Kindle Daily Post

The Trials of “Van-Dwelling”

Broke and desperate but determined, 26-year-old Ken Ilgunas decided to buy a cheap van and secretly live in it in a Duke University parking lot to afford grad school. Walden on Wheels, his self-deprecating travel memoir, is a frank, funny, and brutally honest portrait of life in a van.

Though living in a van on a college campus was, in many ways, as ordinary as living in a dorm (albeit a cheaper, tighter, and somewhat smellier dorm), there were instances when the peculiar hardships of “van-dwelling” made me question whether living cheap was worth it. It turned out to be totally worth it—I graduated debt-free—but for your entertainment, I present some of the stranger, unexpected, and more unpleasant aspects of two years in a home on wheels. 

A mouse lived in the van's ceiling for three days. During this period, I got little sleep as I obsessively watched the imprint of its tiny paw prints scurry across the upholstery.

Once a family had a picnic next to my van. For four hours! Living in there was a secret, so I couldn’t make a sound, let alone open the door. For those four hours, I remained fixed in the same sprawled position on my bed for fear it would squeak and I'd be discovered.

During my first rainstorm in the van, I discovered there was a leak in the roof. It dripped down onto the bed and left a pancake-size circle of wetness, making it look like I'd had a terrible accident.

I was so excited and nervous about going on a date with a girl (a rare occurrence, I assure you), I accidentally crashed the van into a concrete cylinder, leaving permanent scars that would ultimately make it unsellable.  

Ants, thousands of ants, invaded my storage container one fall afternoon and carried off my food.

Without the luxury of refrigeration, I scoffed at the supposed need to keep some food items “fresh,” not bothering to chill my month-old bottle of squirtable butter. This resulted in a nightlong food-poisoning extravaganza that culminated in my throat discharging the entirety of my stomach’s contents into my wastebasket in one impressive burst.

When my secret was finally discovered, a student in the adjacent apartment complex told campus administration that my van made her feel “uncomfortable.” I was given a new parking spot next to the campus police station—and a law was created that more or less bans students from living in their vehicles.

—Ken Ilgunas

Guest Blogger: Sarah Thebarge, author of "The Invisible Girls"

Twenty-seven-year-old Sarah Thebarge had it all - a loving boyfriend, an Ivy League degree, and a successful career - when her life was derailed by an unthinkable diagnosis: aggressive breast cancer. After surviving the grueling treatments - though just barely - Sarah moved to Portland, Oregon to start over. There, a chance encounter with an exhausted African mother and her daughters transformed her life again.

In 2010, I was riding public transportation in Portland, Oregon, during rush hour when an African woman and her two little girls got on the crowded train.  The woman and her older daughter found seats, but there was no open seat for the littlest girl, so she stood between her mom’s knees as we rode towards downtown.

A few minutes into the ride, I was watching the little girl try to sleep while standing up, thinking, Someone needs to hold that tired child, when she opened her sleepy eyes and looked at me.  I opened my arms to her, and she climbed into my lap and fell asleep. 

Her mom and I had a conversation on the train, and a few days later I ended up going to their house to check on the family.  They were living in the poorest conditions I’d ever seen --  they had no socks or blankets or furniture or toiletries or heat.  They had run out of food, and were eating moldy bread the mom had retrieved from a Dumpster behind a nearby grocery store.

I started going back a few times a week, showing them how to navigate life in America and get the resources they needed.  A few months into our friendship, they adopted me as an honorary family member and nicknamed me Sahara.  And I called them The Invisible Girls, because that first day on the train, no one seemed to see them but me.

The closer I got to these girls, the more I realized that in spite of our many differences, we had a lot in common.  Because after growing up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, I knew what it was like to be a little girl in a fundamentalist culture. And after nearly dying of breast cancer in my 20’s and ending up in Portland with just a suitcase of clothes, I also knew what it was like to be a refugee of sorts.  So when I saw the girls on the train, they looked familiar to me -- because I’d been an Invisible Girl, too.

The Somali girls’ joy and unconditional love brought me back to life.  I began asking not, “What do you get for the girl who has everything?” but “What do you get for the girls who have nothing?”  

I decided that instead of buying them things that would eventually fall apart or break, I would leverage the best resource I had -- my ability to write -- so I could try to earn them a college education.  Going to college had been crucial in my own journey of transforming from an invisible girl to a visible woman, and I wanted to give these girls the same opportunity.

I wrote our story into a book called The Invisible Girls, and the proceeds are going towards a college fund for the Somali girls. 

Because every girl deserves an education. 

Because every girl deserves a chance.

--Sarah Thebarge

Guest Blogger: Elin Hilderbrand

The Surfing Lesson is a touching short story about a poignant stage in a marriage explores the backstory of Margot Carmichael, one of the stars in Elin Hilderbrand's new novel Beautiful Day.

Full disclosure: I am not a surfer.  I have never lay on a board, nor sat on one, much less stood on one.  I don’t even particularly like waves.  When I go into the ocean, I time my entry and exit between waves, after executing what I have termed “the French dip,” which lasts two to three seconds.

Why then did I write a short story entitled, The Surfing Lesson?  The answer is that I wanted to write a spinoff to my forthcoming novel, Beautiful Day – and the story of Margot Carmichael’s divorce from her well-meaning but somewhat feckless husband, Drum, presented an irresistible opportunity.  The Surfing Lesson follows Margot’s painful and confounding realization, during her family’s two-week vacation on Nantucket, that she no longer loves Drum.  She yearns to feel differently, but when she and Drum and their three children bump into Drum’s ex-girlfriend, a woman who has haunted Margot for the entirety of her marriage, she feels no jealousy, and she understands the marriage is over. 

Drum is a Nantucket surfer.  Not only have I gotten to know this particular breed of athlete during my twenty years on the island, I have given birth to one.  My son, Maxwell, age thirteen, is one of the most graceful surfers I have ever seen in action.  It came to him naturally; it was as though he was born knowing how to place his feet, balance his weight, and ride the board.  I have spent many an early summer morning, completely exhausted, watching from the front seat of my Jeep on the south shore, while Maxx catches the earliest and best waves of the day.

I pretend to be exasperated about sacrificing my sleep so he can pursue the surf, but in truth, I’m jealous.  I wish I had the feel for the water and its movement the way he does; I wish I had his prowess and skill, and I have told him so. 

He is a good kid, and an even better son.  He always says, “It’s okay, Mom.  You can just write about it.”

Believe me when I say, you do NOT have to be a master of the left-hand breaker to enjoy The Surfing Lesson.  You just have to be able to read.  Happy summer!

--Elin Hilderbrand

 

 

Guest Blogger: Kim Wong Keltner on "Tiger Babies Strike Back"

An answer to Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, author Kim Wong Keltner’s Tiger Babies Strike Back takes the control-freak beast by the tail with a humorous and honest look at the issues facing women today—Chinese-American and otherwise.

Hello! I’m Kim Wong Keltner and my book is titled, Tiger Babies Strike Back.

I am a Tiger Mom’s worst nightmare. I am the up-to-this-point obedient child who is currently so over being perfect and quiet. It has taken me forty-three years to realize that my mom doesn’t have absolute power over me. What a revelation! I have a mind and body of my own that can function as vehicles for my own aspirations, not just my parents’.  That might sound obvious to many, but in Chinese culture what you do and say reflects on so many people more than just you. You can shame your whole village by being caught in frilly pink underpants. And you certainly don’t go around airing your family’s dirty laundry. How dare a Chinese person admit that everything isn’t perfect? What kind of daughter would do that, anyway?

Um, hello! I take full responsibility for being That Girl. Since no one else was saying out loud what a load of hooey that Tiger Mom nonsense was, I am here to say the empress has no clothes. A Tiger Mom is just a bossy boots in smart separates. Forget being bullied at school. You can be bullied even in your own home, all day and all weekend. A parent has absolute power over the child. So if absolute power corrupts absolutely … Oh, hi Tiger Mom!

And now that I have a daughter of my own, I choose not to go there. Tiger Mom is last year’s model. Can’t we try something new? Let’s try hanging out and doing nothing together. It’s actually harder than you might think. “You do what I say,” sounds like a much more streamlined way of parenting than what goes on in the Wong-Keltner household, but that style to me just sounds downright fascistic. Is there seriously no room for democracy in the nuclear family? When the senior control freak in the house decrees to the young’uns, “”You will do what I say,” like it’s some Jedi mind trick gone awry, all I can say back is, “And I will hate your guts by the time I’m sixteen.”

Whoa, Nellie, them’s fightin’ words! Yeah, sorry. Harsh, I know. In reality I did not hate my mom at sixteen or even now at age forty-three. But by sixteen I definitely was no longer an obedient, sweet, young thing. By then I already had four years under my belt of hiding who I truly was, of living in my own secret inner world where I didn’t tell my parents any of my real hopes and dreams. When your parents are shoving their own dreams down your throat, where else is there to go but underground? I never showed my parents the real me because there was no room for it. A Tiger Mom can silence you without even touching you, like Darth Vader choking a minion from across the table using the power of the Dark Side of the Force.

And further, when you are not exceeding their impossible expectations, why do parents of any ethnicity say disparaging things like, “You’ll never amount to anything”? In putting us down, are they obliquely chastising themselves, or can they simply not face their worst fears so instead they put their great anxiety upon us to unburden themselves? They are hedging their bets. If we turn out terrific, then they get to take credit. And if we fail, they’ve put in the fix to be able to say, “I told you so.”

Being a strict Tiger Parent is just one way of doing things. It’s brittle. It’s unbending. Something or someone is going to break eventually. I forgive my parents for wanting their version of success for me. We all want success to carry us like an elevator lifting steadily and smoothly to the top, a straight trajectory to Number One. But real life is more like the Wonkavator. It doesn’t just go up and down. It goes sideways and slantways, longways and backways, frontways and squareways. We have to push that one red button that no one has ever pushed before. That’s how we eventually smash through the glass ceiling! And who doesn’t want to win all the chocolate?

Move over, Tiger Mom. There’s enough chocolate for everyone.

--Kim Wong Keltner

 

 

 

Guest Bloggers Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkornon on "Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity"

In Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity,
Siegel and Etzkorn show us how having empathy, striving for clarity, and distilling your message can reduce the distance between company and customer, hospital and patient, government and citizen-and increase your bottom line.

Every day there is a headline about overwhelming complexity and resulting consumer confusion.  One day the thorn is a college financial aid letter—without a standard format, students and their parents can’t compare the full cost of different schools. The next day, a survey shows that 83% of Americans want laws and regulations simplified to be more understandable.  Even recreation and entertainment can be overwhelming with hundreds of thousands of apps for smartphones and hundreds of choices on a restaurant menu. And when we are at our most vulnerable, we confront tens of thousands of codes on hospital bills.

Confusion is a very uncomfortable state of mind; understanding on the other hand is appealing, inviting, confidence-building.  Simplicity increases understanding. Simplicity levels the playing field and shortens the distance between company and consumer, government and citizen, hospital and patient. Clear, timely communication through useful products and services, without hidden fees, traps and arcane provisions, is good for business and government. We believe in simplicity as a philosophy, a guiding principle and a way of life.

That’s why we wrote, Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity. Our society has reached a point where a decision must be made. We either relinquish the power to understand and control what affects us, or we fight for a better, simpler way to conduct our daily affairs. Our book explains the wide-ranging applications of simplicity, how it works and why it benefits us. But it also serves as a call to action: the spark for a movement to reduce societal, government and corporate complexity. When we give up the shackles of “learned helplessness,” we invigorate our economy and empower consumers.

Analyzing hundreds of interactions across a wide variety of industries and circumstances, we realized that only three actions are needed to achieve simplicity:  empathize, distill and clarify. Empathizing with the needs, concerns and capabilities of customers ensures that you fulfill a need, at a timely moment, through an appropriate channel and with relevant content. Distilling your message to its essence increases impact and memorability. Clarifying across all touch points ensures that your message is both consistent and understandable. Understanding engenders trust; trust increases customer loyalty. Simplicity creates a virtuous circle; complexity forms mazes.

We don’t view complexity as a necessary evil. We see it as a thief that must be apprehended. As for simplicity, we think of it as the essence of the golden rule. Everyone wants to understand what is being offered to or expected of them, and simplicity helps make that clear. It indicates that we’ve taken time to move the complexity of something out of the way so that the recipient of an object, deed, gesture or letter understands what we mean. So, be on the lookout for transactions that delight you with unexpected clarity, transparency and responsiveness.  Tweet about hassle-free refunds; letters that tell you how and when to reply; one-page contracts you can sign without a bevy of lawyers. The more simplicity is cherished, touted and praised, the faster we will break the curse of complexity.

--Alan Siegel, Irene Etzkorn

Guest Blogger: Robert Lyndon, author of "Hawk Quest"

Robert Lyndon has been a falconer since boyhood. A keen student of history, he was intrigued by accounts of hawks being used as ransoms during the Middle Ages. Some of the scenes in Hawk Quest were inspired by Lyndon's own experiences as a falconer, climber and traveller in remote places.

Hawk Quest was born out of a long involvement with falconry, a love of wild places and a weakness for epic tales of historical adventure. One book that definitely inspired me was Frans G Bengtsson’s classic The Long Ships, a reworking of the Norse sagas which I read at about the same time I trained my first hawk.

Falcons in the Middle Ages were used not only for hunting, but also as royal gifts, a form of taxation, and as ransoms. At the end of the 14^th century, for example, the Ottoman sultan Beyazid turned down the Duke of Burgundy’s offer of 200,000 gold ducats as ransom payment for the duke’s crusader son. Instead, the sultan offered to free his prisoner in exchange for a dozen white gyrfalcons.

Hawk Quest is set three centuries earlier and tells the story of a band of adventurers who travel to the ends of the known world in search of four falcons demanded as ransom for a Norman knight captured by the Turks. The journey lasts a year and takes them to Iceland and Greenland, the White Sea and Rus, and down the River Dnieper to the Black Sea and Anatolia.

Writing the book took me ten times longer than that journey. I wrote it in stages, laying it aside for months on end while I scraped a living doing everything from driving a truck to teaching creative writing. The research probably took as much time as the writing. Initially I planned to retrace part of my characters’ route, but soon discovered that the medieval word in which they travelled had changed beyond recognition. The Dnieper, a major route used by Viking raiders and traders, is now one of the most polluted rivers in Europe, and its legendary rapids, with names like the ‘Gulper’ and the ‘Insatiable’, were drowned under a hydroelectric scheme in the 1920s.

I’ve just finished the sequel to Hawk Quest. Imperial Fire involves another epic journey – this time from Constantinople to China. It was a lot easier to write, my main difficulty being how to do justice to four rather than three Point of View characters. Now I have to decide whether to complete a trilogy or allow my characters to slip back into the mists of history.

--Robert Lyndon

Guest Blogger: Peggy Riley, author of "Amity & Sorrow"

Peggy Riley is a writer and playwright. She recently won a Highly Commended prize in the 2011 Bridport Prize and was published in their latest anthology. Amity & Sorrow is her first novel.

My 1970s California childhood was filled with violent faiths and death cults, from Charles Manson’s Family of former hippies who committed murder in his name in the Hollywood Hills to Reverend Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple, which moved from San Francisco to Guyana, hoping to build Eden.  I will never forget the bodies, strewn across the jungle floor lying flat and embracing, all having drunk his poison punch, or the fiery siege at Waco that killed the Branch Davidians, praying inside their church.  In America’s history of handmade faiths are charismatic leaders who set out to change the world and the followers they gather, desperate to believe. 

I began to write my first novel, Amity & Sorrow, when I saw a newspaper image--a wooden church on fire, sitting on a barren prairie.  My mind added women to the picture, a group of women in long skirts running through the smoke.  I began to wonder who the women were and why their church was on fire.  I thought of the strength of belief in America’s history, a nation founded by religious radicals in search of freedom, and the fear of outsiders and the government that forces new faiths into isolation and secrecy.  In creating the church at the center of my novel, I knew it would have its roots in the American impulse to build utopia, but that it would be influenced by my own memories of more recent and darker faiths.  Its believers would be women, drawn from a world that had abandoned them, rejected them, leaving them alone, afraid and eager to join a family, at any cost.  Their children would be raised outside the world, in an Eden that was slowly turning to rot.  

Amity and Sorrow are two sisters, run from the fire by their mother--by one of their mothers--for their home is a fundamentalist, polygamous church of one man and his fifty wives.  They drive for days until, frightened and exhausted, they crash onto a farm on the Oklahoma Panhandle.  The girls find themselves in a new and strange world, far from their faith and family, when all their lives they had only been waiting for the world to end.  Will they find a new way to be a family without their faith?  Or will they have to move heaven and earth to get back home?     

--Peggy Riley

Guest Blogger: Author Connie Brockway on Southern Romances

Guest post by New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Connie Brockway. She is an eight time finalist for Romance Writers of America prestigious RITA award and a two-time recipient for My Dearest Enemy and The Bridal Season.

I’m in the mood for something steamy and since up here on the tundra, where we are still entrenched in the never-ending winter, preferably something warm weather-related. But if I can’t have that, I’ll settle for the Deep South and a molasses-smooth drawl, humid nights, hot heroes, and Steel Magnolia heroines.

Here’s my selection of old and new treasures guaranteed to sweep you away somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line:

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Long before True Blood hit the HBO airwaves, Charlaine Harris wrote a more genial (if no less blood thirsty) vampire novel called Dead Until Dark. In it, her naive 25-year-old virgin waitress finds true love and an empty mind (you either already know why this is a plus or you’ll just have to read the book!) with super stud vampire Bill. But the real star of this story in Bon Temp, a sleepy bayou stranded town with a plethora of characters both, alive and dead, supernatural and super-odd that will have you turning pages as fast as you can. Here’s a story that goes down as easy as sweet tea on a hot afternoon!

 

Texas Destiny by Lorraine Heath

If you love a tortured hero, you’re going to adore Houston Leigh, ravaged body and soul by injuries suffered in the Civil War. Sent to escort his beloved brother’s mail-order bride across the Texas wilderness, Houston falls for southern bell Amelia Carson. What’s a tortured, honorable, desperate man to do, especially when your brother is not some shiftless ne’er do well but a good, hard-working man deserving of the glorious Amelia? Happily, in Lorraine Heath’s expert hands, the answer isn’t left entirely up to Houston. Amelia has survived her own ordeals and emerged stronger, more competent and ready to love. This is a richly satisfying and emotional read that never takes the easy way out. And that setting? I can almost taste the trail dust.

 

Meant to Be by Terri Osburn

Warning, this book is not available until May 21 but it fit in so well with my theme and was so much fun that I couldn’t resist including it. Sweet, disarming Beth Chandler isn’t exactly a mail-order bride but she is willing to take a terrifying voyage (okay, it’s a short hop across a channel on a ferry, but she’s hydrophobic) to meet her future in-laws on idyllic Anchor Island. During the trip she finds a welcome distraction in rugged fellow passenger Joe Dempsey and his dog, Dozer. The animal magnetism (sorry, it was irresistible) is not only doomed by the fact that she’s already engaged, but then she discovers that —yup… you guessed it— Joe is her intended’s brother. Fun, flirty, with an adorable and genuinely likeable heroine and a great supporting cast, watching these two fight their high-octane attraction is pure delight. Hit that pre-order button!

I could go on for a long time about my favorite southern delights but for those of you who want to really sink your teeth into the more over-the-top on that pile, I suggest digging up some of Kathleen Woodiwiss’s titles such as Ashes in the Wind or the seminal Shanna. They’re as lush and rich as praline sauce on bread pudding. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Author Neve Maslakovic Lists Five Favorite Time Travel Novels

  When I embarked on writing The Far Time Incident, I’m not sure I knew where the book would take me. The plan was for my narrator Julia Olsen and her co-workers at fictional, Minnesota-based St. Sunniva University to be marooned in the past by a saboteur. The place, I decided as I drew up an early draft, would be the ancient town of Pompeii. A volcano on the brink of an eruption, Latin, togas, sandals -- what could be a richer and more disorienting setting for the modern time traveler?

Of course, many authors have bent the space-time continuum over the years. Here are five of my favorite time travel novels, whose authors managed to pull off wonderfully unique settings (ordered by publication date):

 A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889): Mark Twain’s classic story, probably the first time travel novel I ever read, features sixth-century England, an engineer named Hank, Camelot, Merlin, and a solar eclipse.

The House on the Strand (1969): Somewhat difficult to track down, Daphne du Maurier’s haunting novel features an addictive time-travel drug, a fourteenth century Cornish manor, lords and ladies, intrigue, and a train accident. 

Time and Again (1970): Jack Finney weaves a rich tale about an advertising sketch artist sent to New York City of 1882, complete with photographs of the era, horse-drawn buses, and the Statue of Liberty’s right arm.

To Say Nothing of the Dog (1997): Connie Willis’s humorous novel involves Oxford University, Coventry Cathedral, World War II, and a piece of Victoriana known as the Bishop’s bird stump. The title is a nod to Jerome K. Jerome’s delightfully funny Three Men in a Boat (there was a dog, too).

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) (Spoiler alert) Perhaps not the first book that comes to mind where time travel is concerned, but Hermione's Time Turner does save the day in the third installment of J.K. Rowling's bestselling series. --Neve Maslakovic

Guest Blogger: Austin Grossman, on "You"

With You, Austin Grossman offers his most daring and most personal novel yet--a thrilling, hilarious, authentic portrait of the world of professional game makers; and the story of how learning to play can save your life.

I wanted to write the Great American Video Game Novel. 

I wanted to write about my time in the game industry in the 1990's, and all the exciting things that were happening there as we competed to invent this thing that was just turning the corner from toy to mass media to art. And I wanted to tell the story of four kids who would do anything to escape their stupid lives, but instead of starting a death-metal band or writing poetry or taking drugs, they decide to make the greatest video game in history.

But there was a problem, a novel-writing problem: Who cares about video games? Technically, I and countless millions of other people do, but to a novelist trying to tell a good story there's a haunting question: Is this just going to be a novel about people staring at computer screens?

I knew the obvious way past this. You just say "There's a video game with a bomb attached to it! And unless our hero gets a perfect score, it's going to blow up, and all - all! - the orphans will die." And that's one way to tell that story - you make video games a mechanism for a plot based on sensible, familiar real-world stakes.

But something in me said "no" to writing that novel. It was the nagging feeling I was underestimating the possibilities of a novel about video games. Making it about the bomb and the orphans was like saying video games don't matter. And people do sometimes play video games even when there aren't innocent lives at stake, don't they? There has to be a way of writing about them that showed why video games are the entertainment medium to beat in the 21st century.

I thought about why I make and play games, and I tried to be honest about it. Sometimes I want to goof around with my friends. Sometimes it's been a long, crappy day and I want to feel like I'm somewhere else for a while, doing something else, being someone else - in fact the way a novel makes me feel.

I first came to video games because they were a way of making friends, and a way of leaving my house and my town, of striking out on my own to a place where parents and teachers couldn't follow, long before I could drive a car. Then as now, I came to games for lots of reasons. I came them angry, I came to them lonely, I came to them curious about who I could be if I tried.

People come to gaming from their own individual histories, and it was putting gameplay into prose that taught me that everyone's got a reason to play a video game, and how they do it speaks volumes. And then I wasn't just writing a novel about video games. I was writing about friendship, about ambition, about grief, about everything the hero of a video game feels - you know the hero I'm talking about, the one at the controller making the choices, taking the risks, losing and winning. The hero, which is to say, you.

--Austin Grossman