News from Heidi

I write in a Moleskine, plain paper, large notebook. I write my morning pages; I write lists; I write notes; I write first drafts of scenes and passages for novels, essays, and even blog posts I'm working on (like this one). I wrote a good deal of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky in my Moleskine and then would type it out on my computer.  For my big birthday last year, I got dozens of this awesome Moleskine as a gift! I love my Moleskine. I think it loves me.

I mentioned a few posts back the real books that are mentioned in The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, but I forgot a crucially important one: The Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Eastern and Central North America. It is a "bible" to the character Jamie. Here's a short excerpt about it:

Jamie thought Robbie was a bird flying down below his window. He had been waiting for this bird and ran downstairs without calling to his mother: “Going outside” which is what his mother had told him to say even if she didn’t hear him above the din of the television that played loudly in her room.
Jamie knew that his mother was not watching television. She had a new friend in there. Jamie knew the television as something that made sounds to keep the sound out. He was okay with that. The bird he had waited for had come. Of course, it didn’t have to be this one, but it was. There were any number of hundreds of birds that didn’t belong in the Chicago sky.

There were two windows in his apartment.  One faced the alley and the other the courtyard. Jamie never watched out the alley window. The bird-things that he’d see fly by were never birds, but garbage bags hurled out the window from higher floors. They sometimes struck the air-conditioning units below. Whump. Sometimes catching there, and rotting hot during the summer months.

Jamie who was really James was named after his father but not named Junior because he was really the third. Jamie wanted a strong name, like Steve or Brick. He had been Jamie since he was born even though there was no way to confuse him with his father, James, a man he had only met in dreams. Jamie wanted a name with a different history.

Jamie who was really James ran downstairs to find the bird, to identify it, to see it. He would remember what he saw; he would write it down; he would record the date on his life list, the name of another bird.

In his hands, Jamie held a book. It was the only gift he had ever asked for, but the book was not a gift. His birthday, July 23, came and went with no celebration and no cake and no gift book.

Jamie got the book from the library. When the metal detector went off, he laid on the table a pocket knife he had found in the pants draped across the bathtub, the pants of his mother’s new friend of two weeks ago.

“Young man,” the stout lady library security guard said, “you know you ain’t supposed to be carrying this kinda thing around.”

Jamie who was really James nodded. “I’m gonna keep this here until you come back round with your mama and she says it’s okay for you to have it.” His plan worked. He left behind the pocket knife, and left with the Peterson Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America.
 

I have mentioned this before on my personal blog, but I LOVE fountain pens. I have about two dozen of them now after years of collecting. Some are very every day, and some are numbered collectors' pens. My favorite to write with is my S.T. Dupont with an oblique nib with royal blue ink. Heaven. But what to do with the fountain pen on the road for the book tour? I'm worried that I'll lose it if I use it sign books. Can I install a tracking device on it? Ideas? (Note: This is NOT a photo of my pen. My pen is shy.)

I became kind of obsessed with Wonder Bread as a kid because I thought of it as the whitest thing you could find: Wonder Bread white. My character Rachel in The Girl Who Fell From the Sky deals with the same thing as she lives in the neighborhood of the Wonder Bread factory.. Wonder Bread was very different from the bread I knew and loved which was brown and thick. But then oooo, I tasted it and was torn. And ooo man, no one would make fun of me if my sandwich was Wonder Bread white. Wonder Bread love. Wonder Bread confusion. So of course, I have set out to find histories of Wonder Bread. Here's a really cool old commercial.

There are a good number of Danish words in The Girl Who Fell From the Sky. I just noticed that most of the words are food words. Below is a primer.  (And please note that pastry in Danish is not called a Danish!)

• franskbroed = white bread (nothing at all like Wonder Bread by the way).
• rugbroed = rye bread
• wienerbroed = pastry
• marzipan = marzipan
• stille = silent
• hellig = holy
• frikadeller = yummy meatball patty
• kys = kiss
• Jeg elsker dig. = I love you.

Stay tuned for the definition of the best word of all in the Danish language (and possibly any language) -- hygge!

Some of my characters use words in a colorful way. Here are some translations you might find useful when reading the book:

• lizard = a man, of a good sort, who has a job that is also of a good sort; said man may or may not be handsome.  (Photo by NeilsPhotographer via Flickr.)
• rooster = a man, similar to a lizard, but he "takes care of" his woman.  (Photo by kelpie1 via Flickr.)
• scarey = as in "Why you so scarey?" meaning why are you so afraid of everything even when there's nothing to be scared of.

This concludes today's vocabulary lesson.  Next up: Danish words.

I mentioned a few posts back that the character, Rachel, in The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, loves a book that is really Arnold Adoff's book, All the Colors of the Race. Here are some of the other important books within the book. See any similarities?

The Boston Herald reports today that The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is a Top 10 Book of 2010!

I love visiting museums that used to be the "home of" such and such great writer. And I love to see the writers' desks--I almost feel like I can get a shock of inspiration if I could sit where they sat. I sat at many desks in the making of this novel at several different writing retreats, at home and on vacation. I also wrote at the kitchen counter and in airport lounges--and wherever the muse struck which sometimes didn't feel like often. Here are some of the "desks" I worked at during the writing of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky. The one desk noticeably missing is the one I am typing at right now. But guys--I couldn't show a photo of it. There is so much stuff and paper on it--it's hard to see the desk at all!

American Antiquarian Society 2007

Shakespeare & Co., Paris, France  September 2007

Jentel Spring 2004

Here is one of the "lost passages" of the book. I can't remember when it got edited out because it could still have fit the story. Hmmm . . . "I don’t want to tell Lakeisha that Tracy is white because she will say what the other girls say when they see me hanging out with Tracy: White Girl. Not a white girl. White Girl with two capitals. That means that I think I’m cute. That I act white; and that I’m fast. Everyone knows white girls are fast. And I wonder if they know about Anthony Miller."