NaNoWriMo Progress Report

Today’s my sixth day of National Novel Writing Month. I started out with a bang and churned out a lot of words on the first three days, then goofed off and fell behind. NaNo has a nifty bar graph that charts my progress, telling me exactly how many words I need to turn out per day to finish in time and how long it’ll take me at my present rate.

Today NaNo says I’ll finish on December 8^th, so I’ve got to pick up the pace. This is about the point I copped out the last time I tried several years ago, but I’m determined to stay the course. Fortunately my husband is understanding and supportive – he’s entered NaNo too. Right now I’ve got about twice as many words as he does, but he started late, and I expect he’ll pass me before too long.

I’m all too easily distracted. It’s a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon, perfect for leaf raking and putting the garden to bed, but I don’t dare go outside until I’ve written at least a thousand words. From my office window I have a bird’s eye view of my next-door neighbor’s roof. Two men are laying down new roofing, and it’s a pleasure to watch them, especially the younger one who’s wearing a black tee shirt and jeans as he crawls around with amazing agility. I’m admiring his musculature while I study their technique.

He’s working incredibly fast, while the older guy mostly stands and watches, hitching up his pants every once in awhile. This side show would be all well and good except for the fact that he’s using an electric hammer which emits a steady rhythm of “ribbet, ribbet,” conjuring up images of frogs. I’m tempted to give the men a neighborly shout-out of encouragement, but that would destroy my voyeur status.

Everything’s grist for the mill. I won’t be able to use this scene just yet, because my novel takes place in January, but maybe my observations will come in handy for a future book, so it’s good to take notes. They’ll end up in my 50,000 word count, and so will my thoughts as I worked in the garden yesterday.

Picasso's Woman in Mirror

But there are some observations I can use immediately. Yesterday I went to a vegan restaurant in Troy in hopes of meeting some other NaNo writers who’d said they’d probably be there. I met only one, but I ended up in a long conversation with a non-Nano woman who was unusually talkative and forthcoming with personal information, like the details of her incontinence problems. Only after I showed her a copy of my book MOOD SWING: THE BIPOLAR MURDERS did she reveal that she was diagnosed bipolar. She said she’s doing fine without medication and by adhering to a strictly vegan diet. 

After I extricated myself from the conversation and left the restaurant, a light bulb flashed and I realized she’d make a perfect character for my book – maybe a ditzy secretary who drives the other staff crazy with her never ending self-referential chatter. I’ll transform her in most respects, of course – I don’t even how what she looks like yet – but I can envision her as a recurring character who adds some levity, like the grandmother in Janet Evanovich’s books.

Although I vowed not to get hung up on editing for this first draft, I find I can’t resist the urge to tinker with my words, at least a little. Yes, it slows me down, but I need to feel good about what I write. If I fall further behind, I’ll just have to put in more hours. And when I’m really feeling panicked, I can always paste in a short story I never published, but which I was planning to incorporate in this novel anyway.

Throughout the time I’ve been writing this post, those guys have been working nonstop on the roof. On this first day back on standard time, darkness will come all too quickly, but right now the sinking sun is throwing the young man’s face and arms into high relief. The pine trees framing the lake make a perfect backdrop, and on the opposite shore, there’s still lots of gold and red in the trees. All in all a beautiful sight.

So far, the biggest win for me in NaNoWriMo is the revelation that I can still write fiction, maybe at a higher level than I ever have before. In the year of depression from which I’m only now emerging, I’d seriously questioned whether I had another novel in me. Now I know I do.

*I found the cat photo above by Googling NaNoWriMo, and I don’t know what’s up with the spelling. But she does remind me somewhat of my tabby cat Lunesta, who is currently sitting atop the computer monitor batting intermittently at the screen. She’s still on daylight savings time, not having realized we’ve gone an hour backward, and thinks it’s time for her evening meal.

 

 

 

Support a struggling author – buy my books for the holidays!

For my recent Blog Book Tour, Maryann Miller invited me to post on her blog, It’s Not All Gravy, about why my mystery novels would make good holiday gifts. I decided to quote my own reviews. As a self-published author in the early phase of building my career, I treasure each and every sale, and I believe both my novels, Eldercide (2008) and Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders (2006) would make marvelous gifts. But how to toot my own horn without being overly obnoxious? Here’s how I did it, and what some of my writing colleagues had to say:   

ELDERCIDE

Not Just for Old Folks

You don’t have to be elderly to connect intellectually or emotionally with this book. The story offers something for everyone: for readers of mysteries, a good story; for readers of medical thrillers, authentic (but not too clinical) health care scenes; for readers of literary fiction, an accomplished novel with believable, fully developed characters. And for all of us living in modern society: a contemporary exploration of unavoidable end-of-life issues. The narrative flows smoothly. The dialogue is always on the mark. The editing is sharp, uncommonly good for alternatively-published books. I read the book twice, appreciating its qualities even more the second time. And after finishing the last page, I couldn’t wait to talk about it with my husband. What higher praise for a book than that it provokes discussion?

                                                            Therese Broderick, poet

A Maven of Mayhem

In addition to the joys of combing through the characters and plot to untangle a mystery, Eldercide addresses the moral issue of euthanasia. Homicide – unfathomable. Mercy killing – a very real topic for discussion. Julie Lomoe braids compassion with murder in this page-turning whodunit. As a retired home-care physical therapist myself, I related completely. Ms. Lomoe’s experience as a home-care agency administrator gave depth to these defenseless patients and their caregivers with true-to-life dialog. Her artistic talents are apparent in the vividly painted scenes simultaneously combined with her suspense-heightening skills. She blurs the edges just enough where the answers to your questions reside. Colorful in all respects. I look forward to Julie Lomoe’s next work of art.

                                                            Fay Rownell, author of Death Straight Up

 MOOD SWING: THE BIPOLAR MURDERS

 

Mood Swing is a Marvelous Mystery!

I began this novel with trepidation – like many others, I’m a little in awe, a little uncomfortable with people with “mood swings.” But as I read this terrific novel and got to know the myriad characters, my own mood swung a good ninety degrees – all earlier perceptions altered. This writer is a true professional, a bright, fun-loving, compassionate human being. I admire the high quality of the writing, the in-depth characterizations (often delightfully quirky); the fascinating setting (I love the details of the Manhattan Lower East Side); the realistic dialogue, the plot – all of it brilliant. I found myself going back to reread sections, to laugh (the author has a great sense of humor), to despair when the gifted WellSpringers die, to rage when the adversaries exploit Erika, the savvy but frustrated director. This is what a mystery should be: unraveling like a colorful tapestry until it is all in pieces – and in the end, put back together with love and with craft.

                                        Nancy Means Wright, author of the Ruth Willmarth series

Mood Swings to Murder

Julie Lomoe’s Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders is an excellent read, a well written and exciting page turner. . . it took me into a world I know little about, people with mental health problems and how they cope with extraordinary character. Yet it did not sentimentalize these problems, which were clearly secondary to the plot. Lomoe knows the streets and the squats of a big city and the menacing characters that may wear Mafia black or Wall Street Armani. . . Lomoe’s main character, Erika, is believable as a savvy and smart denizen of the city who also has her vulnerable side. She may be Scandinavian, but she’s no ice princess.

                                        M.E. Kemp, author of Death of a Bawdy Belle

Rereading these quotes and typing them into this post did wonders for my self-esteem, and I hope they tempt you to buy my books. You can read the first chapters of both right here on this blog. To bypass the giants and support small business, you can order directly from my publisher, Virtualbookworm. You can also order online from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, place an order at your local (and hopefully independent) bookstore, or ask your library to order copies of both books.

Thanks again to Maryann Miller for hosting me on November 10^th. My Blog Book Tour ran from November 9^th through November 20^th, and I encourage you to visit the excellent sites that hosted me. You can find the links by checking my own posts during that time period. I’m still planning to post a summary of what I learned on the tour, with links to all the authors, but frankly, I needed a week off! I’ll get it up here this week, after tomorrow’s trip to New York City. I’m treating myself to a day at the Guggenheim, visiting my old haunts in SoHo, then going to the MWA New York Chapter’s holiday shindig at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park South.

True confession time: I’m a POD person, I’m out and I’m proud!

Early in this blog’s brief history, I posted about my bipolar diagnosis, saying I’m out and I’m proud. Today’s post is about an aspect of my identity with perhaps even more stigma attached – I’ve published my two mysteries POD, or print-on-demand, rather than with a traditional publisher. A discussion on Murder Must Advertise got me riled up this morning, and I realized I hadn’t come clean how my books made it into print. It’s high time to change that.

My history in a nutshell: I began writing fiction in the 1980’s, inspired by my work as an art therapist at Hudson River Psychiatric Center in Poughkeepsie. After years as a free-spirited painter in New York’s SoHo, I found the institutional atmosphere overwhelming, but I was fascinated by the patients I worked with. The experience inspired my first mystery novel, and I produced a second as well. I managed to land a New York City agent, Kay Kidde of Kidde, Hoyt & Picard, but she didn’t sell my books. I stashed them in a drawer and forgot about fiction.

In the 1990’s I left the mental hospital and founded ElderSource, Inc., a Licensed Home Care Services Agency. The business did well, but it pushed me over the edge – it was while running ElderSource that I was first diagnosed bipolar. My husband and I sold the agency and moved further upstate to the Capital Region, where I did a year’s stint as Assistant Director at a psychiatric social club. They fired me the morning after I disclosed to one of the club’s consumers that like her, I had a bipolar diagnosis. Once again I turned to fiction as therapy: the experience inspired Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders.

While attempting unsuccessfully to find an agent for Mood Swing, I wrote Eldercide. Perhaps mental illness was too specialized a topic, I thought, and I hoped for more success with the novel that drew on my home care experience. No such luck: the rejections continued. Approximately 18 rejections for each book – not many at all, but enough to throw me into a profound clinical depression. Once again I nearly gave up, until some writer friends convinced me to try print-on-demand publishing. I did due-diligence online research on POD companies and settled on Virtual Bookworm, a company in Texas that received consistently good reviews. Within two months of my decision, I had a published book in my hands. I had a major say in the design and layout, and I did my own cover illustration. Lo and behold, my depression lifted, and it hasn’t come back since.

Do I still want a big-time agent and publisher? Yes, that would be great, but my life no longer depends on it. And I plan to acquire them on my terms, when and if I choose. In the meantime, the people buying my books don’t care who the publisher is. Bookstores and libraries carry them when I do the necessary outreach, and they’re available worldwide through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. At my high school reunion last month in Milwaukee, I learned the school had purchased both books for their collection of alumni writers. And a fellow alumna from Norway, an exchange student back in the day, had bought them both as well.

Do I recommend POD publishing to other aspiring authors? Absolutely. I’ve got a lot more to say about it, so check back on Monday, when I’ll post a Q&A dialogue with myself about print-on-demand. If you have questions you’d like answered, leave them as comments, and perhaps I’ll answer them in my post. In the meantime, have a great weekend!

You can read the first chapters of both my mysteries by clicking on the tabs above or the pages on the right. If you like what you read, I encourage you to buy them! This fall I’ll be reissuing Eldercide with a new cover and a new title, Evening Falls Early. When I do, I plan to add a couple of pages with brief blurbs from other authors. These will include the authors’ own titles and/or websites, so it’s an ideal place to draw attention to your own work. Space is limited, though. I’ve already got some good quotes, and I can’t promise to include everybody, so act fast if you’re interested!

See The Soloist with Jamie Foxx as a schizophrenic cellist

The Night Cafe by Van Gogh, 1988

Today I saw The Soloist, featuring Jamie Foxx as a homeless man with schizophrenia who had been a gifted cellist and a student at Juilliard, and Robert Downey Jr. as a burned-out reporter for the Los Angeles Times. The film is based on a true story that became a book by the reporter, Steve Lopez. It’s another Oscar-worthy performance by Jamie Foxx, whom I loved as Ray Charles, and Downey is great as usual, although he’s playing to type as a dissolute, world-weary guy.

Most importantly, the film is a graphic depiction of the harsh realities of schizophrenia. As someone who worked in a psychiatric hospital for 12 years as an art therapist, my primary question was why on earth they didn’t manage to get the poor guy onto some effective meds! They can make life a lot better, and they don’t necessarily destroy creativity – I should know, I’ve been on a modest regimen of low-dose medications for years now for my bipolar disorder.

See the film before it disappears. For those in the Capital District, it’s at the Spectrum through Thursday.

Van Gogh painted The Night Cafe in 1888, two years before his death. He frequented this cafe and described it as a place one might easily go mad. He sold only one painting during his lifetime, but of course his paintings now sell in the multi-millions. This one is in the collection of Yale University, and to me, it vividly portrays the kind of claustrophobic, angst-ridden mood experienced by Jamie Foxx’s character, Nathaniel Ayers.

Thanks to the positive reaction to the Grant Wood painting yesterday, I’ve decided to try including some art with each of my posts. For me, it’s a way of getting in touch with my other persona, the visual artist.

Final exam anxiety, the B.A.D. gang, and Erika’s bipolar revelation

Have you ever had one of those “examination dreams” – the kind where you have to take a final exam in college and you’re woefully unprepared? In my dreams, sometimes I didn’t study at all. Other times it’s the wrong course, or it’s the right course but I hadn’t realized I was enrolled in it, so I’d never come to class or done any of the assignments.

Today feels like one of those dreams. Tomorrow’s the day my blog will be critiqued by the other members of the current Blog Book Tours class. In May, we participated in the Blog-A-Day challenge; hence the B.A.D. moniker. Rationally, I know there’s nothing to fear. We’ve already critiqued other members’ blogs, and the group has been uniformly kind and considerate. No one’s trashed anyone else’s site. No one’s said, “You’re a horrible writer; you might as well give up right now,” or “Yours is the ugliest blog I’ve ever seen.” (Of course, no one’s deserved comments like that, either.) It’s all about constructive critiquing and suggestions to help us improve our blogs.

Yes, I know all that. Even so, I’m planning to spend the day tweaking my site, with time out for a little gardening and a trip to the Y for Nia and weight-lifting. I know what’s good, what needs improvement. I won’t be more specific here, because I don’t want to influence my critics in advance. But this feels like putting the final touches on a term paper – proofreading it one more time, making sure the bibliography and footnotes are all in order. (Aside to folks of a certain age: how did we ever manage all this before the age of computers?)

Then there's the lingering anxiety about yesterday's post, wherein I proclaimed my bipolar diagnosis. So far, I've received a couple of positive comments, but nothing major. In fact, I'm reminded of  the scene in Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders where Erika comes out of the closet. Following a memorial service for a member of WellSpring who died mysteriously, Erika is confronted by a TV newswoman:

     Ariana’s dance segued into a final chant. As she extinguished the candles to signify the close of the service, I rose and moved quietly through the garden and out the wrought iron gates to confront the camera crews.

      Nancy Welcome was waiting front and center, wearing a suit of tangerine wool that showed an extravagant length of leg and looked far too warm for the season. Beads of sweat shone through her makeup, and she was dabbing at her forehead with a tissue. “Ready when you are, Erika,” she said. “But let’s get Stan Washington, the guy I interviewed before. He was great on camera. Maybe some of the other club members too.”

     “Unfortunately, that’s not such a good idea. People’s attendance at the club is strictly confidential. Because of the stigma attached to mental illness – ”

     “Hold it right there, Erika. That’s a good angle, but I’d like to get it on tape before we talk any more. It’ll sound fresher that way.”

     She signaled the cameraman, who aimed his lens at me and began filming. Nancy walked casually into the frame. “I’m speaking with Erika Norgren, Director of the WellSpring Club. The memorial service for Stephen Wright has just ended. Behind us, people are leaving, including many members of WellSpring, the social club for mentally ill adults. Ms. Norgren has requested that we not show these folks on camera. Why is that, Erika?”

     “People’s attendance at the club is strictly confidential, Nancy. Some members hold jobs, and they may not have told their employers about their illness, for fear of repercussions. Even if they’re upfront about their own illness, their family and friends may be embarrassed and not want it discussed.”

     “So there’s a lot of secrecy involved with WellSpring Club, how it’s run and who comes here,” Nancy stated.

     “Unfortunately, some secrecy is necessary,” I replied. “But that’s because in our society there’s still a strong stigma associated with mental illness. For that to change, we need more honesty and open communication about the subject.” I took a deep breath, then a totally unpremeditated leap off the high dive. “For example, I’ve been the Director of WellSpring Club for almost six months, yet no one at the club knows that I’m officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It’s well controlled with medication, and not even my boss knows about it. I guess she’ll find out on the news tonight.”

     Her eyes took on a predatory gleam. “That’s very interesting, Erika. I appreciate your sharing it with News Channel 8. Any reason you decided to go public about your illness at this particular time?”

     “I’m an honest, upfront person in general, and I’ve been feeling more and more hypocritical about keeping this important part of myself under wraps, especially since I became Director of WellSpring Club and began working alongside a lot of wonderful people who face their illness bravely and openly every day. So I’m hereby making it official – I’m one of the crazies, and proud of it.”

     Closing ranks on either side of me, Stan and Gloria began to cheer and clap. Still filming, the cameraman pulled back for a long shot as other members arrived to check out the commotion.

     “I never knew coming out of the closet would be so exciting,” I said. Then everything turned soft and swimmy, and my knees went suddenly weak. But the sensation passed in short order. I didn’t fall swooning to the ground in the wake of my revelation. No fireworks exploded, no comets streaked across the sky. The handful of club members who had gathered around gave me a round of applause and a couple of thumbs up, but that was it. At last I had made the public confession I’d dreaded for so long, and nothing had changed at all. Not yet, anyway.

From Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders, Copyright 2006 by Julie Lomoe

 

I’m bipolar, I’m out, and I’m proud

Typing the title above, I feel a twinge of terror and the proverbial butterflies in my stomach. Should I really write this post and go so blatantly public with my diagnosis of bipolar disorder? I believe there’s no choice, not if I want to keep it real. So here goes . . .

I earned my official diagnosis just 15 years ago. I was running ElderSource, Inc., the Licensed Home Care Services Agency I’d founded in 1990. We provided round-the-clock live-in care for a dozen or more clients, and the stress level was off the charts. Talk therapy wasn’t helping, so my therapist prescribed Zoloft for my anxiety and depression.

Within a few weeks I felt great – confident, energetic, creative. A little too great, as it turned out, because a few weeks after that, my mood escalated into an acute manic episode. A fascinating experience, and I’ll blog about it soon, but today I want to focus on the questions of disclosure and stigma.

The shrink started me on lithium, and soon I was stable enough to return to managing the agency. But the burn-out didn’t go away. We were making money, but I knew that if I continued, ElderSource would quite literally be the death of me. So we transferred our case load and closed our doors on Halloween in 1998.

After a year of hunkering down and licking my wounds, I got a job as Assistant Director at a psychiatric social club run by a not-for-profit agency in the Capital Region of New York. I didn’t disclose my diagnosis when they interviewed and hired me. Things seemed to be going swimmingly until about nine months later. During an afternoon art group with a handful of clients, a woman was discussing her problems with bipolar disorder, and I told her I understood because I shared her diagnosis – I too was bipolar.

Back home at 5:30, the phone rang. It was my boss, asking me to report to Human Resources the next morning at 9:00. There I learned the client had gone to another staff person, a man I supervised who hated my guts, saying “Guess what, Julie told us she’s bipolar.” He in turn had gone to my boss. I was fired next morning without warning. Of course it had nothing to do with my bipolar disclosure, they said; there had been problems with my job performance all along. (Admittedly there were problems – with my M.A. in Art Therapy from NYU and my two decades of experience, I wasn’t on the same wavelength with the staff, most of whom had little or no formal training in working with the mentally ill. A couple of years later, the club was shut down.)

I tried to appeal, consulted lawyers, but they told me my case would be difficult to prove, and I wasn’t ready to put myself through all that pain. So what did I do? Inspired by the setting and the clients I’d just left, I hunkered down and wrote Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders. The heroine, Erika Norgren, runs a psychiatric social club in New York City’s East Village. And when she proclaims her bipolar diagnosis – on the evening TV news, no less – no one dares fire her. Naturally, she goes on to solve a string of murders.

Since Mood Swing was published, I’ve been upfront about my diagnosis at local panels and signings and in one-to-one conversations, and the response has been overwhelming. Many people have said “I don’t usually tell anyone this,” and proceeded to confide in me about their own diagnosis, or that of a family member or friend.

The bio in my book doesn’t mention my bipolar diagnosis, and this is the first time I’ve written about it online. I’ve worried that potential agents or publishers might be put off by the diagnosis. But if that’s the case, I probably wouldn’t want to work with them anyway. Staying in the closet feels dishonest, especially when so many people still suffer from the stigma of mental illness.

So I’ll say it again – I’m bipolar, I’m out and I’m proud.