Bop and Swing = the Sound of Cool West Coast Jazz

If you were in Los Angeles in the 1950s and hot to hear West Coast music, you’d head to The Lighthouse Café or maybe The Haig. Then again, you might take a walk on Central Avenue in Watts. You’d likely hear R&B and jazz floating out of every jazz club door. Musicians like Etta James, the bassist, composer, and bandleader Charles Mingus, Lionel Hampton, trumpet players Miles Davis and Jack Sheldon knew the place. If you’re curious, listen to “Central Avenue Breakdown” and let Lionel Hampton and Nat King Cole take you “right downtown” on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBGgWzAC7y4

 

I’d like to walk down Central Avenue back in the day 10 years before the six days of Watts’ riots in the summer of 1965 and listen to those mellow sounds all night long.

 

Research sure can be fun! A couple of other things I ran into while rooting around in 1950s LA were the Watts’ Towers and the Angels Flight Railway. I guess I’ve had my head in the sand because I was unfamiliar with both. In case you’re in the same fog as me, the Watts’ Towers were built by an Italian artist over a period of 30 years. You can still visit them and marvel at their height, whimsy, and oh-my-gosh power. The Angels Flight Railway with its trolley-like train cars used to transport people up steep Bunker Hill. It’s been moved due to urban renewal, but you can still visit and ride. Delightful!

 

Have I written a word over the last two days? I’d have to answer with a resounding NO! I did catch up with Opal, but I still needed to feel the pulse of LA in 1955 and listen to its heartbeat. Bless YouTube for providing all those things. There are 1950s films, audio of the music of the times, and lots of inspiration for a writer on the trail of an elusive character who refuses to show herself. I think I’m sneaking up on her now, so maybe tomorrow there will be actual words on paper. Perhaps she will agree to walk down Central Avenue with me and listen to the music.

 

Movie Quote: “Take a walk on the wild side, Lowenstein!”  Nick Nolte to Barbara Streisand in The Prince of Tides. Let’s try that in LA!

 

Write On!

Cheryl

 

I'm Back!!!!

After clickling through to my blog from Facebook this morning, I discovered I'm no longer locked out of Blogger. Hooray! I guess there must have been technical troubles with the site itself rather than with my particular blog.


That's the good news. The bad news is that I haven't worked on The Storm Women for several weeks! I've had the "cough from Hell" for about a month and a half. It turns out a blood pressure medicine called Lisinopril - an ACE Inhibitor - is responsible. I'm certainly not taking that anymore since I'm one of the 20% of people with this side-effect.


I now have some soft-gel caps called Tessalon Perles that are supposed to suppress this persistent nagging cough. I'm up to 200 mg. of it now with mixed results. I'm praying I'll be able to stop coughing soon. I am truly worn out with these severe coughing fits. Sleeping is quite a trick as well since I'm frequently awakened with the cough.


I'm still writing about one of my central characters, Opal. She's the wild child from the 50s and 60s, so the research into the music biz in L.A. during this time has slowed me down a bit. I'm fascinated by what I'm learning about the musicians at the birth of rock-and-roll. The phenomenon began with Rhythm and Blues and guys like Johnny Otis, who turned out to be a big player in the LA music scene with his Barrelhouse Club and California Rhythm and Blues Caravan in the late 1940s and early 1950s.


It's difficult for me to imagine the flavor of the times in LA, so I'm listening to the music and trying to transport myself across time. I'm counting on finding Opal, her unique sound and her hopes and dreams skipping along inside those notes.


Wish me luck as I try to get back into the flow of the story after such a long break. I find myself playing writer avoidance games again, and it's so discouraging. I want so much to get this first draft finished and start polishing!


I'm delighted to be communicating again, and I hope you'll come along as The Storm Women novel takes shape. I hope you'll encourage me to put aside all this struggle and angst as I dig back in.


Full Moon at dawn thought: Get with it! It's a new day.
I'm Currently Reading: The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani


Write On! Read On!
Cheryl

Harder Than You'd Guess

Last evening I watched Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays, a one-man Show on HBO. He's been presenting it on stage in New York City and has just released it for TV. I'm so glad he did.

If you get an opportunity to see his performance, don't hesitate. It's really worth your time. It's poignant, funny, sad, and engaging as only Billy Crystal could make it. He's a terrific writer, actor and comedian in addition to having lived an extraordinary life.

Watching 700 Sundays has inspired me to take another turn at trying to write my own story without making it read like a tedious recitation comparable to the "begots" in the Bible. I think the characters in my story have enormous appeal if I can keep their appeal from getting lost while I wander through my life's meanderings. After writing three novels and being half way through writing the fourth, you'd think I'd be adept at figuring out how to pull this off.

I once had a writing instructor who wisely cautioned his students that writing about yourself is harder than you'd guess. I think he meant to say that writing about yourself and making it interesting to someone else is harder than you'd guess. Maybe we're so wrapped up in our own experiences that we forget the reader hasn't "been there nor done that." We're coming from the perspective of someone who knows what things looked like, smelled like, and among other things, felt like. Maybe we're forgetting how much detail someone might need to appreciate the story as we ourselves do.

In the meantime . . . I'm working on writing Chapter 13 of The Storm Women. I'm embarking on writing Opal's life, and I think she will be the most interesting character to write about. She lived the hippie lifestyle of the 60s and made her mark writing music and lyrics.

I'm writing this on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2014. The day dawned warm and sunny here in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. As I was blogging about writing my own story, I realized that Jesus lucked out. Several guys got together long after His life's story ended and wrote all about it. It's a best seller even!

How did those men know what to write and how to write it? They obviously disagreed about some of the facts, and they didn't know Jesus personally in the literal sense. I wish I could have spoken with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John about how they managed to write such an enduring classic. Certainly their characters had enormous appeal.

Departing observation: Whether flesh and blood or creatures of fiction, our characterizations can make or break our stories.

Keep the faith and keep on writing!
Cheryl

When a Character Refuses to Speak

Sometimes a week sails on without so much as a whisper from a particular character. I don't look at this lack of communication as writer's block. It feels more like swimming in a pond of murky imagination. I depend on my characters to come alive and dictate their wants, needs, and feelings. Last week no dictation happened.


The personality of the particular character in question took shape during the writing of Charade. I didn't like her then, and I don't like her now. If you've read Charade, you might have guessed I'm writing about Carrie Storm. There's something blocking me from walking in her shoes.


What would her childhood have been like traveling with her mother, Dusky as she performed for a Wild West Extravaganza in the mid-1900s? Something in Carrie's formative years turned her into the reclusive, secretive woman she became. As a teen she lived through the Great Depression. Those lean years must have taken a mighty toll on a kid without a permanent place to call home.


Carrie lived in a Gypsy wagon perched on a railroad flat car, constantly being transported from venue to venue. Did she see the hungry looks on the faces of young men riding the rails trying to find work during the Dust Bowl years? Was she afraid of becoming like them, footloose and desperate? Who are you, Carrie? What makes you tick? Talk to me.

Today's Lesson: 

When sticky words flow like honey on a cold day, write them anyway!

Cheryl

 

International Women's Day

Today, I'm remembering two questions, and more clearly the one answer to them: Why would anyone choose to get a BA in women's studies? What are you going to do with it? The answer to those questions harkens back to the early 70s when I was a young, stay-at-home mom with three little ones.

Don't get me wrong. I adore my children, and today I adore my six grandchildren very much. Back in the 70s I was longing for something more, but I didn't know what. I was also heading for a break-up that would thrust me out of the house into a world I was ill-prepared to face. Finishing my bachelor's degree in women's studies in the year 2000 was a direct result of feeling duped by the American culture of the 50s.

After choosing English as a major in the late 60s, I wanted to study women when I returned to college, so I could write about them. Women have struggled, even before the days of the old west where many of my stories are set, to free themselves from the constraints of whatever society they have been born into. I write about strong women characters because I want women to be aware of the potential within themselves to excel wherever their passions lead.

I was passionate about my growing family, and I'm just as passionate about my skills as a writer of fiction. On this International Women's Day I'm pausing to think about the lives of the women who paved the way. I'm choosing to pursue my passion for writing, and especially today I'm remembering the countless women who sacrificed to open my eyes so I could discover that potential.

One answer to many questions: I often turn to this much quoted phrase written in 1927 by American writer Max Ehrmann:  "You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here."

Write On!
Cheryl

Pining Away in Pearl, Arizona

I'm writing chapter six of The Storm Women and finding myself drawn into the melancholy of Gabe Rafferty. He's such a love-sick guy, longing for a woman whose sights are set on the allure of the professional stage. This man continues to be so infatuated with Almanza that he's blinded to the love that's right in front of him. He's willing to wait forever if it means he can be with her for just a few weeks at a time between tours.


If you've read Charade, you already know about the ghost town of Pearl where Gabe Rafferty presided as sheriff back in the 1870s and 80s. Digging up his past and Almanza Storm's has been Star Lance's most recent occupation while she runs her antique store in Mineral City. Star, the protagonist of the Arrowstar series sells the historical fiction she writes as she attempts to make ends meet in this out-of-the way corner of Arizona.


I'm exploring as an actor might, the mind of the character, Star Lance. Looking at writing The Storm Women though Star's eyes is an exercise in fiction-writing times two! How would she construct dialogue, describe characters, and follow the threads of her research into the 19th Century? Since The Storm Women will be published under Star's authorship, I need to be true to her character.


I'm highly intrigued by what life might have been like for these women of the Storm family and others who peopled the western towns of Pearl, Tucson, Mineral City, Prescott, and the like during the late 19th Century. These women were more than brave, they must have had iron backbones to survive the times.


The west coast, of course, was settled first as pioneers came round by ship, but the interior was slow to civilization. Yet, there were actresses who managed theatrical touring companies, traveling on the back roads of Arizona through wild country rife with life-threatening dangers. What drove these amazing women? I hope you're anticipating the publication of The Storm Women so you can find out.


Today's pearl: I'm learning to "write on" even when I'm uncertain of the outcome. Words written when I'm wandering often surprise me at being just the right ones after all.


Write On!
Cheryl

Finding Out What You Never Guessed You Wanted to Know Circa 1879

Outlining The Storm Women from beginning to end has eliminated the "now what" question each time I complete a segment of the story. However, I've been tripped up when the places I've chosen for my traveling troupe of players to travel, in the outline, aren't even on the 1879 map! I gobbled up one whole writing day last week blundering around on the Internet trying to locate a town just a bit bigger than "two tents and a trading post!"


The following day, I stumbled upon Charleston, Arizona, with, among many other establishments, its fine hotel, four restaurants, a bakery, a post office, a lawyer's and a doctor's office, plus not one, but two livery stables. In 2014, Charleston and Millville, the town on the opposite bank of the San Pedro River, exist as ghost towns accessible only by shank's ponies. Things, and as I'm finding out, places do change mightily over the years, especially when the phrases "strike it rich" and "all played out" dictate the head count of a particular locale.


I may have spent time "blundering around" on the Internet, but in that process I discovered some treasure. The Arizona Citizen newspaper in Tucson, Arizona, from 1879 reports, on its front page, local stories of murder and mayhem, matters working their way through the territorial legislature, theater openings, and adverts for hotels, restaurants, and stores selling everything a miner needs to go prospecting right down to boots, shirts, pants and underwear.


Tucson evidently flourished toward the end of the 19th century, and the news stories of the day provide some rare candor and lively reading entertainment. It's worth joining www.newspapers.com just for the fun and fascination of reading some really, really old news!


I.O.U.: What if Apaches, highway robbers, deeply rutted roads and rattlers had kept our Old West ancestors from digging up fortunes in gold, silver, and copper?


Write On! Read On! Enchantment Awaits!
Cheryl