Author: lleachie

I am an associate professor of human services at a regional Midwestern university. I am also a writer of fantasy and romance, hoping to get traditionally published. I have one husband and am owned by four cats.

PitMad



Hope, I hear, springs eternal.


I have prepared my pitches for #PitMad today. #PitMad, for those of you who don’t know, is an opportunity for un-agented writers (like me) to tantalize agents with 280-character pitches for the books resting uneasily on our computers.

I have had no luck so far on #PitMad. I think part of the problem is that I’m not easily sorted into a niche. In PitMad parlance, I write paranormal, but I don’t write about vampires or werewolves, just immortals. In regular querying, Query Tracker doesn’t even have a category for Paranormal. Maybe Contemporary Fantasy, because I don’t write about medieval chain mail battles with dragons. 

I’m feeling skeptical about PitMad as usual, but if I don’t try, I’ll never know if it works.

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My pitches:

Anthropologist Anna Schmidt must chase the origins of a folk legend in the aftermath of the United States’ collapse to keep her sanity; instead, she finds the truth behind her missing childhood – and her role in stopping a genocide. #A #F #P #PitMad

Grace Silverstein, an eighteen-year-old viola prodigy, hides her secret talent, even from herself, until she and her friends are sought by a shadowy consortium who would destroy the United Nations and hundreds of lives with it. #P #F #A #PitMad

Dreaming of the Pandemic



I think this social distancing thing is getting to me.


I dreamed last night that I was at my alma mater, University of Illinois, and I was teaching there. And I had forgotten my mask and was wandering across campus — out of Noyes Lab into the Union, looking for something to drink. Nobody was wearing masks or social distancing. People sat on the Quad together, having picnics and playing Frisbee. In the Union, I stood in line with a bunch of people, and the line grew so long they shut the door behind me. 

Back into the halls of the Union (and, alas, this was the new Union, the one that no longer had the beautiful hotel lobby in the front entrance), I run into a tall, bulky man with long red hair and a beard, dressed in Renaissance garb, and we give each other a big hug. I gave another man a hug — he was more my height, skinny and blond. 

As I walked out to the Quad, I knew I would have to explain to Richard that I had broken social distancing big time. I couldn’t help it, I told myself, because I had walked out of my house into this new bacchanalia, where we lived life in abandon, waiting for the contagion to take us. 

When I woke up, I had a little bit of a sore throat, and I felt guilty, thinking I had caught the virus, until I realized that my social freedom was just a dream.

A Call to Action: Beyond Hatred



It occurs to me that most white people don’t identify with their latent racist thoughts and assumptions because they don’t identify with the word “hate”. For the middle-class white person, “hate” is too strong a word. 


Instead, what we experience is labeled “distrust”: A black person in a white neighborhood must be up to no good. Two black people, and they’re definitely up to no good. A black person knocking on the porch door — a danger. A group of black children — disruptive. A black person in power — must have a racial agenda. A black person reaching for his drivers’ license — a threat. A group of black people congregating in the street — a riot. A group of black people arming themselves and standing in front of the state capital — an insurrection. Distrust may be more dangerous than hatred here, because it’s easier to justify to ourselves.


We have to face ourselves and question the assumptions we make every day. We have to question the reflexive fear of the Other. Would we react that way to a white person in a similar interaction?


Our distrust is digging people-sized holes in the fabric of society and nullifying our fellow humans in this world. It feeds into the hatred of the people we’re comfortable with calling racist. 


We must address our daily mistrust. Humanity is at stake.

Writing Exercise: Welcome back, Josh

This is the Open Door Coffee Company in Hudson, Ohio. I haven’t been there yet.



I sit at the cafe with my cup of coffee, waiting for something. I’m not sure what — inspiration, perhaps.


Inspiration arrived in the form of a man, a young man who strode up to the table with no wasted effort. He was slender, almost slight. His dark brown, almost black, hair just touched his collar, and his face was boyish, with wide, almond-shaped eyes. He wore a quirked smile.

“You’re Josh,” I said as he sat down across from me. “I owe you an apology.”

“What for?” His face fell into serious, studious lines.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t let you grow up.” It was true — I chose him for the story I had written at a too young age, so he couldn’t show his true potential —

“That’s okay,” he noted. “I’m a writer too. You just got trapped inside the source material.”

“You weren’t supposed to know about the source material,” I growled. A dream — a racy dream — an embarrassing dream that I had written about to exorcise.

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” Josh countered. “We write from dreams. Then we revise. Look on the bright side — you can do a lot more with me now.”

“Josh!” I hissed. “Don’t you even — “

That quirky smile spread across his face.


Struggling for Inspiration



I think I’m getting used to quarantine life.


This feels normal now, spending most of my time indoors with an occasional sojourn on the porch. Spending my days working at the computer at home doing my class work, or reviewing my students’ work.

The only problem is, I’m really struggling with my writing.

When I need to refresh my mind to write, I usually go to a coffee shop. My choice here in Maryville is the Board Game Cafe. Like much of Maryville, it’s closed during the COVID-19 holding time. 

Drinking coffee at home is not the same. Even at my coziest, drinking coffee and listening to classical music, I don’t feel the inspiration. There are no interactions that catch in my ear, no moods except my own. So I’m struggling for inspiration.

Reimaging Josh

Writing status is pretty much stalled lately. What writing time I’ve had I’ve donated to trying to figure Josh. my male lead in Gaia’s Hands, out.


I decided to make him a few years older. He’s now 25 and an instructor at Jeanne’s university. This creates them more equal, which is a thing that had been bothering me since I started writing the original work some 5-6 years ago. 

But who is Josh now?

Much the same, although a bit more confident and a bit less puppyish, which is a good thing. Physically, he stands slightly below average, slender but deceptively strong from his aikido training. His brown-black hair touches his collar. He has lighter brown, almond-shaped eyes from his father’s Chinese heritage, and a quirky smile. (Which brings up the point that I can’t see people in my head. I have a person in mind when I write this, but I cannot find any up-to-date pictures of him on IMDB, alas.)

Personality wise, he’s pretty calm and balanced, yet he chose aikido to temper his anger from being bullied as a child.  He’s mature for his age, but he’s also a writer and mystic. He sees visions now and again that help guide his life, but he pays the price in headaches. He practices aikido and Shinto, has a fascination with Japanese spirituality, but his heritage is Chinese/Italian/Irish.

Josh’s worst fear is rejection, especially rejection for the mystical side he usually keeps hidden. He is driven by creativity, honor, and love; his biggest fault is his temper.

Josh, like everyone, is a set of contradictions. I still don’t know if I have him developed enough in my head yet.

Fountain Pens

This is a stock photo. I don’t write that neatly.

As a writer, I’ve developed this thing for fountain pens.

I’ve loved fountain pens since I was a child, ever since I found a 1920’s plunger style Parker pen at a junk auction. The pen wrote for quite a while, which was amazing since it was 50 years old when I bought it. I still have it somewhere, but it no longer writes. I might be able to clean the years of residue, but the gold nib is beyond repair and I’m no longer able to get the nib to replace it.

I have to say I’m not a pen snob (like I am a coffee snob). There are pens out there that cost $300 or more; I’m not buying those pens. I buy pens in the $25 range with my “mad money” (fun allowance). In this range, you can get pens that work just fine — Lamy Safari and AL-Star, Pilot MR, Platinum Plaisir, Noodlers Ahab. All these have smooth writing and ease of maintenance. 

Not all my pens have been successful purchases. I have a Kaweco Sport from Germany, and while it’s a charming pen (it looks like an oversized stitch ripper) it writes really scratchy. I may have to take it to a pen shop to get the nib adjusted. This, however, would cost more than the pen, which cost me about $15. 

You can get cheaper pens than these, but the operative word is “cheaper”. I got a Jinhao clear plastic (demonstrator) pen for $2 plus shipping from Wish. It wrote just fine, but it dries out when you don’t use it often. A good design has a cap airtight enough to keep that from happening.

I don’t aspire to an expensive pen — no Mont Blanc for me (although there are better pens in that price range). I would like to have one pen with a gold nib someday, just because they write smoother — according to one reviewer. Another says there’s no writing difference. I don’t know if I want to spend that much money to find out. 

So that’s what I’ve been doing with the allowance these past couple months. The pens do not sit idle. I use them for writing my daily journals and writing exercises in different colors. I think they help jog my mind into writing as they flow freely on the page and make my writing look poetic, even when I’m grumbling about how things are going. 

I might have enough fountain pens now, but they’re so bright and shiny that — look! Another pen!

Hope is a Verb



I’m working on the principle of hope —

I’m putting together an author’s website (not really a blog like this one). It would be helpful if I get published, either traditionally or self-published. The way I see it is “if you build it, they will come”. This is my notion, anyhow. I won’t post the URL until the site is ready to go live, which will be if something happens on the publishing front.

In reality, right now is a holding pattern. I am waiting for more news on one novel I’ve queried, and I may even query another (the new improved version) before I decide to self publish. I just like to have something to do, to work toward. I like to feel like I’m creating my own destiny. I am creating hope, by preparing for a future where I am published.

Hope is what keeps me going when I am feeling down, as I am in this pandemic. And accomplishing things gives me hope.

Memorial Day

Sunday morning and — No, it’s Monday. Memorial Day, when we look back at all those who have died in military service. 

As a Friend (Quaker), I am a pacifist. We believe that violence, even violent words, is to be avoided. We call this the Peace Testimony, and that is one of the most vital creeds of a religion that has no dogma.

We hold nothing against our men and women in the military; we abhor the system that exploits them for battle. Quakers believe there are no just wars and that there are alternatives that need to be tried.  Wars are fought for geopolitical advantage these days, and in earlier days were fought for land and empire. They were not fought for ordinary folk, but ordinary folk stood as cannon fodder. 

This doesn’t mean the Friends don’t honor the soldiers who have died in war. We mourn them deeply, perhaps more so because we feel they didn’t have to die. 

So Memorial Day is a strange day for me, a reminder that thousands go to war and fewer return. And I would thank every soldier for following their convictions, yet hope they find a way clear from that path.