Unmasking, then COVID, then more COVID

It’s been August since I posted here, mostly because I was asked to return to the classroom this fall by a department head suddenly short of adjuncts and I decided I would, if only for one class. After two full years out, I had a lot of work to do to get ready, so that’s been taking priority.

My son also lost his apartment and a lot of his stuff in a big apartment building fire in August, and it took a while for him to find a new place and for us to get him and his cat moved out again. (Penny the cat is so happy to have me all to herself again. Her nemesis always hogged my lap.)

Anyway, by the time my class began, I’d had my Omicron booster for a couple of weeks. I didn’t want to wear a mask in the classroom when nobody else was, so I decided to just start living life the way almost everyone out there did already, confidently mask-free. I even rejoined the church choir when it started up.

A return to normalcy! It was lovely.

Then someone in my choir got COVID and a couple of days later I came down with it, too. Of course, I could have gotten it anywhere, but sitting one pew in front of a powerful professional singer with COVID is probably a pretty good exposure.

That COVID diagnosis meant being barred from campus for five days, and then a health services interview to determine if I could go back. Luckily I had a note in the Syllabus about class moving fully online in that situation, and so it did, even though setting all that up while feeling like utter crap isn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Worse, some students either never really caught on, or didn’t want to.

Paxlovid prescribed by my doctor thankfully had me feeling better very quickly, and I had those extra days at home to try to track down errant students through email and our digital platform. Then it was back to the classroom, masked in an N95, and two normal classes.

And then I went home from that class and realized I was coming down with a cold. A bad cold. This was terrible timing, with midterm grades closing in the following week, so I was happy to get a negative COVID test. I figured my immune system was just running through all the viruses I’d missed in isolation. Just to be sure, though, I tested again the morning before the next class.

It was positive. Twice. (I really didn’t want that result!) So I took the class back online, but students hadn’t had any reason to expect my Paxlovid rebound and my emails and announcements felt like they were going out into the void (actually just out to the most engaged students, as usual, but usually in person I can hook a few more along).

I’m still hunting lost sheep out there and hoping the rest of the semester doesn’t include more exciting ways to scatter them into the hills.

As for the writing? Well, right now let’s gently (and in a safe, socially distanced way) cough and say I’m on a reading break. I hit 122 Goodreads reviews for 2022 last night. A lot of them are romcoms and Regency romances and other romances because I’m finding them very relaxing right now and also, of course, because I’m about to publish one.

(affiliate link)

I’m currently enjoying AMONG THE JANEITES, by Deborah Yaffe (affiliate link at left), which I suppose counts as marketing research since my next novel is a PRIDE AND PREJUDICE update. It’s quite entertaining if you’re an Austen fan, though this book also makes it clear I’m just a dilettante.

Yoffe records a beleaguered husband’s comparison of Austen mania (especially the balls and costume play) to Star Trek convention culture. Yep. I may have picked the wrong fandom to geek out in earlier in life. I always pretty much just hoarded Austen to myself. I’m also not into cosplay in either universe, and I’ve steered clear of Austen fanfic, unless it’s been traditionally or indie published. Not because I don’t think I’d enjoy it: for exactly the same reason, I have never tried cocaine.

Anyway. I’m still here, and feeling better day by day and hoping the grades I need to calculate tomorrow won’t be too depressing. I also hope this finds you healthy and happy and wearing only whatever costumes or work clothes or sweat pants or pajamas you want to be in.

P.S. if you ever need to take Paxlovid: I’m a big fan. It worked brilliantly! Just don’t be too surprised if you might need to circle around with the virus again, and without its benefit the second time (though in my case my symptoms were not as bad as the first time, either). It certainly doesn’t happen to everyone, but it can happen.

 

 

 

 

Moving on, we come to PRIDE AND PRECARITY

This Independence Day was so mournful for me, given current events, that I basically just hid out at home reading regency romances. (On the plus side, that meant I had way less chance of getting shot. We are living in crazy times, aren’t we?)

But today is the day after Independence Day, and I need to get some real work done, something I haven’t been doing all that well lately.

So here we go, finally getting the next novel ready for publication. I thought for a long time about querying it to agents (and I did fling it into Berkley’s open submission process, which I can only assume resulted in an extremely deep slush pile). But all the reasons I self-pubbed in the first place are still true – probably even more so in today’s market.

So last week folks who subscribe to my newsletter got a sneak peek of PRIDE AND PRECARITY. It plays off Jane Austen’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, but sets the story in 2019 in a small, struggling liberal arts college town in upstate New York, where the heroine is an under-employed English adjunct (something I’m rather familiar with), and the hero, a higher education consultant, has just gotten his pal Bingley installed as the new college president.

I’m going to share that first chapter here, too, but if you want to see chapters two and three any time soon you need to make sure you’re on the newsletter mailing list, not just this blog’s mailing list. That’s because I have no idea who really sees this blog (unless someone comments). It all happens in the background with Jetpack or WordPress or trained internet hamsters.

BUT if you’re a subscriber to my twice-monthly newsletter I’ve got your email address! And we can have private email conversations! And because of that, you might also have a chance to volunteer to be an early beta reader or ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) reader. (IF you’re willing to commit to providing helpfully specific feedback and/or posting an honest review somewhere, that is.)

So now, here’s the current draft (not final) of chapter one of PRIDE AND PRECARITY. If you want to keep going at least two more chapters, make sure you subscribe to the newsletter, which comes out on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month. I won’t put you through a traditional “Welcome” automation if you join here, but I may circle around and try to catch up with you later.

Obviously, you can always unsubscribe. Also, you’ll probably need to confirm your email for it to work. (So check that promotions tab or spam folder or whatever if you don’t see it right away.)

CHAPTER ONE

I’m not saying this is my Mr. Darcy, because I kind of accidentally downloaded him from Deposit Photos. But he might be!

(Still a working draft!)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a new college president must hold a reception for faculty.

Also true: It would be really awkward to spill a whole tray of chicken satay skewers drizzled with peanut sauce on that new college president.

But I’ll get to that in a moment.

Charles Bingley, the new guy, hired my aunt to cater. And that’s why I’m serving hors d’oeuvres at this faculty reception even though, technically, I’m a member of said faculty.

Only technically, because I’m part-time, an adjunct. I earn less than $3,000 per semester per class, with a strict limit on how many I can teach. (God forbid they should have to give me health insurance.) So I pick up a lot of catering gigs with Titi Sylvia.

I thought about saying no to this one, because of the shame factor. But then I thought about how my car has been making funny noises lately.

Circling the room in my white shirt and slightly faded black pants, I offer my faculty colleagues stuffed mushrooms on the first pass, little chorizo pockets on the second. My best friend Charlotte is the only one who smiles warmly at me. “Izzy! Do you want me to introduce you to anyone?”

I shake my head. No, not while I’m handing out appetizers, thank you.

Charlotte’s an adjunct, too, but as the daughter of Bill Lucas, long-time trustee and current president of the board, she’s comfortable with this crowd. If she’d chosen a more popular major, she’d probably be on the tenure track by now. Unfortunately, she went for a doctorate in women’s studies at the exact moment it was starting to be cut from course offerings everywhere, especially at small, struggling colleges like Meryton. It’s proven as deadly to her career prospects as that doctoral thesis on Barbara’s Pym’s satirical novels has to mine.

At the next little group, that old goat Professor Hart narrows his eyes at me as he helps himself to a chorizo pocket, possibly wondering if he’s seen me or at least my boobs somewhere before. But he’s one of the few to even look my way. I’m the help. I’m invisible. Which is ideal in this situation, frankly.

I come out with the third tray – the soon-to-be infamous chicken satay – and let some hungry adjunct door skulkers scoop up one each, then head around the room clockwise. My baby sister Lidia has the counter-clockwise circuit and is wearing the lowest cut white shirt she can get away with. “Oh, you’re so funny!” she says to some guy, and giggles. I catch my older sister Jane refreshing the beverage service and roll my eyes. She smiles in understanding but doesn’t roll hers – she’s too nice for that, even when it’s about Lidia.

Anyway, as I approach that Most Important Conversational Cluster in the Room, I somehow lose my footing and go flying right into President Charles Bingley’s chest. Tray first.

We both fall to the floor, and there are gasps as every person in the room turns to look.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” I say, and try to leap up, but some tall dude with an excellent grip is already hauling me to my feet.

Jane swoops in and says, “Oh, dear! Come with me, Mr. Bingley, and I’ll help you get cleaned up quickly and back to your party.”

He says, “Please, call me Chaz. Darce, bring me down a clean shirt?”

Tall dude scowls at him a moment, then nods, and asks me, “Are you okay?”

“Yes, perfectly. I’m –”

But he’s already leaving.

I bend down to pick up the tray and the scattered remains of the satay – the hungry adjuncts at the door look on wistfully – and head to the kitchen.

I walk in to find Jane gently sponging Chaz Bingley’s pants and blushing. He’s blushing, too. His shirt is covered in peanut sauce, and he’s already unbuttoning it.

“I’m so sorry,” I say again.

“No worries,” he says. “You have no idea how much I wanted a break from all that terribly, terribly polite conversation!” And then he’s back to smiling and blushing at my sister.

Okay, so maybe he’s a good guy, even if he is admin. He pulls off his shirt and balls it up on the counter. His undershirt fits nicely and he has nice shoulders and nice arms. He’s kind of goofy looking, though. Of course, that may be because of the way he keeps staring at my sister, like he’s dazed or something.

“How did that happen?” Titi Sylvia asks me, under her breath, and it takes me a moment to realize she means my collision out in the reception hall, not my sister and the new college president gazing into each other’s eyes like moony heifers.

“No idea. One minute I’m walking along fine, and the next I’m flying through the air. I’m so sorry!”

“Oh, well, it happens.” She hands me a spray bottle and a roll of paper towels. “Here. I don’t want any cleaning bills for any priceless carpets.”

“Got it,” I say, and take a deep, centering breath before I walk out of the kitchen. Because the only thing less dignified than dropping a tray of chicken satay on your new college president is having to get down on your hands and knees to clean peanut sauce out of the carpet in front of your colleagues.

I’m scrubbing the last stubborn spot when I see Bingley and “Darce” come out of the kitchen. Bingley, restored to full dress, is still smiling a bit idiotically.

Darce frowns and I hear him say, “Must she do that now?”

“Darcy, come on,” Bingley says. So maybe it’s actually Darcy, not Darce? Or maybe it’s D’Arcy? He looks like the kind of guy who might hang on to a pointless apostrophe if it were pretentious enough.

Bingley continues, “You want me to be responsible for staining somebody’s precious historic carpet in my very first week on the job? Listen, you never saw a more attractive bunch of caterers. The one who just cleaned me up in there is the sweetest, kindest, prettiest—”

“Caterer. She’s a caterer, Chaz. And I believe the least you could hope for from a caterer is for them to not splatter you with the very food you’re paying them to serve. Have you met everybody here yet? People are starting to leave.”

Charlotte’s dad Bill rushes up to them. “All’s well that ends well, is that not so? What an inspiring example of graceful persistence you’re giving us!” He sports a kind of pseudo-English accent that I associate with old money. I may be wrong about that, though, because Charlotte’s even more anxious about spending than I am. Perhaps whatever money was involved in forming that accent has been lost. She and I may be best friends, but I’ve never had the nerve to ask.

I try another energetic scrub. Is this last stubborn stain from our peanut sauce, or was it already there?

“Just promise me you’ll hire a different caterer next time,” says Darce/Darcy/D’Arcy.

Asshole. That’s what I’m calling him from now on.

Bill Lucas says, “I don’t recommend that! Sylvia Phillips is the best you’ll find around here. She’s the sister of the wife of one of our most distinguished professors – Professor Bennet, one of the world’s foremost authorities on dung beetles! Sadly, retiring this year. His daughter Isabela there is actually an adjunct professor in our English department. She’s said to be quite brilliant in the field of contemporary women’s literature.”

Asshole says, “And we can see how well that’s working out for her.”

OH MY GOD! Does he not realize I can hear him?

But he probably doesn’t care. Assholes never do. It’s their super power.

I decide the carpet’s as clean as it’s going to be and get up to brush past them. I give Asshole a glare. I wish I could spray carpet cleaner in his face. I don’t, of course, but it’s possible I wield the spray bottle a tad threateningly at him as I go by.

His eyebrows go up, and he smirks at me.

This would be a fab story to immediately regale everyone in the kitchen with, but Titi loads me up with a tray of her famous pastries.

Okay, fine. That is what she’s paying me for. I stop at the hungry adjuncts and take the opportunity to pop one in my own mouth. That’s a big no-no, but I figure I had an invitation to this thing, too. “Go ahead, take two,” I urge them.

“So delicious,” says an anemic-looking young woman I vaguely recognize as belonging to the art department. “What’s that filling?”

“Guava.”

“Guava?” She repeats it with a blank look. We’re pretty far away from any important centers of Puerto Rican culture up here in the hinterlands of upstate New York. For their part, Titi Sylvia and my mom are only half Puerto Rican, but they still like to wow the locals with the flavors of the island. Mom also insisted on Spanish names for us girls, except for Jane, who’s named after Abu Jane because our Puerto Rican great grandparents apparently liked the English version better, too.

It’s all a bit misleading. Mom and Sylvia can roll their r’s and curse people out in Spanish, but don’t ask them to actually carry on a conversation. I have some Spanish because I needed a second language for my master’s degree, but in the four years I’ve been teaching since I got my doctorate, it’s been fading as fast as my hiring prospects.

So I’m not sure my sisters and I really qualify as Hispanic. But we sure know good Puerto Rican food.

I pop another pastelillo de guayaba in my mouth and swallow it down before I resume a slow circuit, carefully watching for stray feet in my path. The idea is to avoid dropping another tray.

Also, to run out of these pastries before I get anywhere close to Asshole.

—-

And so ends Chapter One.

Enjoying it so far? Have some comments for me? You can leave them below or email me at sandrahutchison (at) sheerhubris.com  – or, best of all, join my newsletter list here (if you haven’t already) and I’ll consider you interested in seeing more.

 

 

 

 

Technology, gay rights, the Confederate flag, and other cool ways to date your novel

It’s exhilarating to be living through so much change, especially when it seems to be going in the right direction. But what if your books become dated because of it?

Earlier this month at the Glens Falls Public Library Julia Spencer-Fleming, my favorite living Episcopal mystery romance novelist*, took a question from the audience about coping with changes in technology in her books.

As she pointed out, cell phones have made mystery writers’ lives a lot harder. She also noted that she is fortunate in her setting — a place an awful lot like Argyle, New York — because if necessary her characters can encounter poor or no signal in the local wilderness. (I’m thinking Clare and Russ really need to avoid Verizon, because so far I’ve had no trouble up north.)

Rico Shen [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5 tw (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/tw/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

Rico Shen, via Wikimedia Commons

Spencer-Fleming also mentioned advice she’d gotten to keep technology as unspecific as possible. In other words, perhaps your characters should just call someone rather than doing something with a “phone.” Specific devices or ways of using them can become obscure in a couple of years.

I had to deal with this as I spruced up (AKA finally coming up with decent endings for) some short stories I used in “Missionary Dating and Other Stories.” Cell phones hadn’t even been thought of when I first drafted one of them. Some beta readers told me I needed to clarify when these stories were set, or update them, because they were no longer realistic.

This week another of my books got dated in the way I had always hoped it would. “The Awful Mess: A Love Story”  has a sub-plot involving gay rights which is centered largely on Winslow the cop’s support of his lesbian sister, and suspense over Winslow’s conservative father’s ability to cope with the discovery that his daughter Laura is not only gay, but she and her partner Carla are having a child.Cover for The Awful Mess: A Love Story

One of the issues is that Laura would have no legal rights to a child born of Carla if something happened to their relationship. But as of this week, the Supreme Court has made marriage equality the law of the land. Laura and Carla wouldn’t need to worry that their marital or parental rights wouldn’t hold up simply because of where they were living.

So if the need for nationwide marriage equality had been my A plot, my book would have just become a bit quaint. Such are the risks of dealing with current events. But that can also add a depth of truth, assuming one can avoid stooping to mere propaganda.

ManfieldPark1999One of the reasons I enjoy the take on “Mansfield Park” in the 1999 movie is that it links the Bertram family to slavery in the West Indies, whereas in Austen’s novel you’d have to be pretty aware of the history to even suspect it. (It also spices up Fanny by crossing her with Jane Austen herself — an unforgivable sin in the eyes of some Austen purists, but personally I think this particular Austen novel needs a bit of tinkering before it will work on screen).

I’m also conscious of history changing as I work on my third novel, “Bardwell’s Folly.” It’s about the daughter of a famous dead Southern novelist who was raised in the North, almost completely ignorant of her family roots. When she gets caught saying something racially insensitive, she is forced to try to better understand her Southern legacy.

And oh boy. We have we seen some fast changes in that regard this week, especially in regard to the Confederate flag. Good changes. Way overdue changes.

Of course, the flag is the least of the issues involved, as opposed to the continuing institutional and social racism endemic in the South and the rest of the country, almost as if the Civil War continues to be fought — and sometimes even won by the wrong side.

Still, having people like Strom Thurmond’s son proclaim that the Civil War was fought over slavery is a good step forward. For someone who grew up in Florida watching people like Thurmond and George Wallace win elections using racist code language (or out-and-out hatefulness), it’s astonishing to see the Confederate battle flag so quickly lose supporters.

Sometimes it’s a minor thing that can mess you up. I’d been toying with the idea of having my heroine and her traveling companion, the daughter of a distinguished African American, meet up with a figure very much like Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to explore their ancestry, much as is done in the fascinating series Finding Your Roots.

But that show has just been suspended. Gates is in hot water because the show left out Ben Affleck’s slave-owning ancestors at Affleck’s insistence.

My reaction to this: Affleck is a wuss. Part of what inspired “Bardwell’s Folly” is my own infamous ancestor, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest (yeah, that guy who built his fortune trading slaves, massacred black soldiers at Fort Pillow, and served as an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan). My maternal grandfather’s first name was Forrest, after him. And Forrest, along with the Confederate battle flag, is more popular than ever on Confederate bling marketed to that anxious subculture of white Americans who say they “want their country back.”

I find that deeply disturbing, frankly. Especially in a country where, since 9/11, domestic terror is taking twice the toll of the foreign-inspired terrorism we’ve just spent vast fortunes and thousands of American lives trying to defeat.

In other news…

Summer blog post schedule

I’ve been keeping dutifully to a Saturday posting schedule for this blog since I started following a regular schedule in February, but as of this week I’m switching to summer hours. (Part of this is because I was with my lovely grandkids this weekend and vastly over-estimated the energy I’d have left after my return.) So, through August I’ll post every other Sunday. I may also have some interesting guest posts for you soon.

Requisite book flogging

Cover of Missionary Dating and Other Stories“Missionary Dating and Other Stories” goes live Tuesday, which (I just learned) is the absolute worst day to launch a book, because that’s when traditionally-published books release.

It’s always fun to learn these things.

Anyway, it’s currently available for pre-order in e-book format only at all the retailers.


* Dorothy Sayers is my favorite dead Episcopal (technically, Anglican) mystery romance novelist.

 

 

 

Showing some love to … Barbara Pym

If you don’t know who Barbara Pym is, you’re missing out. I’m going to give you a quick introduction here in the hope that you may enjoy her books as much as I have.

(This is the debut of a new series of blog posts in which I share some of my appreciation for my favorite authors or books or other cool things out there. My theory is that if you’re curious enough about my stuff to pop in here, you’d probably like some recommendations of stuff I like. I may be inviting some fellow authors to guest post in this series, too.)

If you love Jane Austen for her social commentary and not just her romance, you’re likely to love Pym. Like Jane Austen, Pym was English, though she was born over 130 years later. Both write about gentlewomen in distress. Their heroines struggle for dignity and love in a society that has little concern for single women of limited means.  Many of their heroines have either seen a reduction in their status, or are at great risk of it.

Austen and Pym are also both very, very funny.

In Austen’s novels, a love-match to a good man of property is what signals the heroine’s ultimate triumph. In Pym’s novels, first published mostly in the.1950s and 60s, there is not always that definitive a resolution, but there are certainly plenty of romantic longings, and much finely observed social comedy along the way.

Pym finds both delight and absurdity in the rituals of daily life. Her characters are often fellow parishioners in the local Anglican Church (either in villages or London neighborhoods) or anthropologists on the hunt in one way or another. Her men are caddish or hapless but somehow still appealing. Her supporting women exhibit various degrees of thoughtlessness, clumsiness, competitiveness, or eccentricity, while her heroines strive to maintain a sort of cheerful, desperate dignity.

Pym’s take on everyday social transactions is hilarious. Here she is in probably the first book I ever read of hers, Excellent Women:

Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, ‘Do we need tea? she echoed. ‘But Miss Lathbury…’ She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realize that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind. I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day or night.

Jane and Prudence might have been next, or perhaps A Glass of Blessings, but I really became enthralled when I got to An Unsuitable Attachment.

In the weeks that had passed since she had met Rupert Stonebird at the vicarage her interest in him had deepened, mainly because she had not seen him again and had therefore been able to build up a more satisfactory picture of him than if she had been able to check with reality.

Ha! It boggles my mind that this was the novel, after six others found publication, at which her publisher and all other British publishers balked, sending Pym into an exile from her readers that she found baffling and distressing, as any author would. She didn’t stop writing, though.

Where to start reading Pym probably depends on your tastes, but if they are anything like mine, do not begin with either The Sweet Dove Died or Quartet in Autumn, the more modern novels that she published after both Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil called her “the most underrated novelist of the century” and rescued her from obscurity. These are not typical works of hers and definitely not my favorites, though I do not regret reading them.

My favorite Barbara Pym novel of all — and I am probably in the minority in this — is A Few Green Leaves, the one she rushed to finish before she died of breast cancer in 1980. In this village story, a lonely anthropologist longs for a close relationship with any man, though the sweetly hapless local vicar is clearly a better sort than another potential candidate. As in many Barbara Pym novels, love and the local parish are a source of both comedy and pathos, but their treatment strikes me as more affectionate here than in any of her other books.

There are many other books I haven’t even mentioned, of course. Crampton Hodnet was released posthumously, but it was an early one by a younger Pym and it’s quite funny.

I can’t help reflecting that if Barbara Pym had hit that brick wall with the publishers in our time, she could have turned to self-publishing to keep her loyal  fans reading. (Of course, I suppose we could also worry that she might have published the first draft of Some Tame Gazelle too soon and never gotten properly edited or found a wider audience at all.)

If you can’t find Pym in your local bookstore or library, you can find her in the online bookstores today, though not all of her books are still in print, or even available on Kindle, at least in the United States. I hope that is changing, since I do see a few available that way. It doesn’t make sense to me that in a world gone so crazy for Jane Austen (who well deserves it), Barbara Pym isn’t at least fully in print.

Pym’s work also strikes me as great fodder for some fine comedic British costume dramas set in the 50s, like Call the Midwife only less sappy. I’m surprised no one has done it yet (unless they have, and they just haven’t made it to the United States). I do think she could be a little hard to translate onto the screen as fully as one might like, because so much of the humor is going on in people’s heads. Occasionally breaking the fourth wall a la Frank Underwood in House of Cards (but, of course, not at all like Frank Underwood in House of Cards) might help.

(If there is anyone out there who wants to pay me handsomely to have a go at it, just let me know.)

Barbara Pym's take on everyday social transactions is hilarious. Share on X

If you’ve read Pym, let me know your favorites. If you have another favorite little-known or out-of-print author, I’d love to hear about that, too!