Renea Winchester

On this first day of the new year, I’m indulging in one of my favorite activities—reading. Well, I don’t know that I should call it an indulgence when I’m getting paid to do it for a deadline, but fortunately I’m also enjoying Denise Weimer’s Spring Splash, a novel about competitive teen swimmers that was inspired by the author’s own daughters and will be published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. I’m also finishing up another forthcoming LPC title, Hope’s Gentle Touch by Laura Hodges Poole. Quite a different story, that one, featuring a young woman who escapes from a severely abusive marriage and slowly learns to love—and trust—again.

There’s no shortage of books awaiting my attention. Not proofreading assignments, but books in general. In fact, they now number in the hundreds, which was a rather alarming prospect, especially since the list just keeps growing, at a slow but steady pace. What can I say: People will keep writing books, and recommending books, with no sympathy whatsoever for my dilemma. I’ve even taken to deleting most emails from freebooksy.com, since I fear my vulnerability to the temptation of adding ever more titles to the pile. As I’ve wryly remarked a few times to various friends, I have so many books to read, I can never die.

Then I had a short chat with a friend and fellow reader with a TBR not dissimilar to mine, who joked that I had discovered the Fountain of Youth. And I thought . . .

Dang . . . she’s RIGHT!

Too many books? Who cares? Of course I will have time to read them all! Hear that, Ponce de Léon? You didn’t need to visit Florida all those years ago! You just needed a fifteen-page reading list going back over six years and more than four hundred titles in your laptop’s Kindle app!*

With that settled, it was time to think about how many of them I could, and really wanted to, get around to in 2020. I’m not like some folks who plow through dozens of books per year, gleefully surpassing even their own expectations. No siree, I figured that at my typical rate, along with my normal daily responsibilities (day job! Housework! Grocery shopping! Cooking! Exercise! Errands! Car maintenance! Playing with the cat!), the occasional outings with friends, and monthly proofreading assignments, I’d better err on the conservative side of one per month, with a healthy division between memoir, biography, self-help, the craft of writing, and fiction. In no particular order, the top twelve came down to:

Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. (A classic. Period. As one Amazon.com reviewer put it, “Most of the current speakers in the area of personal development, including Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy and others owe a debt to Maxwell Maltz for the foundation of their material.” But even that seems like an understatement.)
As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling by Anne Serling. (I’m a great fan of The Twilight Zone and have seen enough fellow afficionados recommend this to feel sure it was a must-read.)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. (Millions of copies sold. Called a classic that should be on every writer’s bookshelf. Over 4,000 five-star reviews on Amazon.com. Plus—it’s Stephen King, peeps.)
The 10 Commandments of Author Branding by Shayla Raquel. (I need to learn about self-marketing. From someone who freely admits she “used to suck rotten eggs at marketing” and clearly no longer does. After all, she makes a full-time living as an author/editor/marketing coach and is nearly three decades my junior to boot.)
Writing the Cozy Mystery by Nancy J. Cohen. (Because I enjoy the light escapism of this genre and aspire to write my own first cozy in 2020. Which is a slightly daunting prospect as I’ve never attempted a mystery of any sort before.)
Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother by Eve LaPlante. (I’m a nearly lifelong fan of Louisa, and that was one hell of a family.)
30 Days to Understanding the Bible by Max Anders. (I see this as something of a precursor to one day actually reading through the entire Bible in one year, as I’ve tried and abandoned twice already—and getting more out of that than simply saying I read the entire Bible in one year.)
Discover Your Writing Self by Andi Cumbo-Floyd. (Help me, Andi.)
The Cracked Spine (A Scottish Bookshop Mystery) by Paige Shelton. (I love a good cozy mystery. I love bookshops. And I would love to someday visit Scotland. ‘Nuff said.)
Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn. (The definitive work to date on one seriously crazy story. Plus, I’m also planning to resume work on my second poetry collection, Riding With Bonnie and Clyde, and this is a vital resource to that end—along with book #11.)
The Shape of Poetry: A Practical Guide to Writing and Reading Poems by Peter Meinke and Jeanne Clark Meinke. (See above.)
Farming, Friends, and Fried Bologna Sandwiches by Renea Winchester. (Renea, I loved your debut novel, so now it’s time for me to check out your nonfiction. Thanks for the autographs!)

* * * * *

But that’s enough about me. I’ve got READING to do. How about you? Do you have a Big Honking Reading List that will allow you to live pretty much forever? How many titles are on it? How do you prioritize them? (Or do you even bother?) Tell me about it!

*Yes, I know old Ponce wasn’t really searching for a fabled “Fountain of Youth,” but it’s a good story.

Once again I ended up glued to a book I wasn’t sure I’d like.

It’s actually pretty nice when that happens.

If you’ve read previous entries in this series, you might recall that I hesitated over accepting an assignment to proofread Mike Dellosso’s Midnight Is My Time, as I’m not generally a fan of dystopian literature, and how I ended up glued to the fast-moving, scary, can’t-figure-out-where-the-heck-this-is-going-but-can-hardly-stand-the-wait-to-find-out plot, which was adapted from a passage in Revelation that I’d never seen or heard of (especially since I tend to avoid that particular book of the Bible).

I found myself recalling those feelings of hesitancy recently when I was approached with another assignment from the same publisher (and my regular client), Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. Not because there was anything dystopian or frighteningly prophetic about it, but because it came with something unprecedented in my work for them—a disclaimer. Specifically, that there was some language (not too strong, though) and a rape scene (not too graphic).

I started skimming the manuscript as soon as I received it, looking to see just how bothersome that one scene would actually be. Yes, it did make me uncomfortable. As it should any reader. But I kept on skimming, and at first superficial glance I didn’t really think I would bond with these characters. Still, I’d already said yes, so back to page one I went and started reading in earnest. And, as with Midnight Is My Time, I soon found myself so glad I did.

Because, Renea Winchester . . .

Girl, you can tell a story! You can set a scene. With just the mention of a few old product names you took me back to an early-seventies family room where I sat facing the TV while my mom wrapped my stick-straight, Dippity-do’d hair around pink foam rollers. And then to another family room in front of another TV, where, like Doretta, I also crushed on One Life to Live‘s Marco Dane, snake and cad that he was.

*Gerald Anthony as Marco Dane (Wikipedia)*

No, I’ve never experienced an unwanted and unplanned teen pregnancy, or worked a blue-collar job in a textile factory. I’m a stringent saver but I’ve never had to scrimp like Barbara and her mother Pearlene, to the point of scrounging for coupons in a landfill. I’ve never had to eschew buying “fancy” Charmin toilet paper or lived in a rundown trailer with a “makeshift picnic area” created from discarded power company spools. (Kudos to the creativity, Carole Anne).

But I’ve lived in a three-generation household of strong-minded Southern women who knew a thing or two about making do. Gotten laid off as a result of economic decisions made by the powers that be. And oh, how delighted I was to see things were FINALLY looking up for our trio of gals at the end. Still . . . you didn’t give me everything I wanted, Renea. There were still secrets. And it was clear they were going to stay secrets. How I wanted just one of them to be revealed. (I bet you know which one.) How I wanted justice even though the time for it was past. How I wanted to see at least one skeleton released from its stuffy black closet.

You didn’t give me that, but it’s okay. Because that’s how real life works so much of the time.

And this book is full of real life. You had me almost trembling from the comfort of my bedroom recliner on a night that started—and should have ended—with a young girl’s dreams. Almost sick with dread at the prospect of a pink slip. Recalling some of the challenges my mother faced while caring for an elderly parent as I watched your Barbara navigate the challenges of her mother Pearlene’s decline. Grinning at Pearlene”s malapropisms like “crotch pot” and “cue-pins.” Inwardly raging at the dismissive labeling of underprivileged kids as “rejects.”

Oh, Renea, here I am once again in danger of giving away a little too much, even as I think, Girl, you can tell a story.

And how did you? I wondered. Tell this particular one so realistically. Was it mostly good research, or could there be a shade of Barbara in you?

I found out when I reached your Author’s Note and Acknowledgements. Bryson City is a real North Carolina town, and it was your town. The Maroon Devils were and are a real football team. The folks rich and poor, sane and drunk, making do and making out, may have been fictionalized, and yet they were real.

No wonder you could tell such a story. No doubt much of it was due to that mysterious, God-given gift handed out to future writers in their cradles, but I doubt I’ll ever forget how the gaze of that little freckle-faced girl locked with yours from a window in a trailer park, or how your brother said that fated day, “There’s your book” while pointing to that trailer park.

Can you thank him for me? As I thank you for respecting and listening to and honoring the voice of the storyteller within you and giving us Outbound Train?

Dang it, with a voice like yours, Renea, I’m thinking I’m going to have to check out some of your other books as well.

(Look for Outbound Train on April 1, 2020 from Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas.)

In Praise of the Big Honking Reading List, Or: The Real Reason Ponce de Léon Got it Wrong About the Fountain of Youth

30 BOOKS AND 30 THANKS: RENEA WINCHESTER