on. Right in my ear. Shiver.

What books whisper “Pick me up now” to you?

Hunker

L.G.C. Smith

Strategy is a very tricky concept in the life of a writer. Well, this writer. Being good at imagining things, I’m not bad at coming up with good strategies in any number of arenas. I attribute this to my father having had such a love of military history and dragging me across the US and the Western Pacific narrating various battle plans complete with commentary on strategic brilliance and failures. From Custer’s failures at the Little Big Horn to why the US used nukes on Japan, I took it all in.

Simultaneously, there were years of strategic analyses of professional sports games from the spectator position, which at my house was cross-legged on the floor in front of a pile of Legos or Lincoln logs. Dad watched, commented, and helped build things. I ended up with a solid understanding of strategy as it relates to winning games and territory. In other endeavors, I understand the importance of strategies, and can formulate then easily.

I do not, however, possess the will to follow through on the strategic planning I so excel at. One thing about strategy: without a certain degree of ambition and motivation behind it, it remains an academic exercise.

Therefore, I’ve developed a general life strategy that doesn’t require a huge amount of action. This is playing to my strengths. And that strategy is: hunkering.

Hunkerers play a long game. You define goals—conservatively, of course—and you find a position from which you think you can achieve them, and then you dig in. It’s not unlike the tortoise’s path in “The Tortoise and the Hare.” You poke your head up periodically to assess the field, and then you hunker back down. You aren’t static. But there aren’t many sudden moves.


Hunkering is not a sexy strategy, I’m sorry to say. It’s not always nimble enough to take advantage of trends or new opportunities. I wouldn’t say I’d advise others to adopt it, but it’s what I’m able to do, and so I work with it.

Every now and then, however, even a world-class hunkerer needs to blow off steam. This week brings a visit from my brother, the tech geek with crazy ass computer skills and sub-par communication skills, along with his wife and three young children, one of whom is autistic, another of whom is not quite two years old, and all of whom still crap their drawers (don’t ask). Anticipating chaos, which is not the hunkerer’s favorite modus operandi, I’ve given myself a strategy to diffuse stress. I’m going to Tweet the horrors.

This is a good strategy for several reasons, not the least of which is that no one else in my family is on Twitter. Then there’s the fact that I have very few followers. I can speak out with low impact, which is perfect for a hunkering life strategy aficionado. And finally, it gives me some more Twitter practice. That can’t hurt. It’s part of my long game.

Self-Promotion as Nagging?

L.G.C. Smith

I hate the word 'nag.' I'm old enough to still hear sexism in it. Women nag. Men . . . I don't know what they do. Hound? Nagging always seems to put a negative spin on things, and if I care enough to remind someone about something, or insist that a minimum basic standard of family or community participation be met, people should accept the admonition/encouragement (or whatever) appreciatively and snap to it. I am helping. I am being noble. You don't have to listen, but don't tell me I'm nagging.

There's one area where I can't help feeling like a nag, no matter how I spin it, and that's self-promotion. Whether we are traditionally published or indie-pubs, we have to find ways to let readers know we have something they might like to read.

I am constitutionally ill-equipped to do this. I was raised by people who felt it was bad form to toot your own horn. I internalized this completely.

So I have questions for readers: What can writers tell you that doesn't feel like nagging? How can we do it so you know we love and respect you? Because we do. Big time. Seriously. We are nothing without you. The last thing we want to do is nag you about our books.

Cookie Tradition

L.G.C. Smith

Throughout my childhood, there was always one day during the Christmas holiday devoted to making cut-out sugar cookies. All four of us kids had to be there, and Mom. Dad did not have to attend, but if he did, he was the quality control engineer. We made mainly stars, bells, and trees. Pretty basic stuff. We had some tricky cookie cutters that were supposed to press in the lines of a teddy bear, a toy soldier, and a rocking horse, but none of us were adept enough to get the cookies out of them in one piece. So it was stars, bells, and trees.

We frosted with old-fashioned butter cream tinted with food coloring dripped from tubby little bottles. The colors weren't great, and Martha Stewart would have cried at the final results. Sloppy, gloppy and bright. But it was tradition. When other Christmas cookie shapes and recipes evolved over the years, the sugar cookies did not.

And now we inflict making them on the small children in our family. They're a good choice for me because I never liked them, and I never eat them. That isn't true of most cookies. I will eat most cookies greedily. Well, as long as they're gluten-free. Now. As a result, I only make gluten-free cookies to send to my niece in Texas since she's on a GFCF diet. Here are some of those.


These are the sort of cookies we made as kids except that these actually look better than any of the ones we made. Sprinkle technology has come a long ways.


That's one of Adrienne's boys and my niece a couple of years ago. I cleaned two and a third cups of colored sugar off the floor at the end of that evening. The kids are getting older. I anticipate less than a cup and a half on the floor this year.

When my nieces were born, thanks to years of watching Martha Stewart and the ability to follow recipes, I figured out how to decorate sugar cookies in a less gloppy fashion.


I kind of like doing it. But there had better not be any kids around when I'm doing this. Except that I'm not good at kicking the Leezlet out, and she's not too bad at dropping decorations onto royal icing if I give her a template to follow. Like on the gingerbread men on these cupcakes. We made them together for her junior kindergarten Christmas party a year ago. This year cupcakes were banned. Kind of scroogey, if you ask me. Bunch of baloney about too much sugar. (Just kidding, people. Well, the cupcakes were banned.)


Wednesday Adrienne and I are going to make the kids cut out and glop up some holiday sugar cookies. I might go basic. Stars, bells, and trees. Vanilla butter cream and sprinkles. No food coloring. There will be no cookies that look like this:


And there will be a lot that look like this. It's tradition.

Leftover Words

L. G. C. Smith

I write like I cook for holidays. If a twelve-pound turkey is enough, mine will be twenty, and I might bake a ham, too. If two kinds of pie will suffice, I will make five. And a cake. And a pumpkin cheesecake. If a 75K word novel works for most of the world, mine will be a minimum of 125K. One of mine is 160K. (It reads fast, I promise.)

I try to write a short story, and I end up with a novella. I try to write a novella, and I end up with a novel. And one time, I tried to write a novel, which I did finish (the 160K word thriller), and ended up with two additional novellas (one of which is Staindrop, available now from many fine ebook emporia), a 75K word novel, and 150K words of variously related bits and pieces. These last are my leftovers.


In the best of all possible worlds, my time-traveling Anglo-Saxon warlord kings brought into the twenty-first century to bolster counter-terrorism efforts in Britain will eventually find reader favor akin to that enjoyed by Karen Marie Moning, Diana Gabaldon and Sherrilyn Kenyon. When that happens (a writer can dream, can’t she?), my lengthy forays into my seventh-century hero’s experiences with modern-day life might be of use as giveaways for loyal readers. There’s a lot of story in those leftovers.


For now, however, they’re sitting in files like so many pickle jars in the refrigerator. They won’t go bad. They have an indefinite shelf life. It seems a waste to toss them out. So I keep them as I forge ahead with new projects and work on getting Warlord published as well as it deserves.

My Grandpa Johnson was a South Dakota rancher who reserved a part of the field south of the house and barn for broken machinery that might come in handy one day. He had a small forge, and he did a little blacksmithing, so he could reshape an old pin to fit a new use with a little fire and some hammer work. I like to think of my leftover words as being similarly adaptable. They’re a resource. A potential treasure trove. A word hoard. Leftover the way the Staffordshire Hoard of gold and garnets was when it was buried, its value waiting to be rediscovered.


Just to be clear, though, now would be a good time to discover any food leftovers from Thanksgiving and toss them out. Except for pickles and jam. Those you can keep.

Ode To My Father

by L.G.C. Smith

There’s something wonderful about traveling to another country and feeling more at home in many ways than I do in the U.S. I put most of that down to having a predominately British ethnic heritage. Not only do I see people who look like family all over Britain, but I know the rules for queuing, talking to strangers, and negative politeness -- whereby the polite is defined by how little one intrudes upon others rather than doing nice things for them.



I can function as an American in all of these arenas, but there is always tension. When someone tries to cut in a line, I become irrationally furious. I don’t typically say or do anything about it, but I am most definitely Not Pleased. When a stranger speaks to me, my natural inclination is to freeze or say something slightly hostile, like “Indeed.” I have learned to be friendly and will try to pretend I’m not feeling a bit of panic, but in Britain, I relapse. When a perfectly affable American gentleman made a small jest at a kissing gate in Oxford, saying he thought one was supposed to share a kiss going through, I reared back, horrified, and said “I think not!”

Hmm. Was that repressive disapproval strictly necessary? No, it was not. It was, alas, entirely beyond my control.

This may be mostly cultural, but the rapidity with which I forget all my “I am an American; I can cultivate and use social skills” rehabilitation efforts suggests to me a chemical component. Call it genetic. Call it blood. Whatever it is, it’s insidious.

There are some aspects of British life that I do not understand, however, and no degree of British ethnicity seems to help. One is the toilets. Almost every toilet I encountered outside of a public restroom required a master’s touch to flush. Five holiday cottages, all with multiple bathrooms, and nine B&Bs offered a good-sized sample of almost 30 individual loos. One or two I comprehended quickly. Others I learned to finesse into a full flush without interminable afterdrip in a day or two. The recalcitrant ones never cooperated.



What’s this all about? When they do flush, British toilets let loose a torrent of water shocking to ecologically conscious residents of the dry American West. The commodes are also deeper than American versions, making it impossible to inspect whatever gets down there – unlike the German toilets I remember from the 1980s. Those had a little shelf for deposits to land on, making me think it must have been fairly common procedure amongst Germans to keep close tabs on their bowels.

The very fact that I find toilets an interesting topic, and, yes, sorry, amusing, may be yet another indicator of too much British blood in the mix. That and the fact that my father is a Sanitary Engineer, which means he knows about clean water standards in scary minutiae and where to put septic tanks. He has also toured more sewage treatment plants than anyone else in the known universe. Still, one has to wonder why a nation of uptight, occasionally squeamish folks prone to frequent feelings of social ill-ease and embarrassment would routinely install tetchy toilets.



I’ve come up with a couple of reasons. First of all, it may be to embarrass foreign visitors. There’s definitely comedic mileage to be found there. However, all the holiday cottages I stayed in were also used by their owners, or had been lived in by them for extended periods, so I’m not sure this holds up as the universal answer. The second reason, my current front-runner, is that Brits enjoy a little humiliation too much to let go the shameful potential inherent in anything to do with toilets. You can’t get too big for your britches if you can’t operate a toilet successfully on your own. Plus, it encourages independent problem-solving skills in children, always a worthy social endeavor, as well as keeping them in their place. Again, humility must follow in the shadow of one’s inability to master a simple flush. And that goes double for foreign tourists, particularly if they’re French.

Therefore, in closing, the moral of this loosely organized post is that nobody’s blood matters much when it comes to flushing toilets in Britain. Certainly my own high percentage of British genetic material is of no great use, perhaps because most of those bloodlines left Britain before toilets were in wide use, or, perhaps because this is one of the many areas of life where blood isn’t relevant. If, however, one’s parent has a professional interest in sanitation matters, blood ties may involve sufficient affection to foster a similar, if less technical, interest.

Belated Thanks to Peter Jackson

L.G.C. Smith

I love to confess. Not being Catholic, that means readers must bear with me when the urge hits, as it has today. Movies, guilty pleasures, crushes from afar, questionable judgment calls…

Today’s secret is that I think Peter Jackson is the sexiest man alive because of what he did with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Bar none. If J.R.R. Tolkien were alive, he’d be top of the list. In his absence, Peter Jackson’s skill, meticulous effort, and creativity in translating Tolkien’s epic into film earns my enduring admiration and gratitude.

I have three university degrees in linguistics because when I first read Tolkien at age twelve, I learned that the things about language that interested me most were called linguistics. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis showed me a career path I embraced: language scholars who also wrote stories. LOTR was almost a sacred text for me.

It never occurred to me anyone could do justice to the LOTR books in a movie. When I first heard that production was underway, I scoffed. It couldn’t be done. Not decently. There was no way to capture Middle Earth in all its specific, detailed glory. Nothing would match the images Tolkien had blazed into my imagination

I was so, so wrong. Peter Jackson did it. Not every single detail was exactly as I imagined, but 90% of them were. Best of all, he used Tolkien’s languages! Be still my heart! The images of the Shire and Minas Tirith…perfect. Gandalf’s white robe when he comes back after his battle with the Balrog …exquisite. The battle at Helm’s Deep…heart-rending. I could go on and on and on. Every time I watch these movies, I am transfixed. Captured. Just as I was when I first read the books.

If Peter Jackson were before me now, I’d gush. I’d thank him for these movies. Yes, he’s done excellent work since, and will no doubt do lots more, but the LOTR movies are a gift every time I watch them. They inspire me to keep at the details in my books, because they matter. They make a story sing.

Mostly, though, these movies make me happy. Happy that Tolkien wrote the books, and happy that Peter Jackson and his army of talented, clever film professionals were the ones to make the movies. Happy that words on a page can touch so many lives and give so much pleasure. Happy that grand stories are vital in our lives, whether in books, movies, music, or art.