Lisa Alber's Blog

[image error]I’m excited about launching my third novel, PATH INTO DARKNESS. I loved writing this novel. The idea for it had been simmering for awhile, and while writing it, I delved deep into some dark psychological territory. (Which I love, don’t get me wrong.) The story centers around a man named Nathan Tate, who is slowly losing his mind. Since I write a series, we also continue Detective Sergeant Danny Ahern’s life too as he gets caught up in Nathan’s story, tries to solve a murder, and deals with an ongoing family crisis.

I loved writing this book, and I’m so happy I get the chance to share it with you.

Here’s the description from the Amazon book page my publisher set up:

By the author of Whispers in the Mist, heralded by Library Journal as “a first-rate crime novel,” comes this haunting tale of family secrets, madness, and healing in small-town Ireland

Lisfenora is known across the British Isles for its yearly matchmaking festival. But a local man’s murder and the grim discovery in his home have cast a somber mood over the town. Detective Sergeant Danny Ahern tries to make sense of the chaotic scene while struggling to set aside moral conflicts and grief for his comatose wife. Within days, he’s plunged into even darker terrain when the investigation leads him on a collision course with the Tate family: troubled Nathan, who conceals secrets within ghastly secrets, and beautiful Zoe, the daughter Nathan abandoned years ago.

In this “dark, compelling mystery” (Booklist), one man is propelled toward a tragic downfall while the other struggles to walk the narrow path between life and death.

***

[image error]Tomorrow, please join me for a Facebook book launch party with fellow mysteristas Susan Spann and Kerry Schafer. If you don’t know, this is a party held on an event page. A virtual party, if you will. We’ll be posting and conversing and doing giveaways. Please join us!

Facebook book launch party.

Tuesday, August 7th

5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time

On this page –>http://bit.ly/2ui3eTn

I blog on a couple of group sites, so I neglect this blog. But my third novel is coming out in three weeks, and I’m excited about it! If you like dark crime fiction, please check it out. I’ve provided some information about the book below.

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Path Into Darkness
by Lisa Alber

Giveaway ends July 26, 2017.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/widget/245828

From the flap copy:

By the author of Whispers in the Mist, heralded by Library Journal as “a first-rate crime novel,” comes this haunting tale of family secrets, madness, and healing in small-town Ireland

Lisfenora is known across the British Isles for its yearly matchmaking festival. But a local man’s murder and the grim discovery in his home have cast a somber mood over the town. Detective Sergeant Danny Ahern tries to make sense of the chaotic scene while struggling to set aside moral conflicts and grief for his comatose wife. Within days, he’s plunged into even darker terrain when the investigation leads him on a collision course with the Tate family: troubled Nathan, who conceals secrets within ghastly secrets, and beautiful Zoe, the daughter Nathan abandoned years ago.

In this “dark, compelling mystery” (Booklist), one man is propelled toward a tragic downfall while the other struggles to walk the narrow path between life and death.

Praise:

 “An atmospheric story of Ireland, filled with myth and darkness. . . Fans of Erin Hart’s dark Irish crime novels should welcome this series.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“A dark, compelling mystery with numerous plot twists and well-drawn characters interwoven with an involving portrait of life in a small insular Irish village.”—Booklist

“A haunting tale rife with gruesome murders and secrets, Path into Darkness shines.”
—Foreword Reviews

“Lyrical, tense, and haunting . . . the story propels the reader to a conclusion that is heartbreaking, human, and hopeful.”—Deborah Crombie, New York Times bestselling author of Garden of Lamentations

“Each strand in this terrific novel is absorbing enough to carry books on its own, yet Alber effortlessly weaves them into a breathtaking ensemble.”—Catriona McPherson, Agatha Award–winning author of Quiet Neighbors

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! I’m thankful for my friends, family — and you, my readers. Thank you so much for sharing and passing the word about my novels, for leaving reviews, for contacting me with your thoughts, for your support — for being people who read! I love know ing you’re out there. You’re my peeps, for sure. I was a reader long before I was a writer.

As I write this — literally, this word “this” — I’m in the midst of preparing my specialty winter squash galette for Thanksgiving dinner. I consider the first half of today a regular writing day, so here’s what my schedule looks like:

7:30 a.m. Roll out of bed.

8:00 a.m. Coffee in hand, pets fed and my dog pee’d, de-seed delicata and butternut squash, cut them into manageable chunks, and put into the oven to roast.

Write, write, write — I’m working on edits for PATH INTO DARKNESS, which comes out in August 2017. Overhauling a scene near the beginning.

~9:00 a.m. Squash out of oven to cool, get more coffee.

Write, write, write

~10:00 a.m. De-skin the squash, a rather messy and laborious process. I’m about half-done as you see in the photo. (Taking a little blog break–an addition to my schedule today, but that’s OK.)

Write, write, write

Around noon. Shower so my hair has time to dry before I leave the house. In case you don’t know, I have curly hair–it’s best left to air dry with a little curly-hair de-frizzer product in it.

~12:30 p.m. Put together the galette. With the squash goes gorgonzola, walnuts, rosemary and butter. I use pizza dough for the galette. Roll it out, put the mixture on it, fold corners up, and bake!

Write, write, write

Galette(s) out of the oven, finish getting dressed, and out the door by ~2:00 p.m. Don’t worry about cleaning up until tonight–or probably tomorrow.

Have fun for the rest of the day! Eat and drink a little too much, and don’t think about my writing.

This is a pretty good example of how we writers get our writing in. I’ll be forgoing anything to do with Black Friday tomorrow in favor of, yes, more writing! I’m hoping I have a few leftovers to eat, so maybe I won’t even have to leave the house!

What are your special Thanksgiving traditions? For those who don’t live in the U.S. what do you do on your country’s equivalent holiday?

 

Earlier this month I caught a tweet from Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of “Hamilton.” It said:

Good morning. Do NOT get stuck in the ‘comments section’ of life today. Make, do, create the things. Let others tussle it out. Vamos!

I’ve been thinking about his words because since the first presidential debate, I’ve been living too much in the comments of life, letting others’ commentaries, diatribes, fallacious assertions, and appeals drown out my already fragile internal voice.

And I wonder why I’ve been feeling depression’s caul settle over me.

I’ve found myself sinking deep into the comments sections of Facebook posts. Then I Google articles, of which there are many, too many — and I’ve found myself wallowing in their comments sections.

And I wonder why I haven’t progressed on my next novel.

As we all know, the social media otherworld can be a total time-suck, a sinkhole of trashed dreams, an abyss of the wasted. Useless. Ridiculous. Mind-numbing. Soul-zapping. Creativity destroying.

I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself. I’m obsessed by this election as I’ve never been before.

And I wonder why my anxiety is a free-floating cloud I can’t seem to swat away.

This has been a helluva election cycle, and I can’t wait for November 9th. Meanwhile, I remember Miranda’s comment. Yep. Out of the comment sections–all those voices aren’t the voices that are going to help me make, do, create.

Last night, I came upon this reading by Benedict Cumberbatch that echoed Miranda’s words. Seemed like a sign.

Key word: DO

I recently participated in a group post with four other mystery writers, in which we talked about how we get and stay organized. (Read the post here.) I felt like a fraud because I rarely “get” organized, and I’ve never in this life of mine stayed organized for long. It doesn’t matter what kind of organizational system I attempt: Day-Timers, calendars, iPhones.

Thanks to my pal, Cindy Brown, I discovered a fantastic method for the organizationally challenged: Personal Kanban. If you like Post It notes, this is the method for you! (Here’s an overview.) I just started using the system, and it seems OK. I mean, it’s pretty, that’s for sure, and it satisfies my irrational need to jot things down willy-nilly on colorful bits of paper. Slap them on the wall — voilá — I’m organized!

The secret is to actually refer back to my wall. Hopefully I’ll get the hang of it. It’s not like I don’t pass by this area in my kitchen twenty times a day.

We’ll see how long it lasts. I’ll probably use this method along with my tried-and-true thumb-pad method for to-do reminders on the fly.

I’m not a hugely public person. In fact, I tend toward being a loner. I form deep and abiding relationships, but I don’t spread my socializing seed all over the place. I’m a friendly and well-socialized introvert, which is to say, when I’m at a party or a conference, I have a blast, but then I need recuperation time afterwards. You might not guess how much I crave my solitude and downtime when life gets too crazy. You might not see me for awhile, but I’m around and still your friend, and if you call needing help, I’ll be there.

My second novel, Whispers in the Mist (yay!) launches three weeks from today, and I’m starting to gear up for the more public side of the authorial life. This is the part that gets my anxiety cranking, because although I’m a well-socialized introvert, I am not — no way, no how, not in a million years — a public speaker. Yee gads, hell NO. That’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax, and I’ve been practically phobic my whole life.

However, when I chose to pursue fiction, I understood that if I should be lucky enough to get novels published, I’d have to face my fear of public speaking too. Life is a yin, and life is a yang, right?

The launch events around my debut Kilmoon just about killed me. I was a basket case. Now, a few years later, I’ve noticed that although I still need to gear up my psyche, I seem to be handling the public side better.

Practice does indeed make perfect–or at least, less phobic. In the land of therapy, this is called “exposure therapy.” Basically: facing your fears. Low and behold, it works.

I’ll probably always be a person who needs plenty of mental space before any public event so that I can prepare myself. I’ll probably always feel uncomfortable with winging it. But, yeesh, I’m so much better than I used to be.

In fact, this past weekend I participated in a panel discussion about “sense of place.” I thought the four of us authors would be sitting protected behind a table. The second I saw the lectern, my heart flipped and pressure started to build in my chest. Yeeks.

But okay, I could handle it. No biggie — until I realized that I’d misunderstood the concept around this panel. It was more of a reading with a QandA afterwards. Because of my phobic tendencies, I’d pre-prepared some things to say about the concept of place in novels, with reading snippets from Whispers in the Mist as examples. Oy!

What could I do? I had to get up there, and I wasn’t prepared to read a whole chapter. I hadn’t practiced that, so therefore: no. So, I copped to my misunderstanding, and then shared my thoughts about sense of place. It turned out fine, just fine. Fun even.

And afterwards, a member of the audience called me “wise.” I’ll take that!

I’ve learned two important things that have helped me tremendously when it comes to public speaking:

The audience is rooting for us. They want us to succeed and are very forgiving, and I think they enjoy us the most when we’re simply being ourselves.
Copping to misunderstandings or your nervousness or whatever it is, is a-okay. Better to just be honest and move on. Joking around a little bit about whatever it is, is great too. It’s just about being real, I think.

Are you scared of public speaking? What do you do to lessen your nerves?

I’m not a hugely public person. In fact, I tend toward being a loner. I form deep and abiding relationships, but I don’t spread my socializing seed all over the place. I’m a friendly and well-socialized introvert, which is to say, when I’m at a party or a conference, I have a blast, but then I need recuperation time afterwards. You might not guess how much I crave my solitude and downtime when life gets too crazy. You might not see me for awhile, but I’m around and still your friend, and if you call needing help, I’ll be there.

(Sidenote: Introversion does *not* equal shyness, timidity, insecurity, lack of self-confidence, etcetera.)

My second novel, Whispers in the Mist (yay!) launches three weeks from today, and I’m starting to gear up for the more public side of the authorial life. This is the part that gets my anxiety cranking, because although I’m a well-socialized introvert, I am not — no way, no how, not in a million years — a public speaker. Yee gads, hell NO. That’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax, and I’ve been practically phobic my whole life.

However, when I chose to pursue fiction, I understood that if I should be lucky enough to get novels published, I’d have to face my fear of public speaking too. Life is a yin, and life is a yang, right?

The launch events around my debut Kilmoon just about killed me. I was a basket case. Now, a few years later, I’ve noticed that although I still need to gear up my psyche, I seem to be handling the public side better.

Practice does indeed make perfect–or at least, less phobic. In the land of therapy, this is called “exposure therapy.” Basically: facing your fears. Low and behold, it works.

I’ll probably always be a person who needs plenty of mental space before any public event so that I can prepare myself. I’ll probably always feel uncomfortable with winging it. But, yeesh, I’m so much better than I used to be.

In fact, this past weekend I participated in a panel discussion about “sense of place.” I thought the four of us authors would be sitting protected behind a table. The second I saw the lectern, my heart flipped and pressure started to build in my chest. Yeeks.

But okay, I could handle it. No biggie — until I realized that I’d misunderstood the concept around this panel. It was more of a reading with a QandA afterwards. Because of my phobic tendencies, I’d pre-prepared some things to say about the concept of place in novels, with reading snippets from Whispers in the Mist as examples. Oy!

What could I do? I had to get up there, and I wasn’t prepared to read a whole chapter. I hadn’t practiced that, so therefore: no. So, I copped to my misunderstanding, and then shared my thoughts about sense of place. It turned out fine, just fine. Fun even.

And afterwards, a member of the audience called me “wise.” I’ll take that!

I’ve learned two important things that have helped me tremendously when it comes to public speaking:

The audience is rooting for us. They want us to succeed and are very forgiving, and I think they enjoy us the most when we’re simply being ourselves.
Copping to misunderstandings or your nervousness or whatever it is, is a-okay. Better to just be honest and move on. Joking around a little bit about whatever it is, is great too. It’s just about being real, I think.

Are you scared of public speaking? What do you do to lessen your nerves?

 

 

I lost the past week to pain. On the Fourth of July my lower back started to ache, and by the next day I could barely move. Typical movements such as bending to pet my dog or lowering myself into my car seat had me gasping in agony.

And sitting at my computer–my job?–forgettaboutit. As a result, I sunk into a low place. Maybe I was feeling sorry for myself. In fact, I was, but I was also grieving for my body. A friend recently told me that her chiropractor said that twenty years of sitting for work causes trauma to the back. I thought about that, wondering if I’d forevermore be a chronic pain sufferer. How would I get everything done? How would I keep myself from getting depressed if I couldn’t write or garden or pet my little dog easily?

I suppose I’d cope. Like we do, especially as we get older and get hit with new challenges that cause us to suffer, whether it’s the challenge of living on our own fresh out of college, or weathering a stormy marriage and divorce, or raising a child with a disability, or dealing with mental illness, or experiencing the gradual breakdown of our bodies as we hit middle age. (Please, let’s not get into dementia and Alzheimer’s–I’d like to stick my head in the sand when it comes to that!)

In my down mood I got to thinking about humans as one of millions of species on this planet–the biggest-brained species, but still a life form that evolved out of the primordial ooze like every other life form. I got to thinking that we’ve divorced ourselves so much from nature that we don’t consider ourselves part of nature anymore. Like we’re beyond it, somehow.

And maybe that’s where science ultimately wants to take us: beyond nature. To the point where we don’t age, where we live forever (or can be brought back), where we’re beyond the rules of the birth, life, death cycle.

Meanwhile, here we are expecting life to be somehow easier and more fair for us as humans. Funny how that’s not the way it works, isn’t it? We’re not exempt from what seems to me to be nature’s natural cruelty. By cruelty, I mean its indifference. An alligator grabs a wildebeest in Africa, another alligator grabs a boy in Florida — that’s nature at work. It doesn’t care what species the prey is. It doesn’t care that famine and drought kill off thousands of humans in Africa as well as wildebeest and other species.

All the stuff we can’t control (even though we like to think we can) like the economy and disease is subject to nature’s cruelty too. We can’t control each other, we can’t even control our own minds most of the time. And so, things happen that cause us to suffer, to face challenges, to go into survival mode.

Through our lifetimes, we’ll have to survive many things–loneliness, disease, tornadoes, bankruptcies–doesn’t matter. No one said survival was easy. It’s certainly not for the poor wildebeest. Why would it be for us?

Ah well. It’s nuts that my back goes out, and I start thinking about all of this. That’s just me–the contemplative sort. As for my back, muscle relaxants, anti-inflammatories, and physical therapy, and I’ll be fine. But I have a feeling that my back will bother me sporadically from now on, reminding me that I’m not as in control as I think I am.

We take it for granted that we can control our lives. However, nature wouldn’t allow that, now would it?

However many years she lived, Mary always felt that she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow.

— Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

 

The other day I was talking to my writer buddy, A, about the usual thing: how behind I am on my work-in-progress (which is to say, County Clare mystery #3, soon to be titled by the publisher). I joked that with all the time spent in my garden since April, I could have had the novel completed, revised, and polished by now.

So what’s up with me and my garden? Yet another procrastination method or required for mental equilibrium?

I’ve owned my house for a year now, and much to my surprise I’ve become what I call “one of those crazy gardening ladies.” I suppose it’s better than being a crazy cat lady or a crazy-looking Botox lady, but still, I’m fascinated by this newly discovered side of myself. I hadn’t realized I would take to gardening to the extent of digging up bushes and transplanting established plants and sifting through the soil to dig out every, and I mean every, bluebell bulb I can find.

So what gives with that?

I (re-)realized as I was talking to A that I always need a project. You might think, But isn’t fiction your project?

No no, oh no — not any more, it isn’t. It’s my *work* now. A while back, writing fiction was my soul release, my labor of love. I pursued it just for me — writing is the way I connect and process — but once I started to get published, I was forced to think of it as a business. Which it is, definitely, and I don’t have a beef with that.

With the advent of fiction writing moving over to “the dark side,” I was left with a void. A project void. I no longer had a creative outlet that was just for me in the spirit of Elizabeth Bennett …

… I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.    —Pride and Prejudice

Over the years I’ve tried out all kinds of creative activities in addition to writing: photography, painting, guitar, piano, pottery, drama, cooking (which may surprise people who know me well), crocheting, knitting, decoupage(!), printmaking, scrapbooking, and more I can’t remember.

Ultimately, fiction (with photography on the side) stuck, but now I need something to replace fiction. Looks like it’s gardening! And I’m content with this, more than content, actually. Gardening seems to be doing my poor, beleaguered, neurotic mind some good.

There’s a meditative thing that happens where I don’t think I’m thinking at all. (I must be, but you know what I mean.)
I lose time, which is signal enough that I’ve been 100% living in the moment.
I’m outside and physical and getting dirty—a nice opposition to the cerebral, clean world in front of my laptop.
Unlike writing, I can immediately see the result of my work. Instant gratification. While writing I can see my word count, but I can’t tell if what I’ve written is good or not. Whereas, a de-weeded flower bed? That’s nothing but good.
The excitement of seeing perennials pop up, watching buds grow fatter until one day the rose or the lily or the peony  pops open. That’s just good for the soul.
And, I don’t know this for sure, but I suspect that mucking about in my garden enhances my creativity when I sit down to work.

So, I may joke with A about all the time “wasted” in the garden, but I know it’s time spent on what’s important rather than just on what’s urgent. Life needs to be more about the important than the urgent.

Do you have a just-for-you activity that ends up being therapeutic?

Acceptance of one’s life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices.
–Paul Tournier

Last week I experienced a quiet moment of epiphany. I’m one of those striving types who is always trying to improve myself. Like most people who are like this, I create my own suffering. When it comes to my fiction writing life, I’ve been looking toward the future, striving, itching, yearning for years. It’s rather tiring, to say the least.

We novelists don’t have control over whether we’ll ever earn enough money from our novels to quit our days jobs. All we can do is write the next novel. My second novel is coming out in August, with the third in 2017. This is great! You’d think I’d be flying high.

No, it doesn’t work that way, because it’s hard work and there are no guarantees. Not long ago, I found myself thinking, Whatever, I can’t do anything about this. People will either like my books–or not, whatever–and my publisher will either want to extend my contract for more books–or not, whatever.

It was a giant mental shrug. Sad me. But then something dawned on me: Was I feeling resigned or, for once in my life, accepting? I had to parse that one out because true acceptance is such a strange and, dare I say, novel feeling for me. Had I confused it with resignation–a kind of giving up–because the feeling was so unfamiliar?

I came to the conclusion that I might actually accept the ambiguity of the writing life for what it is. The big shrugging “whatever” feeling wasn’t so much resignation as the glimmers of acceptance. It’s a relief not to worry so much over what I can’t control.

My thought experiment around this felt very profound and unique and exceedingly wise. Then, when I went to the Internet to look up the definitions of “resignation” and “acceptance,” I discovered a boatload of articles around this topic. Hah! Seems it’s a pretty universal human conundrum (which actually relieved me).

Accepting reality in all its ambiguous, uncontrollable glory doesn’t mean giving up. I’ll do my work, meet my deadlines, do what I can do to the best of my ability, given my life circumstances. The creative process is a fraught thing–at least for me–and I accept that too. The moments of depression and self-doubt: I accept that too. What else can I do? There are no guaranteed outcomes, and I might as well throw expectations out the window (expectations = suffering, oh boy–that’s another discussion). But that’s not the same as resignation.

I associate resignation with a feeling of helplessness and acceptance with an objective assessment of reality–the facts of the matter. You can be resigned to a coming storm and get drenched, or you can accept a coming storm and pull out your umbrella.

There are a lot of woo-woo write-ups out there, but the ones I found that are based on psychology made the most sense to me. Check out this one.

Do you have any life circumstances that are hard to accept? What do you do when you start feeling helpless?