Surviving the Heat

Karen McCullough Posted on by  

It’s July in North Carolina and that means heat. Serious heat. Blast furnace levels of heat. And for the next few days we’re expecting some of the highest temperatures we’ve seen in several years, with highs around 98 today and in the 100s tomorrow, going back down to 99 for the 4th of July holiday.

We usually go to a baseball game on the 4th if our local team is in town, to enjoy All-American hot dogs, ice cream, and fireworks. The team is playing here, and the show will go forward, but without us this year. We’re just too old to sit for hours in 95+degree heat, even in shade and with plenty of cold beer and water available.

Instead, we’ll cook our own food at home, scoop our own ice cream, and watch a baseball game on television in the comfort of our air-conditioned living room.

On the Garden front, I try to get out most mornings to do some maintenance work while it’s still—relatively—cool. But when the day starts out at 81, I give myself a break and pass on the weeding and mulching.

I do water the plants regularly when temperatures stay high and rain stays away, which is currently the case. And the garden is repaying me efforts with some pretty spectacular blooms. The pots on the patio are looking especially good this year, I think, but it will take daily watering to keep them happy when the daytime highs go above 90. It’s worth it to me when I get to sit on the porch swing in the shade and listen to the birds sing and admire the flowers surrounding me.

Remarkably Bright Creatures Movie

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Cut to the chase: I loved it.  I liked the book a lot when I read it a couple of years ago, after a recommendation from my sister. Initially, I was taken aback to discover the book featured an octopus as a main character, but I trust Barbara’s judgement, so I got a copy and dove in.

The book has both heart and brains, although it might rely too heavily on a long-shot coincidence for its resolution. Still, I admit it was emotionally satisfying. The story does a great job of exploring the emptiness created by loss of loved ones and the ways people try (or don’t) to fill up that void.

The movie also leaned into that theme of loss versus connection in a way that felt natural and realistic. In exploring the secondary theme of the meaning of “home,” I felt the movie actually did a slightly better job than the book. (However, I read the book at least two years ago and I’m not a person who remembers every detail of a story.)

A lot of the movie’s resonance is due to the strong performances by all of the cast. Sally Field reminds us why she has won all those acting awards, including a couple of Oscars. She sinks into the role of Tova, the “cleaning lady” at the aquarium where Marcellus, the octopus, unhappily resides. She does the job as a way to cope with the loss of both her husband and her only son. Field is great at good-hearted grumpy. Her connection with Marcellus is both convincing and heart-breaking. For a scene near the end where Tova makes a shattering connection, the camera focuses tightly on her face and she lets the viewer read every single moment of the emotions it brings. It’s a tour-de-force performance.

Lewis Pullman is almost equally effective as a young man with a good heart but a soul lost in the cosmos due to the psychic wounds of his father’s desertion and his mother’s tragic life and death. His search for his missing father brings him to Tova’s home town.  A job at the aquarium pushes them into conflict.

With all this, I think Albert Molina’s work as the voice of Marcellus is underrated. His voicing gives the octopus a real and fascinating point of view along with emotional depth.

The direction and editing kept the story moving along at a snappy pace that still allowed time for secondary characters to provide interesting depth.

Visually, the film pays a lot of attention to the environmental details and surface textures – water tracks left by Marcellus, the wood paneling in Tova’s house, uneven planks on the dock, and the view across the water. It adds immediacy to the feeling of being in the story.

The nearly two-hour running time passed quickly with almost no “boring sections.” I was hooked from the very start and couldn’t look away until the end!

Making the Ideas Into a Story

Karen McCullough Posted on by

My previous post considered the role of ideas in writing, especially fiction. The bottom line: ideas are important but not the most important factor in creating a story. Ideas are a starting  point, but the real work is turning them into a plot and actually sitting down at the keyboard to pound it out.

Even before that, though, comes the work of considering all the ideas and figuring out which ones have the legs to carry a story. I have lots of ideas. They’re everywhere. Usually the starting point is something that happened, and I start thinking about the whys and hows, twisting the possibilities to find interesting possibilities.

For instance, there was a story a few days ago in the NY Times about the 1990s art theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, a crime still unsolved. Anything that’s still a mystery has lots of possibilities. Inside job? How was someone convinced to do this? What happened to the art, which has never been located?  How does it affect some collector who can never show off his prizes? Can you imagine being an heir finding some of these paintings in your late uncle’s secret vault? What do you do?

Or consider a more average story about a murder-suicide. Happens a lot, unfortunately. But what if it was actually a double murder made to look like a murder-suicide? What happens if the victims turn out to have no obvious connection to each other?

Even an ordinary traffic accident might be something more sinister.

So, there you have a few ideas, but none of them are stories yet. The one about the heir finding stolen art work is close since it has an inherent conflict established, but it needs more development to become a story.

I hope this makes the point that it takes more than an idea. You have to take that idea and rub it up against something else to create a story. Another idea. A problem or a challenge. Put a character into the idea in a way that will make him or her uncomfortable—or worse. Then you watch what happens and how the character tries to resolve his problem.

Not all ideas work out. I’ve come up with some great situations but can’t find the right character or characters to make it into a story. Sometimes ideas I think are going to work just kind of fizzle out or don’t go anywhere. The main conflict isn’t clicking or the resolution is too obvious. Too often, I can’t take what sounded like a great idea and make it into something that’s actually interesting. Occasionally I get a great story but can’t come up with a satisfying resolution.

I know I’m not the only author who has a folder full of half-written stories sitting on their hard drive. Every now and again I go back through them, and occasionally I even have a breakthrough and realize where I was trying to go with one of them. It’s particularly satisfying when that happens.

Is It All About the Ideas?

Karen McCullough Posted on by

It’s almost a cliché that when people hear you write fiction, someone will inevitably suggest, “I have this great idea for a novel. I’ll tell it to you, your write the book, and we’ll split the money.”

I’ve never had anyone say exactly that to me, but occasionally someone will say they have a great idea and want to write a book. Someday they’ll get around to it.

Or they ask: Where do you get your ideas? They imply it’s some kind of special talent to find those components for a story.

There’s a lot to unpack from those assumptions. First one is that the idea is the most important part of the process. Here’s a hint: it’s not. Ideas are a dime a dozen. I can get four or five good ideas from the morning news. I already have more ideas floating around in my head than I’ll ever be able to use.

The real trick is sorting through those ideas, letting them play out, and seeing how they can develop.

My own theory about the genesis of stories is that they happen when at least a couple of ideas start rubbing up against each other to produce friction and conflict. It usually takes several good ideas to generate a novel’s worth of plot.

The second assumption is that writing even a good short story is easy. It’s not. Developing characters, plot, situation, background, integrating them, and finding the right words to express all those elements takes an enormous amount of mental energy.

Writing demands discipline as well, the determination to put your butt in the chair and keep your hands on the keyboard long enough to create. Even a short story takes many hours of work. I generally spend anywhere from three days to a week creating a first draft of most short stories, and then take at least a few more days of editing.

A novel can take up to a year of work. It’s true that I’m not the speediest of writers, but I take pride in giving the process the time it needs to produce the best possible work.

So… Ideas? They’re the easy part. The work is everything else it takes to create a story. And it’s hard.

Can It Be Spring?

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Spring? Maybe. Probably not. We’ve all seen the meme about the twelve seasons, which can be applied to most states, but often does seem to describe North Carolina’s crazy weather shifts. In fact, someone at the NC State Climate Office did some research that showed the 12-season description is actually surprisingly accurate.

Right this moment I think we’re in the Spring of Deception.  Just a few weeks ago we had ten inches of snow over three inches of sleet. Temperatures stayed below freezing for almost a solid week and then barely went over the freezing mark at midday for several more, so it took almost two weeks for all the frozen gunk to disappear.

This past week daytime high temperatures were in the seventies and even hit eighty on one day. As a result, the daffodils are putting on a show. Crocus, hellebore, forsythia, and camellias are blooming. The early flowering fruit trees are beginning to show off their colorful, short-lived, flowery apparel. It’s beautiful, but don’t let it fool you.

The current long-range forecast shows the Spring of Deception lasting through most of this week, with daytime highs predicted to reach the eighties on a couple of days, then temperatures sink to more normal levels for this time of year, with highs in the fifties for some days thereafter. There’s even one day next week showing the dreaded words “snow showers” as part of the prediction.

That’s more than a week away, so no point in getting too excited about it right now. But it does illustrate the point that spring hasn’t really arrived yet.  There’s a reason that the last frost date for this area of the country is April 15. There’s no point in planting anything vulnerable to frost before then.

But, by golly, I’m enjoying the nice weather right now!

A New Dragon Story

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Hollow Oak Press is featuring my fantasy story, Dragon Dancers, on their Acorns site now. After reading the other stories they have posted, I’m seriously honored to be among them!

Some quick background on the story. I wrote the first version in one sitting about three years ago. I wrote it in response to a prompt from an anthology, which turned it down, saying it felt “unfinished.” They were right. So I’ve noodled around with the story several times, rewriting it until it felt like I’d gotten it right.

You can read it here: https://hollowoakpress.com/dragon-dancers

A Memorable Winter

Karen McCullough Posted on by

It’s snowing again. Fourth time in the last two weeks. This one isn’t supposed to amount to anything, just a few flurries. I hope that’s right. We don’t need anymore. Weekend before last we got three inches of mostly sleet, some of which is still on the ground. (Nicely compacted into treacherous sheets of ice!) Sleet was actually a blessing, though. It could’ve been freezing rain and brought down trees and power lines. But sleet bounces off, so we dodged that bullet.

It has stayed cold, with several days not getting above freezing, so some ice was still around when ten inches of snow fell this past weekend. Fortunately, it did warm up a little by Tuesday, but it wasn’t until yesterday (Wednesday) that we deemed it safe enough to take the car out.

Last night we had another dusting of snow and today it’s snowing again. It’s also so cold that the slush has refrozen and nothing will be melting today. Tomorrow might be a little better. I’m really tired of it.

This is central North Carolina! Many years we don’t get any snow at all. Mother Nature seems to be confused. I’d like to point her to points north where they expect this stuff.

Winter 2026 – What I’m Working On

Karen McCullough Posted on by

It’s the icky time of year. Cold, often blustery weather, with occasional bouts of freezing rain and snow. My least favorite time of year. The garden is brown and dry—not dead but asleep. There isn’t much to do right now outside the house. Going out for a walk means bundling up and preparing to fight wind and cold temperatures. Travel is minimal

But it does have some virtues. The lack of distractions means more writing time and I’m trying to take advantage of that. My current project involves scanning in an older book I wrote many years ago. I still like the premise, but I didn’t really know how to unwind the plot effectively. I’m not sure I know how to do it now.

But the setup for the story is good enough that I think it’s worth giving it a try. I’ll probably have to rewrite most of the second half of a 90,000-word novel. And maybe it won’t work at all. It’s going to be an interesting challenge.