So let’s say your main character’s parents own a funeral home and a single engine prop Cessna airplane. They just learned that the body of dearly departed Great Aunt Wilma is 500 miles away. Poor Wilma died while dancing the tango at the Professional Elvis Impersonator’s Convention. Even though the weather looks grim, Mom is going to hop in the plane to bring Aunt Wilma home. (Of course she promises to be back in time for your main character’s big soccer game).

Sound plausible? Well, I have a few questions. First does a body fit into a single prop engine Cessna? Would a mortician fly a plane with an impending storm? Would Aunt Wilma really get one last airplane ride? And would she still be dressed as Elvis?

If someone came into my library with these questions, I’d tell them to contact the Flying Funeral Directors of America. This is an association for licensed airplane pilots who are also in the funeral industry. According to their blurb, the organization enables members “to participate in two activities which are very much a part of their lives: funeral services and aviation.” I suspect that one of the 100 members of this group would have some answers.

I’ve found answers to some of my most challenging reference questions by contacting associations, like the Flying Funeral Directors of America. I’m amazed at how generous people are with their time and knowledge.

There’s an association for everything. They exist for professions, hobbies, fan clubs, medical problems, trades, sports, unions, governments, religious affiliations, ethnic groups, patriotic groups, veteran’s organizations, cultural groups..the list goes on. You can find over 150,000 of them in The Encyclopedia of Associations (Gale Publishing Group, Detroit). This multi-volume treasure is available in many libraries and is a favorite of librarians.

As a writer, I use the Encyclopedia of Associations as a starting point for my research. When I needed to know what jails were like in the Mississippi Delta in 1926, I made a phone call to American Jails Association. In one twenty-minute conversation, I learned about jails in the twenties, about the current size of the jail in my own county and about a sheriff in the 1800’s who believed that his prisoners could exist solely on a diet of tomato juice. I also received a few complementary issues of American Jails magazine. For another story, I needed to know what could make a pet squid sick. A quick email to the American Malacological Society and I had an answer.

Here are a few hints when contacting associations:

*Be respectful of the person’s time. I write down my questions beforehand to try to keep them brief.

*When you call an association, try to get past the receptionist. Introduce yourself, tell him what you’re looking for and ask if there’s someone who can answer a few quick questions.

*If the association specialist doesn’t have the answers, ask for suggestions about where else you can look. A knowledgeable person in an association can often point you in the right direction.

Next time you’re in your library, take a look at the Encyclopedia of Associations. It's a great resource for writers.

Oh and regarding Aunt Wilma, I have one more question. Do they really dance the tango at Elvis Impersonator Conventions? Let's check with the Association of Elvis Impersonators.

This is the first of a series. Every Wednesday, there will be a post about fun, quirky, useful resources for writers. Look for future posts on databases vs Google (trust me, it's more interesting than it sounds), the invisible web and very cool reference books. Hope you'll check back.

Halloween has me thinking about all the things that make me anxious or just sort of creep me out.  Once you get going on a list like this, it’s hard to stop.

Here are only a few of the things that scare me:

• The this-really-happened ghost story my husband tells about a basement apartment, a neighbor and a dead relative.

• Snuggies (especially the new designer leopard prints)

• The fact that at 3:00am almost everything on an infomercial seems like a reasonable and practical purchase (including the cellulite remover, the get-rich-through-buying-real-estate-course, and the automatic reloading paint roller when I lived in a rental apartment that I wasn’t allowed to paint.)

• The long gasp a baby takes just before he’s about to let out one of those really loud wails.

• Melted plastic

• The recurring dream that starts out where I’m having lots of fun at a party/ beach/coffee shop/karate dojo and I run into an old college buddy. When he asks me what I’ve done with my life since graduation, all I do is stutter and stammer because I can’t think of a single thing. 

• The blue computer screen of death (that’s the blue screen that shows up instead of all your icons when your computer is never going to start again)

• Another season of reality shows

• An empty page. I love to revise. It’s those first drafts that get me.

• Lines of people waiting for printouts two minutes before the library closes.

• Another really innovative social networking tool that everyone in the world is using that you MUST be on because it is so important that it is going to change the political, social and cultural fabric of our society (of all societies) and perhaps even alter the course of the human evolutionary path.  And if you’re not using it, then you will be viewed as a washed-up has been, a cultural anachronism clinging to an obsolete way of life, the same way a broken clamshell clings to the shore just before a wave comes crashing over it and washes it out to sea.  And people will make fun of you and mock your luddite values.

• Floods

• Medical tests

• Essays that predict the end of books and libraries (especially when the essayist decides to wax poetic about the above mentioned social networking tool)

• Snakes. Oh heck, throw in most creepy crawly things and scampering things too.  Small rodents, bugs, reptiles, etc. 

• Watching the dog go crazy when she hears a scratchy sound in the walls. This is another manifestation of fear of creepy crawling/scampering things.  Oh and just so you don’t think I live in rodent-infested squalor, this happened only once and not in the current house. And it was only one mouse.

• Traffic

• Not having a pile of books on my nightstand to look forward to.

• Nature documentaries:  They’re either about global demise (pollution, natural disasters etc) or they’re giving you an up close and personal view of the cycle of life. The second I see a tiger eyeing an antelope who has strayed from the herd, I reach for the remote.

• That there’s a Miley Cyrus song on the radio right now and I kind of like it.

• The enormous amount of fur that my dog leaves all. over. the. place.  This fear increases exponentially when I learn that someone is stopping by for a visit.

• The dentist’s drill (and I feel bad about this one since I have a really nice dentist).

• How really clueless I am about fashion trends. Big shoulder pads in or out?  What about tie dye?  And at what age should you stop wearing sneakers with sparkles on them?

• That I don’t know the name for those metal things that people wear in their stretched out earlobes.

My list could go on and on…Happy Halloween

        Every summer when I was a kid, my family would take the long drive from my New York home to my Great Aunt Lil’s place on the Jersey shore. She lived with my other aunts and uncles in a cottage-style house filled with surprising rooms and quirky spaces. The major attractions were the built-in pool and the pool house where my aunt cooked up amazing summer treats. No one made buttered carrots like Aunt Lil.
       In her basement there were shelves filled with books left over from her teaching days. I read them all. Ballet Shoes. The Bobbsey Twins. Anne of Green Gables. On those summer days, I wolfed down stories like I wolfed down her buttered carrots.
       Not sure if it’s fate or coincidence, but I now live at the Jersey shore and happen to work about a mile from Aunt Lil’s former house. Sometimes on my lunch hour I drive by.      
       The land is divided up. The pool is filled in. There’s a garage where Uncle Vinnie’s garden used to be. The pool house is now a rundown all-season home. But the cottage is there. If you look close, there are hints of the old days. A few trees still stand, including the big holly tree that guarded the pool gate.
       I’m driving by and I see the new homeowner. Despite my shy nature, I hop out of the car and introduce myself to the woman standing outside. I tell her all about Aunt Lil and the pool and the summers. I try to remember everything I can about the cottage. “They had plastic slipcovers. And the house was immaculate.”
      “Well, the house is immaculate now too” she says. “My house is always clean”
       “Oh, I’m sure it is. I didn’t mean to imply… I just meant…” After a few more attempts to fix things, I give up. There’s a long pause. Since I am one of those people who feels compelled to say things during moments of uncomfortable silence, I add, “I’m a librarian here in town.”
        The woman pulls out her cell phone and dials a number. “My daughter is upstairs,” she tells me. Then she talks into the phone “Remember that overdue book that I told you to return? There’s someone from the library outside who wants to speak to you. You’d better get down here.”
      As soon as I see a girl look out from the second story window, I’m flooded with memories. I wonder if she ever spent some quiet time in that tiny walkway on the top floor behind the stairs.
      “Been telling her for days that should return the book,” says her mom.
      The girl, about 15, comes bounding outside spilling out apologies. “It’s at school. But I’ll return it. I promise.”
      I start to explain that I’m not here for that, but her mother cuts me off with one of those looks. So I’m quiet. And I retain my role as the book police. A new career low.
      “Would it be okay if I walked over to your holly tree? It was here when there was a pool.”
       The woman nods.
      As I enter into the yard I hear them behind me.
       “What is she looking at the tree for?” asks the girl.
       “I have no idea,” says her mom.
       I block out their conversation and spend a moment with my tree. I touch a leaf, and I expect there to be magic. I thought it would whisper to me of summer days and moonlight swims and buttered carrots. Instead, it gives off the same what-are-you-doing-here feeling as the teen who now believes that librarians come to your door if you have an overdue book.
       I have closure now. It’s not the same type of closure I expected when I hopped out of my car and said hello. But I can drive on that road and forget to look at the house. Sometimes you have to move on.

My favorite vacations are the ones that start with the words “North? South? East? Or West?”

My husband and I used to do this all the time. We’d get into the car, decide on a direction and head toward the open road.

With no plans and no destination, if we wanted to spend the day watching the tides come in on the Bay of Fundy or wandering through the streets of Annapolis or driving for the entire day just to see how far we could go, there was nothing stopping us.

Unplanned vacations are filled with surprises, but they are not for the faint-hearted.

• You have to stay flexible. A grouse hunting festival in the middle of the Canadian woods could make it impossible to find a place to sleep. You may have to decide that instead of the spending the weekend communing with nature, it’s time to see the sights and sounds of the city of Moncton, Canada’s “most polite and honest city”.
• You have to accept the fact that the planners in the world get the great deals, nicer hotel rooms and often get to stay closer to the place where everyone wants to be. This is especially true if you wander into a tourist area at peak season. It’s best to stay off the beaten path. But that’s where the adventures are anyway.
• You have to have faith in the direction you’re going. That means if you’re driving along the Maine coast and you pass your 87^th “no vacancy” sign, you must never say the words, “I told you we should have gone south this time.” At 2:00am on a foggy night, even if you say it in your softest, sweetest voice, it will not be met with good results.

But something happens on these road trips. At some point we know exactly where we want to go. Our destination becomes clear.

My husband, who is a major history buff, says that his favorite days are the ones where we visit museums, old forts or historical towns. And my one of my best vacations was when we went to Prince Edward Island. I remember standing in a souvenir shop, surrounded by Anne Shirley dolls, wondering how we accidentally ended up in a place that I dreamed of visiting ever since someone put that first Anne of Green Gables book into my hands.

I was taking a break from my W.I.P. and going through some scrapbooks today, when I realized that I write like I vacation. Chapter-by-chapter outlines don’t work for me. If I’m not flexible, I get in trouble. But with a little luck, eventually I know where I'm going.