Terez Mertes Rose's Blog

Book 4 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles has launched!

**Goodreads Giveaway for this new release goes until February 11th and we're giving away 5 print copies!!**

At long last, OTHER STAGES the fourth and final book of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles has launched! I'm sentimental about the series ending, but it felt right, and I love the tidy feeling of a quartet of books. Speaking of quartets, there's lots of classical music and a string quartet mention in this final book, for those who like that kind of thing. One of the main characters is a violinist -- readers of the series might remember Montserrat from OFF BALANCE. Alice from the same book has made a return here, as well, and Katrina and April, featured in all three of the other books (OUTSIDE THE LIMELIGHT and BALLET ORPHANS), narrate in this fourth book, along with April's teen daughter. See, this one isn't just about ballet. It's about being a parent -- of a toddler, of a teen -- and being a bright, angsty teen who's encountering bumps in the road she'd never anticipated (remember your first teen crush? Yeah. Ouch!). The book's tagline is "Parenting meets the performing arts." It's a wild ride.

Check it out!

The Girls in the Stilt House - a review

I recently finished Kelly Mustian's THE GIRLS IN THE STILT HOUSE and had to give it a shout-out. There's so much the novel does right. It's the kind of novel you can slip inside of, and immerse yourself in lives vastly (hopefully) different from your own. Gorgeous prose makes you slow down in order to savor sentences and descriptions, but the tense storyline makes you want to read faster.

Check out this book!

Here's the review I posted:

This powerful, nuanced book has it all: a compelling, well-crafted storyline, sublime description, realistic dialogue and characters that you quickly come to care about. Set in 1920’s Mississippi’, the story packs a punch in its depiction of poverty, overt racism and violence toward the vulnerable. The story’s dramas, gritty and painful, never descend into sentimentality but instead provide the reader with a gripping, realistic take on a world, and a story, that needed to be seen and heard. Kudos to author Kelly Mustian for this impressive debut.

Join our launch party this Saturday!

My new novel, BALLET ORPHANS, launches on Saturday, January 2nd, 2021 and we want YOU, dear reader, to join us at a rollicking 80’s-themed launch party!

The BALLET ORPHANS launch party, co-hosted by Leigh Purtill, artistic director of Leigh Purtill Ballet, will be a lively 85 minutes with games, a costume competition for the best 80’s getup (in honor of Ballet Orphans’ 1989 setting), a mini ballet class, taught by co-host Leigh. Readings, a trivia game and GREAT prizes, like gift cards, tote bags, print book copies, and an AMAZING grand prize that will have you dancing (trust me here)!

All the fun will take place online on Saturday, January 2nd, at 5:30pm Eastern Time, 2:30pm Pacific Time. The Zoom-based event is free, but you’ll need to sign up in advance at Facebook in order to get the Zoom link. Click HERE to take care of that, or just to check out more details.

It’s all easy-peasy, and we’d love to see you there! Feeling shy and don’t want to be seen, but want to participate in the fun and be eligible for one of several prizes? You can show up and turn off your camera, so you can see everyone but no one has to see you. And maybe this is that chance you’ve been yearning for, to take a ballet class for the first time, or return to ballet after years, decades away. A perfect, and free, opportunity to dip your toes back into the practice of ballet again. And a perfect opportunity to act on a New Year’s resolution. (Be more engaged! Exercise, and lose a few pounds! Bring art back into your life!)

BALLET ORPHANS is part of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles, following OFF BALANCE and OUTSIDE THE LIMELIGHT While BALLET ORPHANS is Book 3 of the series, it’s a prequel, so no previous reading of the series is required. Buy your own copy HERE.

Crazy Rich Africans - the drive behind writing A Dancer's Guide to Africa

Seems there’s a perennial hunger to explore the personal lives of the globally wealthy, evidenced by the recent blockbuster success of the novel-turned-movie, CRAZY RICH ASIANS. Even as a returned Peace Corps Volunteer, I admit it, I’m not immune. I realized how much that was the case, sixteen years ago, when I started writing a novel, based on my two years with the Peace Corps in Africa. The writing stalled; it seemed bland, more earnest than exciting, until a character and a situation sprang to mind. How about, I mused, instead the stereotyped altruistic, liberal-minded, upper-middle-class American volunteer helping those less privileged, I’d make her humbler. Bumbling. And the main African character, Christophe, would be a wealthy, privileged, pampered African, far more cosmopolitan and privileged than narrator Fiona. It’s not that big of a stretch, either. Every country has its elite, and trust me, this includes African countries. Building on this, I made Fiona a cloistered Midwesterner girl from a good family, but a modest, middle-class one. A ballet dancer, at that, more “save the pointe shoes” than “save the world.” The main reason she joined the Peace Corps was to get far away from her sister’s bitter betrayal. Running from conflict, she landed with a thud in Gabon, Central Africa, where her encounters with the privileged, charismatic, (did we mention sexy and good looking?) Christophe leaves no doubt that conflict will continue in her life. Fiona, over the course of the next two years, is in for an education. Then again, so is Christophe.

Mind you, A DANCER'S GUIDE TO AFRICA has more depth than “impressionable Midwesterner falls under the spell of wealthy, sexy African man.” Alongside Fiona’s desperate infatuation is the struggle to acclimate in this world so wildly different from the one she grew up in. Her American precepts of being a “fun” English teacher, and being an outspoken, assertive female, land her into trouble, time and time again. In a country where family is everything and children are wealth, the single, unattached Fiona is considered poor beyond measure. And then there’s Christophe, his family’s fortune, their mansion, their ocean-front, palm-fringed vacation villa. While he and his family are purely fabrications of my mind, I’m certain they represent a segment of Gabon’s population. Gabon enjoys a per capita income four times that of most sub-Saharan African nations. (Think: oil, the fifth largest oil producer in Africa. And manganese and lumber and other natural resources.) But there is a high income inequality, and a large proportion of the population remains poor. And the rich, well, many are crazy rich.

I’ve been asked, in interviews, what I’d like readers to take away from A DANCER’S GUIDE TO AFRICA. There’s the obvious: I want readers to enjoy a good yarn, with dance, but not too much; with romance and conflict, but not too much. But beyond that, I wrote this story to share with armchair adventurers, incorporating the grit of Africa, the unforeseen challenges, the bafflement and reverence, in the hopes that they come to “see” the Africa I saw. In some ways I wrote this as a love letter to Africa, one that I want to share with the world. The more all people can relate to or simply learn about foreign cultures, understand them at the personal level, the better this world will be. There are rich Africans, here and abroad. There are poor, under-served, struggling, hungry families right here in the U.S. Values can vary wildly between cultures. Life isn’t fair, for so many people. There’s so much suffering in one part of the world, so much entitlement in another part. Fortunately, the hunger to connect, find affiliation and love, seems to define us all. I hope we take that similarity, that yearning for connection, and instead of saving the world, maybe just save each other.

There's a giveaway going on from now until midnight Oct 24th for 100 electronic copies. Check it out via the following link: A Dancer's Guide to Africa Giveaway

This article appeared first at The Classical Girl

10 Ballet Novels [for Adults] You'll Love

For a long time, “ballet fiction” meant the books that catered to young girls, slim tomes with pink, appealing covers. Noel Streatfeild’s more substantial and highly popular Ballet Shoes comprised my ballet fiction-reading youth. I adored the book. I compensated for its lack of competition by reading it over and over, annually, through my youth and adolescence, until the trashy romantic fiction genre caught my eye and stole my attention for {{winces}} well over a decade. What can I say? I love the ballet world’s theatricality and glamour, its dangerous, seductive glitter, and ballet fiction for adults just didn’t exist. Fast forward two dozen years. The movie Black Swan happened. The equally compelling documentaries, First Position and Ballerina happened. And suddenly I wasn’t the only adult wanting to read ballet fiction.

I should clarify something about this Top 10 list. While I’m calling it ballet fiction, it doesn’t mean it has to take place in a ballet studio or theater (or necessarily be classical ballet, for that matter). In Outside the Limelight, one ballet dancer narrator spends nearly the whole story offstage, in doctors’ offices, out in the “real” world with new non-dancer friends and ideas. The Art of Falling uses flashback to reference the narrator’s actual performing days, and chronicles instead her slow, treacherous journey to finding wholeness beyond her lifelong relationship with dance, its dark hold, the mix of slavish love and despair its presence conjured. Likewise, Girl Through Glass features one narrator (of two) who is a dance historian and professor, steering clear of the dance performance world in a way of avoiding her own dark past within it. The thing connecting these ten books is that all the narrators are dancers at their core. The craft, and the scars the lifetime commitment has yielded, have made these characters who they are. And who they are runs very, very deep.

Without further ado, here are my favorite and recommended ballet novels (and one short story collection), in no particular order:

1) Girl Through Glass, Sari Wilson
2) The True Memoirs of Little K: A Novel, Adrienne Sharp
3) The Art of Falling, Kathryn Craft
4) The Cranes Dance, Meg Howrey
5) Astonish Me, Maggie Shipstead
6) White Swan, Black Swan: Stories, Adrienne Sharp
7) The Painted Girls, Cathy Marie Buchanan
8) Ballerina, Edward Stewart
9) First Love (also released as The Sleeping Beauty), Adrienne Sharp
10) Off Balance, Terez Mertes Rose

I don’t know about you, but when I hear about a new ballet fiction book, I want to know, is it dark and dramatic or breezy/funny? (Or, as in The Cranes Dance, both.) Is it a literary voice (Girl Through Glass, First Love) or does it have more of an old fashion storytelling voice, the kind of book that you can sink into and lusciously inhabit another world for the afternoon (Astonish Me, Ballerina)? Is it deeply immersed in the ballet world (Ballerina, First Love) or is the dance world somewhat peripheral to the story at hand (The Art of Falling and half of Girl Through Glass)? Do issues relevant to women and relationships—self-acceptance, the power of healing and/or the power of friendship—come up? (The Art of Falling, Off Balance, Girl Through Glass) So, over at my blog, The Classical Girl, I've taken this list and nicely spliced it up to help you discern what will be that next favorite ballet read. I hope it’s okay with you that I included my own ballet novel, Off Balance. And I’ve also included, in the chart, its follow-up, Outside the Limelight, forthcoming on October, so that you can see what category it will fall into. Check out that list HERE. Or just go ahead and check out all of these books on your own. They're all damned fine reading!

Giving birth [to a book] on Mother’s Day

It’s minutes before midnight and I’m about to give birth. Well, to a book. But, weirdly, there are correlations: this pain of pushing, pushing, and finally, in this agonizing rush of both relief and loss, it’s out there.

OFF BALANCE, my first ballet novel, is out there, in stores. My baby, out in the world. But I didn’t choose Mother’s Day as its pub day for just this reason. I did it, because, if you’ve read my blog at The Classical Girl through the years, you’ll know that I’m a strong advocate for the “motherless daughters” movement, this alternate way to celebrate Mother’s Day for those of us whose mothers have died. I’ve made some wonderful connections with like-minded women (sorry guys; weirdly, this feels like a girls’ only club. You don’t mind, do you?), and it’s given me an interesting conversation topic for friends whose mothers are still living. And some of these friends, ironically, feel a sense of loss themselves. For some of them, their relationships with their mothers are crap. Dysfunctional. Hurtful. And they look over at us, the motherless daughters’ club, and all our fond memories of Mom. And it makes them hurt even worse.

Wow. There’s a lot of us hurting on Mother’s Day.

OFF BALANCE features two female protagonists. Daughters (duh). Hurting daughters. Only they don’t know it, because they’ve cleverly hidden it from themselves. It’s easier that way. You lost your mom as a kid? The unspeakable agony and loss of it, at age 10? Suppose you’re part of a family that covers that kind of pain up and just focuses on the positive stuff, the future. And two years later, there’s a stepmother, and she’s great, and really, you’re fine, and everyone in the family agrees, so, therefore, you are, and so the pain should be gone. And ballet’s all about illusion anyway, and hiding your pain. Kill two birds with one stone. Mom gone, but ballet career, even when you’re just a teen, is looking great. And it all pays off. Only the career, a decade later, gets killed, too. But you know the drill: out of sight, out of mind, moving on, you’re fine, really. And now, the second narrator: Mom’s alive and that’s great. A scare, many years back, but now she’s great. Okay, demanding, but great. Okay, occasionally psychotic, but great. Increasingly excessive demands, emotional blackmail, using her love as a weapon, but, really, great. Until her demands go a little too far…

This is OFF BALANCE. My baby. Today my baby is born and it flies out of the nest. Like a child being born and heading off to college a few hours later. And all I can do is wring my hands, watch it take flight, and pray for its protection. Which is pretty much all I can do for my own baby (the “real” kind), now sixteen, making his first tentative steps out there in the world. Between the two experiences, I must say, this is a Mother’s Day I won’t soon forget.

(This first appeared at The Classical Girl.)

Where do writers get their ideas?

People, upon hearing I’m a writer, tend to have a variety of reactions. Either their eyes glaze over with disinterest, because this sort of thing is just not their thing. Second reaction: mild interest. Wanting to know if they’ve read anything I’ve written. As my beloved novels remain unpublished, I elaborate instead on the smaller successes. Essays, I tell them. Travel, the performing arts, parenting stuff, life stuff. The occasional short story. “Ah,” they say, already bored. “Yes,” I say in return, smiling politely. An awkward pause ensues until I ask about their job and animation returns to the conversation.

A third reaction: their eyes light up. They’re thrilled by the notion. “You know,” they confide, “I’ve dabbled with the thought of writing myself. I’ve got some great ideas for a novel/essay/short story/fantasy trilogy. I’ve got tons of them!” When I ask if they’ve written them down, they shrug, shake their heads. The time factor, you know. But they are fabulous ideas. Seriously.

That’s great. That’s cool. I’ve got ideas as well. Hundreds. Thousands. Life hands them to you everywhere you turn. They crowd your brain, like an overcrowded cocktail party. Each one takes his turn pushing past the others, sticking his face up close to mine and shouting out his idea. A moment later he is pushed back, replaced by another. No matter. He has planted his idea in my brain. It now resides there, along with 70,000 others.

I’ve been asked, “where do writers get their ideas?” Here are my thoughts:

The best ideas come when you are driving. Showering. A general rule of thumb is that, the further you are from a computer or pen/paper, the better the idea will seem. But here’s the caveat: if you don’t stop what you’re doing that instant and write it down, sometimes that Really Good Idea gets lost. Which sucks.

More thoughts:
• Ideas thought and not acted on are not a dime a dozen. They are a dime for twenty dozen.
• Ideas that make it to a one-line scratched out note are more the dime a dozen type.
• Ideas that are more than one line or a catchy title are a dime.
• Ideas that I return to, spend an hour on, turning this way and that, are a dollar.
• Ideas that morph from there into a multi-hour, multi-day piece of work spawning other essays/stories are valuable.
• Ideas that turn into novels are priceless. Utterly priceless. A gift that gives and gives for the next fifteen months.

By the way. This idea morphed, where else, but in the shower. Full blown and perfect in every way. They always are. What made it to the page (with me, dripping from the shower, wearing a towel, typing away furiously) is a paltry representative of the masterpiece that had been hovering there.
This is why I tell people, when they inform me they have an idea, for them to write it down. Really, I encourage it. Strongly. To get your ideas down on paper is the most wonderful feeling. Creative. Liberating. And, well, humbling. Oh, so humbling. Because those thoughts, those perfect pearls of profundity, made you feel like a god. And getting the thoughts down on paper makes you painfully aware of your mortal status. But the good news is this: it also makes you a writer.

PS: I just read the most absolutely wonderful Q&A with bestselling author John Green, that’s solo worth a read. Funny, concise, candid, as he gives his own answers to the above question, and others. Best one, a response to how he deals with writer’s block: “I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90% of my first drafts so it doesn’t really matter much if on a particular day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers forever, because there’s a 90% chance I’m just gonna delete whatever I write anyway.”
Check out the rest of the blog here: johngreenbooks.com

This article first appeared at The Classical Girl