I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska. We moved there when I was ten. And as much as I hated it at the time, I grew to love it more. One of the reasons was all the incredible stories that I can tell for having lived there for a decade.

My favorite and the one that most people find bizarre is the Hair Popsicle story which believable or not, I may still use in one of my stories.

I lived at twenty-two and a quarter mile Chena Hot Springs road. The only place this road ran was the fifty miles from Fairbanks to Chena Hot Springs. There was a road that t-boned it and cut over toward North Pole (an actual town and home of the Santa Claus house where you could have letters from Santa sent to children with a real North Pole postmark). To get from where I lived to my high school was a twenty-five mile trip one way. The school bus was driven by a neighbor who lived a few miles further up the road at the end of the paved and populated part of Chena Hot Springs road. She would keep the bus at her place overnight, drive it the one way picking up kids and then not return it back out there until after school when she dropped us all off. There was a definite small town feel among all of us who lived in that fourteen mile stretch of Chena Hot Springs road.

Why all this background? To set the stage. The bus driver didn’t just leave if you were running a few minutes late because the winter weather in Alaska, which was most of the school year, didn’t really accommodate waiting on the road for the bus. It was cold. And dark. In order to get us to school in time we were catching the bus at something like 6am. Truth be told, in the heart of winter, it was mostly dark twenty-four hours a day. So, the bus driver would hit the end of my driveway and honk, wait for me to run up the drive which was almost a quarter mile long, and I’d catch the bus.

Life in Alaska is a little different from anywhere else I’ve lived, and I’ve lived in eleven states. Alaska is unique.

More setting – stay with me. Because we lived in Alaska and Alaska gets cold, our school didn’t officially close down until the temperatures hit sixty below zero. Mind you, back in the Portland area of Oregon, where I used to live, if it snowed two inches, everything shut down. In Alaska, “home of the individual and other endangered species”, school and everything else went on until it hit -60°F and forget how much snow there was because we would still have four feet on the ground in April. Also, keep in mind that freezing is at 32°F. Sixty below is a full ninety degrees colder than freezing. At -50°F it was optional to go to school and the parent’s decision. I have been to school when it is optional.

This one winter, we had a long spell of cold that was in the -40°F range. This is where you can hardly breathe for the cold air hitting your lungs. I was running late that fateful morning and by the time I got out of the shower I had minutes to get dressed. I heard the bus honking as I was combing my long straight hair that was still almost dripping wet. I pulled on my boots, grabbed my coat and ran. No hat, no gloves. I didn’t even do up my coat. I just ran because I couldn’t miss the bus. Halfway down my long drive way, my hand came up and hit my hair.

You know how long hair, when wet, hangs in icicle like clumps? Yeah, that was my hair. And it had frozen in the few minutes it took to get halfway down my drive way. And frozen stuff that is hit, breaks. Yep, I broke my hair. Cursing, I grabbed the frozen hair Popsicle from the snow and ran on.

Once on the bus, I was able to truly assess the situation. I was holding an icicle of hair about an inch in diameter at the widest part and about eight inches long. It had snapped off straight, right below my ear. As my hair thawed on the ride to school, I realized how bad it was. Do try to imagine it if you can. All day at school I got teased and then had to get a horrible shag haircut to minimize the damage done.

Needless to say, I was more careful in the future, and I got a cool (get it… cool… lol) story out of it. Can’t wait to hear more tales that are stranger than fiction.

Stranger Than Fiction

September 1, 2014

Nancy

We’ve all heard the phrase that “life is stranger than fiction” but what does that really mean? For me, it means that sometimes real life happens in such a way that if I were to use the event verbatim in a fiction story my readers would cry “implausible.” Think about that for a second. Readers accept vampires, zombie detective, purple unicorns, space ships, entire West Virginia towns going back in time to create an alternate universe, (speaking of which) alternate universes, evil twins, a series of coincidences that add up to a twist ending,,, and the list could go on forever.

So, how bizarre does an event have to be before it’s “stranger than fiction?”

Do the events have to be so coincidental that the odds of the event happening are astronomical? Does the main character have to be dumber than a fence post not to see the results of her actions? For me, I think the situation has to be so divorced from what we consider “normal” that we sit back and say, “no. No one (Nothing) could be that….” Judge for yourself though as we spend September exploring events that are “Stranger Than Fiction.”

Let me start.

Most of the things I’ve seen or heard as a lawyer I can’t repeat. Sometimes though it’s the other side’s client who does the unbelievable thing. When that’s the case there’s nothing that prevents disclosure. Still, I’ve changed names and occupation.

HOW TO BE YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY

A husband and wife started an interior decorating business. Mary was responsible for getting and performing the work. John took care of the back office tasks – staffing, bookkeeping, banking, billing and the like. Years into the business they were doing well on a professional front (millions of dollars in gross revenue) but not so much on the personal one. Suspicion and distrust ran deep. A little deeper on one side than the other. Eventually, Mary accused John of embezzling. Mary hired an attorney (not me) to file for divorce and seek a court appointed receiver for the business. John hired an attorney (again, not me) to counter-sue for divorce and defend the theft allegations.

Mary alleged John would go to the bank every Friday with pizza for the bank tellers. In return, the bank tellers of a national bank would cash checks for John, andl hand him bundles of cash. The tellers would then create a false bank statements that wouldn’t show the deposit (if the check had come from a company client) or the withdraw (if the check being cashed were a company one). John believed that every gap in the checks sequence on the bank statements represented a check Mary used wrongfully withdraw the money from the company. She thought John stole millions of dollars this way. After all the company had margins of 60% so where was the money? Mary’s definition of “margin” didn’t include most of the company’s salaries or overhead. Mary also thought John was stealing her paychecks.

The receiver (yup, this is where I come in) obtained copies of all the bank statements from the national bank (not the branch John was allegedly feeding) and payments from the company’s client. Like most businesses some of the jobs from a gross profit number were very profitable and others were dead losers. Once you took out the operating cost including a HUGE monthly payment for their house the company ran deeply in the red. There was no proof of a national conspiracy. The checks…checked out. And those paychecks? They were deposited into a joint bank account. From the company’s standpoint there was no misappropriation of funds.

We met with Mary’s attorney for hours to explain the situation. Mary fired the attorney when she agreed with the Receiver. Mary hired another attorney to pursue the claim. He lasted as long as her retainer did. No amount of reason could shake Mary’s belief that John had robbed her blind. She accused the Receiver of being paid off by John (NOT) when the Receiver wouldn’t support her theories.

Mary threatened to report that the tax returns were false to the appropriate authorities when the Receiver wouldn’t amend the returns to show the “missing” income. We said she needed to do what she needed to do but we didn’t have any evidence to support her position. While there were substantial tax debt owed the various agencies had been mostly silent on collection since no one had any money. Ultimately, Mary called the governmental entity designed to ensure that people paid their taxes to report that John had under-reported the company’s income for years. She didn’t think about the fact that she was listed as a 51% co-owner or that she would be deemed to have received 51% of the “stolen” money as a result.

Well, the taxing agencies were no longer willing to wait to see if the Receiver collected enough money to pay them. After all, Mary just advised them that the couple had vastly under-reported their income for years. So, now Mary has some tax issues to deal with. And she still insists that John stole millions of dollars.

Write On

August 29, 2014

Frank Morin

Author's Perspective Frank Morin Motivation Reflection Self-Awareness The Writing Life No Comments

Have you ever heard anyone say, “Wouldn’t it be great to go back in time to high school and re-live those days knowing what we know now?”

I’ve always thought, “No way!”

If I could take my hard-won experience back in time, it wouldn’t be to high school. Maybe to college. At least then I’d be an adult and I could apply that knowledge to something useful. High school was a pretty crazy time. I didn’t know who I was yet, and no one around me knew who they were either. Getting stuck there with the wisdom and experience of an adult would probably drive me nuts.

There are no shortcuts to wisdom, and that’s probably a good thing.

One ancient proverb says:

Wisdom is knowing when not to do something stupid.

Wisdom is gained through experience after doing something stupid.

We can’t go back in time, but enough wisdom has been shared this month to prevent us from wasting a whole lot more time than we might have to if we all had to learn it all the hard way. I’d like to thank everyone who participated this month. Writing is a long-term commitment and the journey is rarely a simple cruise with smooth sailing. Then again, it’s from those struggles of life that we glimpse the greatest truths and learn the hard-won lessons that really matter. Hopefully now we understand a little better how to pick our battles.

Thanks to the excellent guest bloggers this month. Mark Leslie, Bobbi Schemerhorn, Lisa Mangum, Brian Herbert, and Peter Wacks.

At the beginning of the month, I suggested we’d hear some great advice, and this month’s posts exceeded my expectations. I hope you enjoyed the outpouring of hard-won wisdom and can apply some of it to your life and/or your writing.

Write on.

Notes to My Younger Self

August 28, 2014

fictorians

Guest Posts Reflection Self-Awareness Starting a Career The Writing Life 1 Comment

A guest post by Mark Leslie.

For almost as far back as I can remember I knew that I wanted to be a writer. One of the most prevalent memories was the summer that I spent down in the basement hammering out a Dungeons & Dragons inspired fantasy adventure novel. There I was, thirteen years old and hunkered down with my notes, my hand-written first draft, my research material and the typewriter, working hard at typing the revised draft of what I felt was an epic that the world was eagerly awaiting: The Story of Aaron Boc. The rise and fall of a noble barbarian whose name would ever be hailed in the history books of my fictitious universe.

My friends were out on their bikes, hanging out at the beach or playing football or baseball to pass away those two precious summer months that seemed so fleeting to a child. And I remember, clearly, feeling the angst of not being with them, not participating in the social activities that I really wanted, because, to me, finishing that novel was something I wanted even more.

So it seems that, even at that young age, I knew in order to be a writer, you had to actually write. And that meant making time for writing, which often involved sacrificing other activities that you might be doing at that same time. I later found a quote from Hugh Prather from his book Notes to Myself that reads: “If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire is not to write.

So, no, I wouldn’t go back to ensure that my younger self knew the importance of carving time, ideally every day, in order to write, and that would mean lots of sacrifice.

I might be tempted to ensure that the thirteen year old Mark knew that it was okay to suck in the first draft; that you could always revise and improve upon mistakes from the first draft when you wrote the second one. But it appears that the thirteen year old Mark who hand-wrote the first draft before typing in the revision had already begun to appreciate that concept.

But when I look at this young and eager writer, I do find something that I believe I can share with him after three decades of experience as a writer who has come to embrace both traditional publishing and self-publishing.

I think I might tell him that, despite his deepest inner belief and the thrill coursing through his heart, that the world isn’t waiting to read his stuff.

Yeah, I know, it seems cruel to tell him that, but that statement would immediately be followed by the fact that while the world isn’t just waiting, breathlessly, for his epic novel, there WILL be people who will enjoy his writing enough to eagerly anticipate his next piece. And THAT is what counts.

No, there won’t be hoards of people flocking to bookstores asking, every day, if the next Mark Leslie book has arrived. But there will be some folks who, having enjoyed his previous works, seek out his latest.

The lesson, I suppose, is for him to not lose focus on the story he is trying to write, and ensuring it’s the best possible story, true, entirely, to itself, and nothing else, if perhaps a single adoring reader. That if he pauses and tries to consider the larger picture, of how that story might appeal to a broad, mass audience, he might lose sight of the actual readers who are quite pleased with the words that naturally flow from his pen.

Write the story you feel deep inside. Be true to the tale that you are creating. Don’t worry about whether or not the masses will love it – worry about whether or not you love it, whether or not the story is honest and real. Be true in that first draft, and then work at polishing and carving out the uglier bits in the second and third drafts.

And sometimes the entire manuscript becomes an ugly bit that will never see the light of day, but indeed does contribute greatly to your craft and skill. The Story of Aaron Boc and the sequel novel written the following summer, The Search for Aaron Boc remain in drawers and will likely remain there permanently. They weren’t the best written books, some might even suggest they were terrible, but they were written with heart and passion, and the process of writing them taught me so much about the mechanics of plot and sub-plot, of character and setting. I had to write those novels in order to hone my skill. And that ongoing learning as a writer never goes away.

Oh, and I’d also suggest that the younger Mark enjoy the feeling of having hair while he still can, because as fleeting as the thrill of having finished and published a work can be, so too can that fleeting moment in life where one’s hair is thick and rich and full.

But if I start offering advice about things like that, we could be here all day. And you have stuff to write, don’t you?

Guest Writer Bio: Mark Leslie lives in Hamilton, Ontario and has been courting a serious addiction to writing since discovering his mother’s Underwood typewriter at the age of thirteen. The editor of speculative fiction anthologies such as North of Infinity II (2006), Campus Chills (2009) and Tesseracts Sixteen (2012), Mark also writes a series of non-fiction paranormal books for Dundurn which include Haunted Hamilton (2012), Spooky Sudbury (2013) and Tomes of Terror: Haunted Bookstores & Libraries (2014). Mark’s first full length novel, I, Death is out in the fall of 2014. When he’s not writing, Mark tacks “Lefebvre” back onto his name and works as Director of Self-Publishing & Author Relations for Rakuten Kobo, Inc. where he heads up the Kobo Writing Life team.

Images: 1) Mark Leslie at the age of thirteen, working on his “epic fantasy novel” while his cousins play video games and his Baba tries to get him to stop writing and come eat some lunch. 2) Author pic