Shelley Ann Clark's Blog
September 18, 2014
The Official Have Mercy Playlist
I listened to a ton of music while writing Have Mercy. Makes sense, right? It’s a book about music as much as it is about a relationship. Along the way, I came to associate particular songs with particular parts of the book, and was inspired by a few songs for the songs that are featured in the book. So, if you were curious, these are the songs I imagine are on Emme’s and Tom’s playlists.
And if you have any of your own to share, please do in the comments!
Read more on my blog. . .
And if you have any of your own to share, please do in the comments!
Read more on my blog. . .
May 12, 2014
Missed Connections
My pal Del Dryden, fellow romance writer extraordinaire, came up with a fabulous idea for those of us who are (or aren’t!) attending the Romantic Times Convention this week– share a flash fiction story about a missed connection, up to 500 words, to celebrate all the connections made or lost or wished for as we travel to New Orleans and back.
I haven’t even left my apartment yet, and I’m already so excited about her prompt that I’m posting a little ahead of the game here. Hopefully I’ll just be kicking things off and not being terribly unfashionably early to the party.
W seeking M
February 22—Lincoln Park Conservatory—Artist?
You:
Sitting cross-legged on a bench under a jasmine tree in the Tropical Room at the Lincoln Park Conservatory on Sunday, February 22nd. Three months ago. Dark hair, brown skin, late 20s-early 30s? You were drawing on a sketchpad, frowning, until you looked up and saw me watching you, and then you smiled.
You had a really nice smile.
I think you might be an artist, because there were paint or ink stains on your fingers. I couldn’t see what you were drawing at first.
Me:
Brown-haired girl with glasses in a purple wool coat and scarf. Obviously insane, because I’d just spent an hour in the Tropical Room of the conservatory, reading every sign on every plant, reciting the Latin names aloud, and I’d only just gotten warm enough to unbutton my coat and unwind my scarf from around my neck.
Also I waited three months to post this Missed Connection.
I was at the conservatory that day because I hadn’t felt warm in months. Hadn’t felt anything, really, in a long time. Then you smiled at me, and my blood ran hot in my cheeks and I felt my heart beating through my twelve layers of wool and I felt alive in a way I hadn’t in years, from just that one look.
I thought I’d felt you looking at me, the way I’d been looking at you. If you’d had a Latin name, I would have recited it aloud until I’d memorized it. If you’d had a plaque I could read that would tell me where you grew, I’d have run my fingers over the engravings of the words.
I couldn’t work up the nerve to talk to you, so I walked behind you instead, underneath the jasmine tree. I was hoping you’d say something to me first, because I knew I’d never be brave enough to say hello. Maybe five years ago I would have been, before life knocked that confidence out of me, but it’s not five years ago.
Just as I walked behind you, you set down your sketchbook and stretched. Your fingers brushed the jasmine petals over your head, and I felt that touch on my own skin, imagined your fingertips against my cheek, on the back of my neck, behind my ear. I could see those parts of your skin—cheek, neck, the juncture of neck and shoulder, the shape of your biceps under the worn cotton of your sweater. I wanted to touch you, and I must have made a sound, because you turned around and I blindly reached for a jasmine blossom and plucked it off the branch. I didn’t know what else to do with it, so I tucked it behind my ear.
You looked at me again and held out your sketchbook.
It took more than a moment for me to recognize myself in your drawing. Some wild, lovely girl, as full of life as her surroundings. Warm as May and as welcoming.
It’s May now.
I wear jasmine perfume.
I haven’t even left my apartment yet, and I’m already so excited about her prompt that I’m posting a little ahead of the game here. Hopefully I’ll just be kicking things off and not being terribly unfashionably early to the party.
W seeking M
February 22—Lincoln Park Conservatory—Artist?
You:
Sitting cross-legged on a bench under a jasmine tree in the Tropical Room at the Lincoln Park Conservatory on Sunday, February 22nd. Three months ago. Dark hair, brown skin, late 20s-early 30s? You were drawing on a sketchpad, frowning, until you looked up and saw me watching you, and then you smiled.
You had a really nice smile.
I think you might be an artist, because there were paint or ink stains on your fingers. I couldn’t see what you were drawing at first.
Me:
Brown-haired girl with glasses in a purple wool coat and scarf. Obviously insane, because I’d just spent an hour in the Tropical Room of the conservatory, reading every sign on every plant, reciting the Latin names aloud, and I’d only just gotten warm enough to unbutton my coat and unwind my scarf from around my neck.
Also I waited three months to post this Missed Connection.
I was at the conservatory that day because I hadn’t felt warm in months. Hadn’t felt anything, really, in a long time. Then you smiled at me, and my blood ran hot in my cheeks and I felt my heart beating through my twelve layers of wool and I felt alive in a way I hadn’t in years, from just that one look.
I thought I’d felt you looking at me, the way I’d been looking at you. If you’d had a Latin name, I would have recited it aloud until I’d memorized it. If you’d had a plaque I could read that would tell me where you grew, I’d have run my fingers over the engravings of the words.
I couldn’t work up the nerve to talk to you, so I walked behind you instead, underneath the jasmine tree. I was hoping you’d say something to me first, because I knew I’d never be brave enough to say hello. Maybe five years ago I would have been, before life knocked that confidence out of me, but it’s not five years ago.
Just as I walked behind you, you set down your sketchbook and stretched. Your fingers brushed the jasmine petals over your head, and I felt that touch on my own skin, imagined your fingertips against my cheek, on the back of my neck, behind my ear. I could see those parts of your skin—cheek, neck, the juncture of neck and shoulder, the shape of your biceps under the worn cotton of your sweater. I wanted to touch you, and I must have made a sound, because you turned around and I blindly reached for a jasmine blossom and plucked it off the branch. I didn’t know what else to do with it, so I tucked it behind my ear.
You looked at me again and held out your sketchbook.
It took more than a moment for me to recognize myself in your drawing. Some wild, lovely girl, as full of life as her surroundings. Warm as May and as welcoming.
It’s May now.
I wear jasmine perfume.
April 23, 2014
A Little Bit of Dirt
The main character of my debut novel, Have Mercy, was born in one of the dirtiest bars I’ve ever seen.
I don’t mean dirty in the sense that it hasn’t been cleaned– although it certainly could have stood a deep clean, especially the bathrooms– I mean deeply dirty, rolled in life’s mud and disappointments, openly acknowledging, even celebrating, its hurts and sins and pain-tinged joys.
It was March, and I was there for a friend’s birthday party. This particular friend is a blues guitar player himself who once played regularly at this bar. That night I had arrived early, still dressed for work. Sitting alone in a bar that would have been opaque with smoke in an era before smoking bans, sipping bourbon, with nothing but my pen and a notebook for company, I watched a blues singer who had just returned from a tour in Europe get onstage and just own the music, own the crowd, own her life as she sang it. Every wrong thing she’d ever done, every scrap of happiness she’d ever earned or deserved, belonged to her.
I wondered what it would be like to be that kind of woman. I wondered if she was that kind of woman offstage as well as on. I wondered what kind of man would fall in love with that kind of woman, and what kind of man could make that woman happy, and how they would meet.
And so Emme was born. I started writing, letting the music wash over me. I made her a Kentuckian, like me, stuck somewhere between urban and rural, Southern and Midwestern. Maybe it was the influence of the bourbon that did it. I made her from Louisville, a river town where the blues have traveled up the Mississippi and stopped along the way, where they’ve been influenced by and influenced country music and rock and gospel and good ol’ Baptist church hymns.
By the time my friends arrived, I’ll admit that I wasn’t very social. I’d been pulled under by the music and the story that had woven itself around me. One scene in particular stuck with me, and was the first scene I wrote (I’ll tell you which one closer to release day). By the time my friend got up to sit in with the band, the air was opaque for me, not with smoke, but with characters and plots and themes and all the magic of the good, clean dirt of life that I wanted to roll around in.
I don’t mean dirty in the sense that it hasn’t been cleaned– although it certainly could have stood a deep clean, especially the bathrooms– I mean deeply dirty, rolled in life’s mud and disappointments, openly acknowledging, even celebrating, its hurts and sins and pain-tinged joys.
It was March, and I was there for a friend’s birthday party. This particular friend is a blues guitar player himself who once played regularly at this bar. That night I had arrived early, still dressed for work. Sitting alone in a bar that would have been opaque with smoke in an era before smoking bans, sipping bourbon, with nothing but my pen and a notebook for company, I watched a blues singer who had just returned from a tour in Europe get onstage and just own the music, own the crowd, own her life as she sang it. Every wrong thing she’d ever done, every scrap of happiness she’d ever earned or deserved, belonged to her.
I wondered what it would be like to be that kind of woman. I wondered if she was that kind of woman offstage as well as on. I wondered what kind of man would fall in love with that kind of woman, and what kind of man could make that woman happy, and how they would meet.
And so Emme was born. I started writing, letting the music wash over me. I made her a Kentuckian, like me, stuck somewhere between urban and rural, Southern and Midwestern. Maybe it was the influence of the bourbon that did it. I made her from Louisville, a river town where the blues have traveled up the Mississippi and stopped along the way, where they’ve been influenced by and influenced country music and rock and gospel and good ol’ Baptist church hymns.
By the time my friends arrived, I’ll admit that I wasn’t very social. I’d been pulled under by the music and the story that had woven itself around me. One scene in particular stuck with me, and was the first scene I wrote (I’ll tell you which one closer to release day). By the time my friend got up to sit in with the band, the air was opaque for me, not with smoke, but with characters and plots and themes and all the magic of the good, clean dirt of life that I wanted to roll around in.
