Weeds--A Walk In the Park

My husband complained that walking in the park near our house bored him to tears. He's a fauna guy. Now I love fauna as much as the next person. I like to see the ducks and the turtles, but I also love the native flora. There's always something new to see, especially in the spring. So Thursday I picked up my point and shoot Canon Ixus 100 and set off to photograph some weeds. Sorry if you hit on this blog hoping to get some news of the excellent Showtime Series or directions to where you could buy some really good weed, for medicinal use of course. I just wanted to share a walk in the beautiful park near our house.

Cool Note from Facebook Friend

My books take so long to write, letters from readers mean a great deal to me. I thought I'd share one I received last month from a Facebook Friend:

Ms. Despres -
Thank you for the comments and the wall posts. I hope you know that myself, as well as the girls I work with, absolutely love your novels, and the rules from The Southern Belle's Handbook...I I truly do appreciate your writings, as they tend to influence us on a daily basis. For years it has been a habit of mine to pick up the handbook and simply remind myself of all the little life lessons, and the situations that surround them. I will continue to do so, and will be passing allong "The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell" as soon as it arrives and I get the opportunity to enjoy it.

I hope you are well, and enjoying life to its fullest.

Thanks again,
Brandy

Two Kinds of Men

There are two kinds of men. The ones who are interested in you and the rest. The second kind are so misguided, they're not worth your time. Because if a man doesn't have the sense to appreciate you, he obviously doesn't have any sense at all.

Rule Number 71, The Southern Belle's Handbook.

Reader on the Go

Recently, a reader shot off a note on her T-Mobile Sidekick. I thought it was so very nice of her to take the time to write, I decided to share her kind words.

Dear Loraine,
I was wondering if there will be another fabulous book to this series? I enjoy your books and they sure drag you into them. I hope in the near future you'll be willing to write another book. I appreciate your writing and thanks for everything.

Your fan,
Andrecarol

Thanks, I'm finishing up a new book right now.

How to Interview a Man

to find out if he's good enough for you.

A good way to begin is by asking: "What do you want to be doing in five years?"

If the answer is, "I don't know, I don't have any real plans." That's a clue he's not ambitious. It's also a clue, you'll be supporting him if you stick around.

If his answer is: "A rock star filling arenas."

Your next question should be "So how's that going? You in a band?" If the answer is, "No, not really." That's another clue that you could be working for two. If instead he says, "Oh, yeah, and we just got a record contract." You might want to stick around. You could be in for a fun ride. Or not.

Whatever the answer, the guy will have lots of fun talking about his dreams and think you are one interesting woman.

But if you really want to find the man of your dreams, before you begin the interview, the Southern Belle advises ask yourself, "Where do I want to be in five years?"

A Reader from Chicago

A reader from Chicago contacted me through Shelfari an on-line community of book lovers. She has a staggering 214 books on her shelf, but generously took time to write me this. I had share it with you.

"Ms. Despres,
I just wanted to write you a quick note. I originally read the Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell severals years ago and decided to read it again last week. I loved it even more the second time around! I read The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc yesterday and absolutely loved that as well. I'm originally from New Hampshire, and have never visited the South, but I feel as if I could connect to your characters so well.
I hope you plan on writing more books like these, because I thoroughly enjoyed them!
Maryann"

Men Are Easy

I talked to a beautiful young 20 something today who told me she was excited because someone invited her for a date.

"What!" I said. "You should be carrying rocks in your pocket to fend them off. What do you mean, you're excited?"

"I guess I'm not very encouraging. When I'm out with my girlfriends, I'm sort of out with them." She went on about how she discourages men.

"How's that working for you?"

She tried to change the subject. Finally she admitted it wasn't working out well at all. She dreams of having children, but I know too many lovely 40 somethings who are sitting home Saturday evenings, because they don't know how to encourage a man.

What she and any girl who's looking for love has to do when they go out on the town is to interview the men who come up to them and offer to buy them a drink.

The guys will love it. As I said in The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc, Rule #11 "Men always find themselves the most fascinating subject of any conversation."

Let him talk. He'll enjoy himself and you'll be interviewing for a bf. The point is, you want to find out if he's good enough for you.

More tips on how to interview for a boy friend in later blogs.

Avid Reader

Avid reader and talented photographer Erin Norman took time out of her busy life to read and blog about the Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc. I thought I'd share her kind words with you.

"My 13th book was The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc by Lorraine Despres and it was great! It was recommended to me by a friend (Thanks McCall!) and I really couldn't put it down, I read it in about 2 days. Its basically about one small town Louisianna woman's summer of scandal, the title says it all. One the first page of the book, it says that her husband buys a gun, so the whole rest of the book, you're taken on a journey of twists and turns to find out why exactly her husband buys that gun and what he does with it. You learn more about Sissy's life as she "flashes back" and she really is a victim of her own mistakes but you can't help but to like her, and root for her. If you love a good piece of "Chick Lit" this one is definitely one for you!!

This book is full of Sissy's Rules to live by which she calls the Southern Belles's Handbook:

#39- A girl doesn't have to give in to temptation, but she might not get another chance.

#102-When making a life decision, you can't trust your head.

And my favorite:

#59- Its okay for a woman to know her place, she just shouldn't stay there."

You can find this and other reviews as well as her reading challenge on her blog along with some of her beautiful photography : http://www.puddinsugar.com/

Adultery

A woman who goes out with a married man plays second fiddle to his wife--Southern Belles don't make that kind of music.

Rule #54 The Southern Belle's Handbook

Awesome Reader

I keep getting such moving letter from my readers. I wanted to share this one with you from Leslie Amyette, Ayden, NC who graciously gave me permission to post it.

"Your novels are awesome. I was turned on to you a few years ago by my sister. We are both avid readers and are Southern girls ourselves. Anyway, we have eagerly awaited a new novel by you. I checked out your website, but was unable to determine if you have a new novel in the works. I am just curious to know if you are or plan to write another novel. If so, could you please let me know approximate publication date? Or even just if you are planning something so we can be on the lookout for it!

Sincerely,
Leslie Amyette"

Leslie, you will be the first to know.

Naked Girls, Modest Guys

Summer is near, It will soon be bathing suit weather and women across the world will be looking in the mirror, dieting, buying cosmetic elixirs promising the impossible, worrying about every real and perceived figure flaw.

That got me thinking. For my novel, The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell, I researched swim wear in the early 20th century. In 1920, men wore tight shorts and wife-beater teeshirts when they ventured into the water. At the same time, respectable women wore long skirts and stockings. Some women's swim teams did adopt men's suits, but in 1922, women wearing such "indecent" attire were arrested on the beach in Chicago.

Today, the guys wear boxy, knee-length shorts that would seem modest to a time traveler from the early 1900s, while girls are next to naked, every blemish, every tiny roll of flesh. Are we giving up our mystery?

I read a book by an American who went to Saudi Arabia. When he attended party of Westerners, he found unveiled faces of women incredibly erotic. Now, I'm certainly not in favor of veiling women, but I wonder are we giving up some of our allure by flaunting so much Southern exposure? American men could wear the tiny briefs we see on European beaches, but they don't want to be that exposed. Why do we? Just asking.

THE BOGUS BOOK CLUB

Sometimes the Southern Belle is able to actually go to a book club.

That's what happened March 3, when the vivacious Elaine Donan invited me to her home to discuss THE BAD BEHAVIOR OF BELLE CANTRELL. Inspired by the Southern theme, some of the ladies even wore hats.

We wined and dined on fried chicken and sweet potatoes and discussed the book and the research I did into the year 1920 when prohibition became law and women finally were able to vote. I told them some men thought they were protecting us as we were too delicate to "withstand the rough and tumble of the voting booth." That was also the year the KKK spread across America as a money-making pyramid scheme and equal opportunity haters.

Have They Lost Their Minds?

I keep getting ads for mini-skirts in spring and summer fashion: http://www.neimanmarcus.com/store/catalog/templates/P9.jhtml;jsessionid=DOXPQGGGZ5EIKCQAAKTRACY?itemId=cat25260741&parentId=cat25260731&masterId=cat000003&icid=her0b

The Southern Belle says if you've got great legs flaunt them!

But how many of us want to show off our knees or God forbid our thighs? Just as men put on extra weight in there tummies, for women every extra ounce shows up in our neither regions,which in the great scheme of things is healthier.

Although tall skinny models wobbling on stiletto heels may look great on the runway, designers who expect real women to wear those clothes have lost their minds. Maybe they have a poverty wish.

Letters from Readers

As an author I often hear from my readers and I always welcome their thoughts. But rarely do I get an email that moved me as much as this one. Ms Zeboor gave me permission to share this with you and use her name:

Dear Ms. Despres,

I wanted to tell you how much of an impact your book, "the Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc", has had on me. I have moved 7-8 times in the past year or two. I have been to nice places, and gotten a chance to see new things, but I have also been to the rougher side of the tracks living in my car and being homeless. But one thing that stayed constant in my chaotic life is this, your words. I have reread sissy so many times my copy is tattered and yellowed, the pages are softening like paper does when it's touched a million times. Next week monday is my birthday, and I was wondering if I could mail you my book to sign? It would mean so much to me, and from one southern belle to another. Your book kept reminding me of the good days down south where everything slows down enough for you to enjoy summer and get yourself into a bit of trouble.

If you cant do this, i completely understand. You must be a very busy woman, but I had to try! Thank you so much for your time and I hope that the three books you wrote (of course I have them!) wont be the last! :)

Sincerely,

Heather "Scout" Zeboor

" We shall not cease Exploration, At the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive at where we started...And know it for the very first time.."

T.S. Elliot

Mother's Love

As I wrote in an earlier blog, I went to London for my son's wedding. The wedding was held in Newlington Green Unitarian Church, built in the early 1700s and a hotbed of radicalism at the time of our American Revolution. A perfect setting for the bride. You'll get the idea from her blog: http://cruellablog.blogspot.com/

A few days after the wedding she gave us a tour of Oxford, where she had studied "maths." Training for a stand up comic, right?

It was cold and rainy and I needed a hat. Confession: I have a big head. Most women's hats don't fit and those that do look down-right silly. So I found this great men's hat. I loved it. It was warm and kept the rain off. And I loved the way I looked. I'm sharing the photo with you because, I gave it away. Sob.

It looked great on my son, so I left it for him in London. I think that qualifies in the "no greater love" catagory.

London transportation

The fastest way around London is by the tube. But you're underground, breathing foul air, herded like cattle at transfer stations. The most expensive is by taxi and it can be very expensive. The slowest is by bus. Yesterday, I had lunch with a friend in Belgravia. What a treat it was to walk down Sloane Street past the achingly beautiful and wildly expensive shops and then take the bus back to the flat in Maiden Lane. I sat on top in the corner and watched the world go by. We lumbered past Hyde Park Corner, the Wellington Arch, Green Park, the Ritz Hotel, up Piccadilly past the Royal Academy of Arts, around Trafalgar Square, up the Strand to Maiden Lane. A great way to see London and get home at the same time.

The Mother-in Law in a gang of Comics

My son, David Mulholland, is a stand-up comic and runs the Soho Comedy Club in London. When I set off for his wedding to the brilliant comedian and blogger Kate Smurthwaite, my friend Carl Gottlieb, a great screenwriter and wit, emailed me that I was very brave going into a group of comics as "the Mother-in-Law."

The wedding was held in the oldest Unitarian church in London--built in 1709. It's where Mary Wollstonecraft worshiped and had her school for girls. If you don't know who Mary Wollstonecraft is look her up. She's the mother of feminism.

Anyway, the reception was held in a pub and was filled with comics. They were attractive and very smart. (You don't have to be smart to be an actor. You may be or not. After all you're saying someone else's lines.) But you have to be very smart to be a comic. I expected the evening to be very funny. It was fun, but the comics were not trying out material. They were professionals. Instead I heard lots of intense conversations on the craft of comedy. It reminded me of a time a few years ago when I was in Paris. An old school pal had become one of France's leading artists. He invited me for drinks with another artist. I expected to hear a high minded conversation on art. But no, the two of them talked about a hardware store in the suburbs where they could find the tools they needed for their sculptures.

Amateurs and fans talk about art. Professionals talk about the tools of their trade.

Snake Poison

Saw the Golden Globes last night. 50 years after the Woman's Movement and all those actresses are injecting snake venom into their faces to freeze their expression. It's sad they/we feel we have to. Foot-binding anyone? Oh, we don't need to do that, we have those beautiful high rise shoes with tiny heels to trip us up.

Fame, Fortune, Fun, FAST

With the holidays pressing upon me and trying to wrap up my next book, I didn't get a chance to blog. But this is my wish for the new year. May 2010 bring us all: FAME, FORTUNE, and FUN FAST. Don't we deserve it? What do you want most? Fame? Fortune? or Fun?

MINDY WRITES; THE VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB

I want to give a call out to Mindy Long and her excellent blog MINDY WRITES: http://mindylong.com/blog/ She writes about books and writing.

I did a call in to her book club tonight and she posted the following. I've embedded it here to make it easy for you to read, but check out her blog for lots of good stuff on what it's like to be a free lance writer, she has a virtual book club too.

December 1st, 2009

Book Club with Belle

I love my virtual book club, but every once in a while even I miss talking in real time about the books I love. So tonight I hosted an in-person book club, pulled out some serving platters and dusted off the carafe.

The holidays and the dreary weather here resulted in a small turnout, but we delved into The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell by Loraine Despres and had a great conversation. In addition to writing Belle, Despres wrote The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc in which Belle appears as Sissy’s grandmother. Despres was generous enough to call in and take part in the discussion and we peppered her with our questions.

Belle is full of details from the 1920s—details that could only be captured by meticulous research. Despres said she spent a year researching the time period. “Thank God for the Web,” she laughed. She read books, visited the library and studied magazines from the period.

To capture the details of one particular scene, Despres reached out to the Stutz Barecat Club and found someone who shared the particulars of how to shift.

Despres even committed to only reading literature written before 1920 during the three years it took her to write Belle.

I fell in love with Sissy, and the entire time I was reading Belle I couldn’t help but think about how Despres weaved the two stories together even though they were very different stories. I was also left wondering how much the author knew about Belle when writing Sissy.

“I knew I wanted a lady like some of the ladies I knew in New Orleans—very imperious, very sure of themselves. Belle really came to me,” she said.

Of course we asked Despres her favorite rule. Without hesitating she said, "It’s okay for a woman to know her place. She just shouldn’t stay there."She also told us she doesn’t usually come up with a rule cold. “If something tickles me, I write it down,” she said.

Several parts of the book were inspired by Despres’s own experiences. She told us she grew up in a house like the Rubinstein’s—a house complete with bullet holes in her bedroom wall. “A vigilante group tried to drive my family out of town. It probably happened in the 1890s, but I knew I wanted to tell that story,” she said.

She also shared that she some of her favorite traits of Belle’s were her courage and her cynicism. “She was pretty much based on my mother,” she said.

SPOILER ALERTS—IF YOU HAVEN’T READ BELLE, STOP READING NOW. COME BACK AFTER YOU FINISH THE BOOK.

Based on the letter Belle found in Claude’s jacked, I assumed he was having an affair, but since I’m ever the optimist, I held out hope that Belle just misunderstood parts of the letter. I asked Despres flat out if Claude was having an affair. She confirmed my fear—he was unfaithful. Oh Claude—how could you? I will cut him a little slack since he was at war.

Throughout the novel I went back and forth on whether Belle was ignorant of the dangers she faced or if she was brave. I felt that she became more aware of her danger she faced as the novel went on and clearly was courageous when defending the Rubinsteins against the Ku Klux Klan.

Despres said she envisioned Belle as being brave when writing her. She added, “As a middle-class southern lady, she thought [the KKK] wouldn’t hurt her. Her family was important in the town and she thought they wouldn’t go after her.”

There were so many great story lines in the book. After we hung up the phone with Despres, we kept chatting about the book. I definitely recommend it as a book club pick and, you never know, Despres might call into your group, too. You can visit her blog athttp://www.lorainedespres.blogspot.com/ and her Web site atwww.lorainedespres.com. Also, check out my earlier Q&A with Loraine here, my post about Sissy here and my virtual book club post about Belle here.

By the way–my local library system had a a good number of copies of Belle available, but there was a wait list! So, you may want to check your local library or order from Amazon.

GIVEAWAY!!! What could be better than adding an autographed book plate courtesy of Loraine Despres to your copy of Belle or Sissy? Leave a comment by midnight Dec. 4 and I will pick a lucky winner on Dec. 5.