Cathy Zane's Blog, page 2

Unlikeable Characters

Guest blog by Mary Camarillo

A meme floated around Facebook recently, reminding us that we need to be okay with not being liked all the time. “You could be a whole ray of sunshine and people will still dislike you because they’re used to rain.”

I feel that way about fictional characters as well. One of my favorites, Olive Kitteridge in Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge and Olive Again, is prickly and opinionated and not anyone’s definition of a ray of sunshine and I’m okay with that. I don’t need to like her as long as I feel compelled to keep reading and see what happens next.

After all, likeability is such a subjective description. “Unlikeable” can describe anyone who doesn’t behave the way you do or like the same things you enjoy. Some of us long for sunny days. Some of us are happiest when it’s raining. Some people voted for George W. Bush because he seemed like the kind of guy they’d want to have a beer with. Some people don’t like beer. Some people don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have a dog. Some people prefer cats.

Because I enjoy reading about unlikeable characters, I’ve created a few. The women in my debit novel The Lockhart Women (She Writes Press, June 2021) are good examples of not always sympathetic human beings. The mother, Brenda Lockhart, is judgmental and egotistical, sure that she’s entitled to a bigger life, convinced she’s settled for less by marrying beneath her. Her oldest daughter Peggy is a self-described doormat and younger daughter Allison enjoys sex, drugs, and shoplifting, not necessarily in that order.

Brenda Lockhart’s husband announces he’s leaving her for an older (and in Brenda’s always judgmental opinion) much less attractive woman. He drops this bombshell on the night of the O.J. Simpson chase through Southern California. Brenda, blindsided, sits down on the couch and gets hooked on the Simpson trial. She’s convinced he’s innocent. Meanwhile her two teenaged daughters make their own bad decisions with lovers and crime.

Some readers can handle unlikable characters as long as they are either punished or eventually redeem themselves. While both outcomes can be gratifying, real life doesn’t always work out that way. Good things happen to bad people. Bad people get away with murder sometimes. For example, O. J. Simpson.

And, although people don’t always change enough to completely redeem themselves, most of us have a few redeeming qualities. Brenda Lockhart loves her daughters. Olive Kitteridge turns out to be a kind and generous neighbor, especially as portrayed in the movie version by the always wonderful Frances McDormand.

In the same spirit as Olive Kitteridge, Julie Zuckerman’s The Book of Jeremiah brings her protagonist Jeremiah to full life, in all of its complex, aggravating, and often wince provoking moments. The novel spans eight decades of the twentieth century and although we don’t always admire Jeremiah’s decisions and behavior, we still root for him.

Similarly, in Lord the One You Love Is Sick, author Kasey Thornton beautifully constructs a small-town community in North Carolina rocked by a young man’s fatal drug overdose. The deceased’s best friend, a police officer, has a nervous breakdown. The police officer’s wife reconsiders whether she wants to be married to him anymore. His younger brother won’t come out of his mother’s basement. Ms. Thornton is unafraid to show life in its gritty details. These may not be people we’d want to have dinner with, but they feel familiar and very much alive.

In Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs, Nora is a rage-filled, forty-something schoolteacher. In an interview about the novel, Publisher’s Weekly complained to Ms. Messud that Nora’s outlook was almost unbearably grim and that they wouldn’t want to be friends with her. Ms. Messud famously responded, “If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t “is this a potential friend for me?” but “is this character alive?”

I read to experience other people’s lives, people I don’t know and who I might assume at first glance aren’t at all like me. I love the eventual realization that they are actually someone with whom I have a great deal in common, and if not, someone I at least understand a little better after giving their story a chance. To me, that is the power and joy of fiction.

But if you read to find friends, no judgment here. Life’s too short to slog through pages you can’t stand. I’d still be happy to have a beer with you and discuss books, the weather, cats and even George W. Bush.

 

Mary Camarillo’s novel The Lockhart Women recently won First Place in the 2021 Next Generation Indie Awards for First Novel. Mary lives in Huntington Beach, California with her husband who plays ukulele and their terrorist cat, Riley. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in publications such as Sonora Review, 166 Palms, and The Ear. For more information go to her website https://www.MaryCamarillo.com and find her on Facebook at mary.camarillo.31, on Instagram @marycamel13 and Twitter @marycamelmary.

 

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Windows into Mental Health

Guest Blog by Florence Reiss Kraut     

 

Back in October, when I launched my debut novel, How to Make a Life, I did not have any idea that one of the ways I would be sharing my book with libraries and on-line book clubs would be as an example of how a family copes with the mental illness of one of its members.

I thought How to Make a Life, which traces an immigrant family over one hundred years through all kinds of adventure and troubles, had an intrinsic interest for different ethnicities and all ages.  It had drama, war, love stories, tragedy, betrayal. I thought those issues would be what attracted readers to my book.  But as I did my early presentations to book clubs and libraries what continually came through was the connection readers felt to the character of Ruby, the sister, mother, wife, daughter who suffers from a lifelong chronic mental illness that affects everyone in the family. It became clear to me that people were resonating to her.

While watching a virtual book event at a local library, I heard Marlena Maduro Baraf talk about her beautiful and poetic memoir, At the Narrow Waist of the World, which describes growing up in Panama as the child of a mother who suffers from mental illness. The immediate interest of the audience in the subject made me think about the books I had read through the years where the main character suffers from chronic mental illness. There are many of them.

Sylvia Plath’s autobiographical novel The Bell Jar came to mind. It so movingly describes the mental breakdown and recovery of a young woman struggling to find herself in a world where men are in charge and societal norms make it almost impossible for a woman to fulfill her desires and potential.

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest describes the inhumane treatment of people hospitalized with mental illness in the 1950s and 1960s and the importance of recognizing all people’s individuality and dignity. In the book Nurse Ratched, the overseer of the ward in which the main character “Mac” McMurphy is placed, oppresses and dehumanizes her patients, much the way the world treated them at the time.

I recently read John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down, a young adult novel, but one which is a must read for adults as well. In it, Green brilliantly describes the struggles and pain of a teenage girl, Aza Holmes, who suffers from an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Throughout the book we are in Aza’s mind, experiencing her pain and terror. John Green, who has bravely and publicly told of his own lifelong obsessive-compulsive illness, shows us Aza’s struggles, in all their complexity, with compassion and understanding.  In the end we admire Aza’s strength in dealing with her illness.

As I thought about it, in most of the novels and memoirs that I read which deal prominently with mental illness, it is the main character who suffers with the condition. The effects of the protagonist’s behavior on family members seem peripheral. But in Marlena Baraf’s memoir we experience her mother’s mental illness through the eyes of the author as a child, who tries to understand and help.

In my novel we see Ruby from the point of view of her mother Bessie, who devotes her life to trying to fix her daughter, and Jenny who is appointed caretaker of her sister, and Ruby’s daughter and son who try to escape their mother’s illness by running away. In thinking about our two books, I realized that they both resonated with audiences, because so many of our attendees were in families grappling with members who had mental illness or other chronic disorders.

Marlena and I decided to craft a joint program for libraries and book events that dealt with the effects on families of their member’s mental illness and what they did about it. We drew on Marlena’s personal experience with her mother, and my 30 years as a clinical social worker.

We found libraries welcomed the idea of a book program about the effects of mental illness on families, especially during May, which is Mental Health Awareness month. While most of the programs will have a librarian interacting with us, one library, in Chicago, has a psychologist who will be interviewing us, further enriching the program.

I am excited by these programs because they extend the ways in which we can talk about our books to audiences and share their relevance with people all over the country.  It proves once again that we should never underestimate how books truly reflect aspects of readers’ lives and help them to understand themselves.

 

Florence Reiss Kraut is a native New Yorker, raised and educated in four of the five boroughs of New York City.  She holds a BA in English and a master’s in social work.  She worked for thirty years as a clinician, a family therapist, and the CEO of a family service agency before retiring to write and travel widely.  She has published personal essays for The New York Times and her fiction has appeared in journals including The Evening Street Press, SNReview, The Westchester Review and others.  She lives with her husband in Rye, New York. Visit her at www.florencereisskraut.com. 

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Runaway Moms

Guest Blog by Deborah K. Shepherd

“Mothers don’t walk out on their children, no matter how loudly the siren song of a past love calls to them. Peter might need me, but my kids needed more,” muses Caro Tanner, the protagonist of my debut novel, So Happy Together. Caro is stuck in a stultifying marriage, with her youthful creative spark quenched in service to husband and children. When she has a nightmare about her college boyfriend, she takes this as a sign he still needs her. She wrestles  with her conscience, but rationalizes that if she finds Peter she will recapture her authentic self, and takes off to find him.

Although many women throughout history and in our most beloved novels have left unhappy marriages, very few of them have left their children behind. So, when Caro drops her three kids off at summer camp and heads west instead of home to her husband, she joins an exclusive literary cohort.

Let’s start with Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the mother of all “runaway mom” novels, which also happens to be one of my favorite books of all time. Tolstoy has me at “Hello,” or rather, his famous first line: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And, although there are happy families in this tome, the focus is on one unhappy family in particular.

Anna leaves her staid, conventional, loveless marriage to an older man, Karenin, for a passionate affair with the dashing Count Vronsky. When Anna confesses the adulterous relationship and asks for a divorce, Karenin refuses because the scandal of a broken marriage will threaten his position in society. He gives her an ultimatum: If she doesn’t leave Vronsky and return home, she will have to give up her son, Seriozha.

When I crave a story about doomed lovers and am in need of a good cry, Anna Karenina is my drug of choice. Dive into this great big, romantic, heart-quickening, heartbreaking, indelible novel. You won’t be sorry, and you’ll never forget it.

In contrast to Tolstoy’s book, Donna Has Left the Building by Susan Jane Gilman, evokes hilarity, not tears (unless you count tears of laughter), when Gilman’s eponymous protagonist, former punk rocker turned kitchenware-party-hostess, Donna Koczynski leaves her husband after she comes home early from a business trip and finds him in their kitchen, cleaning the oven, dressed in a French maid’s outfit, while a hired dominatrix orders him around from the bathroom. She also leaves their monosyllabic teenage son and incommunicado teenage daughter and embarks on a wild and crazy road trip to find the youthful self she sacrificed in service to marriage and motherhood. Ultimately, this is a story about love and hope enrobed in humor and absurdity. Good to read when you need an escape from the misery of our current world, although, in a surprise ending, the current world encroaches.

I’ve been partial to Anne Tyler’s work ever since I read The Accidental Tourist nearly forty years ago. Her novel, Ladder of Years, does not disappoint. The runaway mother here is Delia Grinstead, who walks away from it all on a family vacation, wearing only a bathing suit and carrying a robe, to start a new life in another town, wearing another identity. The reasons Delia leaves are ambiguous—but life is ambiguous. When her family finally finds her, years after her precipitous flight, she can only say “I’m here because I just like the thought of beginning again from scratch.” This is a book about choices, and while you may not agree with the one Delia makes, the writing is so good, you’ll be glad you read it, even if the protagonist exasperates you.

In Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go Bernadette, the decision of a mother to leave her husband and child is also a mystery. Fortunately, we have a detective to help us solve it: Told from the point of view of precocious Bee, Bernadette’s adolescent daughter, this is a mother-daughter story the likes of which we haven’t seen before. I fell in love with Bee and was intrigued by the mystery behind her mother’s disappearance and relished the adventure of trying to find her. Semple’s writing is deliciously funny and speaks to the heart.

The jumping off point for writing So Happy Together was my unraveling first marriage and my fantasy about just leaving it all and finding my old college love. I think many women have had similar fantasies. I didn’t act on mine: I wrote a book, instead.

 

Deborah K. Shepherd is a social worker who served as director of a domestic violence program in central Maine until her retirement in 2014. Her debut novel, So Happy Together, will be published on April 20 by She Writes Press.  Her essays have appeared on the on-line publications Herstry, Persimmon Tree, and WOW (Women on Writing) and her Covid-themed essay, “Snow Day, Maine, April 10, 2020” was a winner in the Center for Interfaith Relations Sacred Essay Contest in 2020. She is the mother of two adult children, has two grandsons, and lives on the coast of Maine with her husband and two rescue dogs. You can read more of her work at deborahshepherdwrites.com.

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Going Viral

Guest blog by Gretchen Cherington 

I don’t know an author who hasn’t secretly dreamed of their book going viral. We sell a few books at our neighborhood bookstore and wake up to find hundreds were sold overnight by Amazon, then thousands. We’re fielding interview requests from Teri Gross, Dani Shapiro, Reese Witherspoon, or Oprah. Fill in the blank with your own penultimate influencer who picks up your book and really changes your life.

The truth is that few memoirs get this kind of notice. In 2017, Dani Shapiro’s did when her fabulous Inheritance-A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love launched Shapiro into a new stratosphere earning her a well-subscribed podcast and connecting her to thousands whose paternity is determined by donors. Unlike Shapiro, Reyna Grande was largely unknown when her The Distance Between Us: A Memoir, showed us what it’s like to immigrate to the U.S. from Mexico, becoming an instant bestseller and introducing us to a new author with prodigious skills. None of us are surprised that Michelle Obama’s Becoming and Barack Obama’s The Promised Land were instant hits. But to re-weight the scale, Tara Westover’s Educated seemed to come from nowhere to viral status, bringing us a beautifully told and harrowing story about growing up with survivalist parents.

Most of us toil through months or years stringing thoughts on paper and then by more hard work and luck get picked up by a publisher. Going viral is a a pipe dream, as lovely as the aroma from that pipe full of fruity tobacco may be.

Recently, I was given the chance to re-frame my own definition of going viral and found that like much in life, it’s relative. Last August, after my book Poetic License—A Memoir came out, I had a lucky baker’s-dozen of friends who purchased multiple copies—from three to twenty-four to give away. Last week one, I’ll call him Bob, emailed me with what happened to two of the dozen books I’d signed for his poetry group, while he kept one back for himself.

The book describes my reckoning with a long silence about sexual objectification and molestation experienced at age seventeen at the hands of my father, a famous and revered poet. As told in the book, years of silence preceded a pivotal reckoning when I found myself speaking to my father’s doctor who had known my story. Marking a key point in my recovery, I told the doctor, “I don’t need anyone else to change their story of my father. I’m just no longer willing to change mine.”

Back to two of the books Bob gave his friends. One of them, I’ll call A, loved it, and immediately passed it along to her best friend, B, a member of their knitting group. Knitter B passed it along to her son C, then her daughter D, who live in Chicago and Atlanta, the daughter reading and passing it along to her neighbor E. Other knitters in the group, F, G, H, I, J and K got wind of the book and circulated it too. Meanwhile Bob’s wife, whom I’ll call Kathy, loved the read and mailed it to her sister, L, who winters in Florida. L circulated it through her book club, reaching—M, N, O, P, Q, R and S.

Would I have loved to log each of those almost-an-alphabet of readers as new sales? You bet! Would I have loved for every one of them to write a review on Good Reads or Amazon? Definitely! But as Mick Jagger once crooned, we don’t always get what we want. Bravo to Dani, Reyna, Barack, Michelle, and Tara who have. Most of us, like small businesses, will reach hundreds or thousands of readers over time as I have, more than we’ll ever know by our sterile sales reports, knowing friends are passing a copy along to their friends who dog ear and underline the book before passing it along again. A sea of authors and readers who, collectively, make up the vast sales of books. Whole armies of readers carrying our books into the world, multiplying, as Bob did, his original gifts. That’s the kind of math I like—one that multiplies the impact of one person starting a chain of influence to others. That’s pretty viral in my book!  #NoLongerWilling

 

Gretchen Cherington has jotted down lines on pages since being a kid and listening to her father, the poet Richard Eberhart, and all the great literary friends who visited, recite their lines. Published in multiple journals and nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize for her essay “Maine Roustabout,” Gretchen’s first book, Poetic License—A Memoir, was published in August, 2020 by She Writes Press. She’s proud of her first foray into book publishing while she works on her second memoir to be published in Fall, 2022. Gretchen and her husband split their time between the coast of Maine and the hills of New Hampshire. A leader in her community she has served on many boards, chaired four, and is retired from a successful thirty-five year consulting career. She greatly enjoys the antics of her wildly entertaining granddaughters—virtually, for now.

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The Power of Short Stories

Guest Blog by Corie Adjmi 

Some people don’t like short stories.

I don’t get it.

I love them.

Why?

Well, because they’re short.

And they pack a punch in a way that differs from a novel. If a novel is a slow burn, a short story is a spark.

I like that short stories end on an emotional note, often ambiguous, without a tidy resolution. Novels, on the other hand, require more closure because after spending 300 pages with a character, readers want to know more clearly what happens to a protagonist they’ve become invested in.

A number of brilliant authors inspired me as I wrote my first short story collection, Life and Other Shortcomings. Whether exploring first love, friendship or a difficult marriage, I used masterly crafted short stories as models when I first began writing and was developing my own style and voice.

Through striking dialogue, Dorothy Parker reveals much about the dynamics of a marriage in her short story, “Here We Are.” Readers experience failed communication between a honeymooning couple on a train as they discuss trivial topics. We feel tension build at what is not said. “Dinner Conversation,” the first story in my collection, shows three couples at dinner. The conversation seems mundane on the surface but underneath emotions brew. The main character is disillusioned and lonely in her marriage. Readers are privy to her thoughts, feelings and beliefs, which differ greatly from what she shares openly at the table. And in a separate story, “Shadows and Partially Lit Faces,” we see a husband and wife distant and disagreeing, both of them not getting their needs met.

“This Is What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” written by Nathan Englander was inspirational as well. Englander’s story portrays old friends, two married couples, getting together after years of not seeing each other. Englander explores serious content but his work is humorous as well. It was a template for me when writing “Dinner Conversation,” but also it influenced me as I considered writing about Jewish themes, religion and faith. Iris, in my short story “The Devil Makes Three” is a married, Orthodox, Jewish woman, who struggles with her own religious choices—what she wears, rituals she follows, unexpected boundaries she crosses.

The tone in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is eerie and worth paying attention to. Joyce Carol Oates does an amazing job of capturing a feeling, a mood, and I used what I could from her story to create the tone in my story, “Blind Man’s Bluff.” We both use house as a symbol for safety. In the Oates story, Connie, the young protagonist, ultimately feeling compelled, chooses to leave her home, to step outside, and that is where the danger lies. In my story, I explore domestic abuse and how ironically, and sadly, home —  the very place a child should find safety — is actually perilous.

Lastly, I must mention Philip Roth’s short story, “The Conversion of the Jews.” This story makes me laugh out loud. Roth explores the struggle between individual freedom and a weighing authority something I write a lot about in my quest to expose patriarchy in its many forms. In this story, Roth’s adolescent protagonist pushes back against religious doctrine just as my character, Kelly, in “Drowning Girl,” resists old ways of patriarchal thinking as she fights to find her voice, build agency and step into her own power.

As a fiction writer of short stories and novels, I appreciate both forms. But for me, short stories sting in a way that a novel cannot. I once read that a short story is a love affair, a novel, a marriage. And, to me, that sounds just about right.

 

Corie Adjmi is the award-winning author of Life and Other Shortcomings published by She Writes Press. Her work has appeared in North American Review, Indiana Review, South Dakota Review, Red Rock Review, Licking River Review, Evansville Review, HuffPost, Man Repeller, Green Hills Literary Lantern, RiverSedge, Motherwell and others. Visit her at corieadjmi.com

 

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Interracial Friendship in Fiction

Guest Blog by Jill McCroskey Coupe

In my novel Beginning with Cannonballs, two infant girls, Hanna and Gail, share a crib in Gail’s parents’ house, where Hanna’s mother is the live-in maid. This is in the 1940s in segregated Knoxville, Tennessee, where I grew up. Despite having to attend different schools, the girls become close childhood friends. After that, it’s not so easy.

My MFA thesis, a novella, written decades ago, was also about an interracial friendship. A group of my classmates, all of them white, insisted that, as a white person, I could not, should not write about black characters.

Although I disagreed with them, I put my thesis away and haven’t looked at it since. But I never gave up on the idea, and, about eight years ago, I decided to try again. Beginning with Cannonballs tells a completely different story, with entirely new characters. Only the scene in an empty swimming pool bears any resemblance to my first effort.

Remembering the criticism I’d received, I was curious to know how others have handled this. A fairly thorough search revealed that most books about interracial friendship have been written by white women, with children and young adults as the intended audience.

Luckily, I was able to find four beautifully-written novels for adults. In one way or another, each harkens back to the Jim Crow era. Without giving away the endings, I’ve provided brief descriptions of these novels below.

In Stranger Here Below (Unbridled Books, 2010), by Joyce Hinnefeld, two young women become friends when they room together in the 1960s at Berea College in Kentucky. Maze (short for Amazing Grace) is an outgoing Appalachian gal, while Mary Elizabeth is the reserved, musically talented daughter of a black preacher. When Mary Elizabeth gives up on her music and leaves school, the friendship falters. Years later, however, the women attempt to resurrect it.

Calling Me Home (St. Martin’s, 2013), by Julie Kibler, is the story of a road trip from Texas to Ohio and back prompted by Isabelle, an elderly white woman, who asks Dorrie, her thirty-something black hairdresser, to be her driver. The two are already friends, but there’s a lot about Isabelle that Dorrie doesn’t know. The friendship deepens when Isabelle reveals the reason for their trip.

Absalom’s Daughters (Henry Holt, 2016), by Suzanne Feldman, is another road-trip novel, this one involving two teenagers in 1950s Mississippi: Cassie, who’s black, and Judith, her white half-sister. When the girls learn that they have the same father, they decide to drive from Mississippi to Virginia to claim what they believe is their share of the family fortune he’s about to inherit. Along the way, they encounter incidents of racism, which also affects their budding relationship.

Melting the Blues (Gold Fern Press, 2016), by Tracy Chiles McGhee, differs from these first three novels in two respects: the author is black, and the friendship here is between two men. Augustus Lee Rivers, a black guitarist and farmer in fictional Chinaberry, Arkansas, dreams of hitting the big time in Chicago, even though this would mean leaving his half-white wife, Pearl, and their three children behind. David Duncan, a member of the town’s wealthiest white family, loves music, especially the bluesy tunes of Hummin’ Gusty Rivers, David’s nickname for his good friend Augustus. The year is 1957, and members of the “N. Double A.C.P.” are urging change in Chinaberry. Just as in Feldman’s Absalom’s Daughters (above), this novel has a touch of magical realism.

I feel very fortunate to have discovered these books. I’ve since met one of the authors, and all four of them are now my Facebook friends. Of course white authors can write about black characters, and vice versa!

But I’ll let New Yorker writer and critic Hilton Als have the final word here. While doing research for my next novel, I was looking through Sally Mann’s book of photographs, A Thousand Crossings (National Gallery of Art/Abrams, 2018), and, on page 167, came across the following passage by Mr. Als:

“I think the question should be both more pointed and more general: Who gets to speak for Americanness? To ask who gets to speak for blackness feels segregationist, as if black people, events, history, lore, voices, are somewhere ‘over there,’ separate from the larger issue of America as a whole. How can this be when blacks–like Native Americans, Latinos, women, Jews–are endemic to a country that has long tried to shut them out?

I think the artists who ‘get to’ speak are those who do justice to the country’s complexity, in work that is as complex, dense, strange, and incomprehensible as the country that made them . . .”

 

Jill McCroskey Coupe is the award-winning author of two novels about unlikely friendships, Beginning with Cannonballs (2020) and True Stories at the Smoky View (2016), both published by She Writes Press. Her MFA in Fiction is from Warren Wilson College. A former librarian at Johns Hopkins University, Jill lives in Baltimore. Please visit her online at jillmcoupe.com and at www.facebook.com/jillmccroskeycoupe 

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Encouraging Words – Kid (and Adult) Friendly

As we approach the holiday season, with the end of 2020 in sight, many of us are holding the hope that 2021 will be a better year. This past year has been full of uncertainty, anxiety, isolation, loss, and grief – and one that we are happy to have come to a close.

Staying positive and finding ways to cope with the challenges of 2020 has required creativity. Zooming – a word that meant something very different to me before 2020 (my energetic 3 y/o grandson comes to mind!) – became a common practice as a way to stay connected. And reading enjoyed a resurgence for many; books offered a respite, a distraction, an escape.

A local radio station began playing Christmas music on November 1, citing the universal need for hope and inspiration. My initial reaction was that it was much too early, but then found myself either flipping to that station or going to my own Christmas playlist. Listening did feel good. It was uplifting.

As I contemplated a theme for this December blog, I wanted to write about books that would bring positive feelings of hope and encouragement. Since late June, I’ve been blessed to spend time almost every day with my grandson who loves books. Reading was a favorite activity with my own children, and in my Blog # 10, Child’s Play, I discussed several classic children’s books that I read to my sons when they were young. I’m happy to say that many of those books are also on my grandson’s bookshelf. But they are mixed with wonderful new picture books that I’ve been thrilled to discover.

Here are a few for you to peruse and share with all the young ones in your life – and maybe even find soothing or inspiring words for yourself as well!

A well-loved book that has spawned more books, videos, and TV shows is Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by James Dean and Eric Litwin. It is a very simple concept in which Pete, who loves his new white shoes, steps in things that stain his shoes, but he is able to summon resilience to stay positive. The song is upbeat and kids love it!

Rory the Dinosaur: Me and My Dad by Liz Climo, follows Rory as he takes off on what he assumes is a solo adventure, unaware that his father is watching over him and helping him manage the obstacles he encounters. Rory emerges with an increased sense of independence, but also gratitude to be home again with his dad.

Peter H. Reynolds explores a similar theme in The North Star. With independence comes the ability to consider what we want as individuals, what path we’d like to take, what dreams we wish to follow. With beautiful ink and watercolor illustrations, the story follows “the boy” from infancy through childhood, where he realizes that his journey is just beginning.

Another more recent book by Peter H. Reynolds, The Word Collector, also explores the theme of self, encouraging readers to find and express their own words. The protagonist, Jerome, collects words, writes poems and songs, and learns the power of sharing his words with the world.

The Dark, by Lemony Snicket (Illustrated by Jon Klassen) offers encouragement to face our fears. A small boy, Lazlo, with bravery and determination, meets and conquers his fear of the dark, offering inspiration to anyone afraid of the darker, scarier aspects of life.

You Can Do It, Noisy Nora, by Rosemary Wells, also illustrates the power of perseverance. Nora’s beleaguered family begs her to stop playing the violin, but she refuses, committed to learning a special song which (spoiler alert) she does in the nick of time.

These are just a few of the wonderful children’s picture books available. I know there are many more that I have yet to discover. What are some of your (or the young one in your life’s) favorites?

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A Salute to Mature Women

Guest blog by Valerie Taylor

 

Do you remember the “Guess Your Weight” game at carnivals?

I bet I can guess how old you are, or at least in what decade you were born, simply by your reaction to a new television commercial by Knix, a lingerie company targeting mature women.

Surely, you’ve seen it. With scantily clad women of all shapes and sizes lined up across the screen, the voice-over tells us, “It’s time we remind the world that women over 50 still exist.”

Do you nod your head and whisper, “You betcha,” or do you chew your nails, vowing never to age?

I shout, “Bravo, Knix!”

Moreover, I say it’s high time we remind the publishing industry that in the United States alone 75 million mature women exist. Women who have the resources to buy books. Women who want to read relationship-driven stories that accurately expose real life. Like the way Knix portrays real women.

Readers of my newly released novel, What’s Not Said, tell me they find it “refreshing to read a book with characters that are not in their 20s!” Adding, “Can we…appreciate a book that talks about love after the not so happily-ever after?”

I suspect many readers of women’s fiction today launched the chick lit genre twenty-five years ago. In the decades since twenty and thirty-somethings popularized Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding, they have matured and so have their book choices.

Thank goodness chick lit is dead!

Or is it? My theory is that it’s morphed into a sub-category of women’s fiction I fondly call “chick lit for the mature woman.” As such, I think it’s high time writers and Hollywood recognize this phenomenon. Imagine, for instance, how fun it would’ve been had Diane Keaton ridden off with Keanu Reeve rather than Jack Nicholson in Something’s Gotta Give?

Instead of young, perfect women in search of the perfect man in chick lit of yore, flawed females (and men, for that matter) grace the pages of today’s novels. And while they still enjoy stories that make them laugh, women will stay up half the night reading emotional stories about dysfunctional families, infidelity, discrimination, abuse, and more. Why? Because they relate to these characters, they are them.

Consider the following four books that illustrate my point.

Land of Last Chances (She Writes Press, 2019) by Joan Cohen may be a novel, but it’s about real-life situations. Drawing from some of her own personal and professional experiences, Ms. Cohen crafts a complex story. As we journey into the mind of Jeanne Bridgeton, a forty-eight-year-old, single, marketing executive, she struggles with the possibility of a genetic predisposition to early-onset dementia and what it means for her career and future well-being. With each turn of the page, our own philosophy and principles are challenged.

What if you’re in your fifties and your husband suddenly walks out on you? That’s the dilemma Camille Pagán skillfully addresses in Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties (Lake Union Publishing, 2018). As Maggie Harris examines her past and the risk of taking a road less traveled, so do we reflect on our own lives, wondering how people saw us way back when and perhaps judge us now.

Building a house becomes a metaphor for life and relationships in As Long As It’s Perfect (She Writes Press, 2019) by Lisa Tognola. Most readers can relate to Janie Margolis as she balances her own desires for a perfect house, along with a perfect life, with the realities of parenting, job insecurity, money woes, and even a bit of mid-life extra-marital temptation.

Though David Nicholls may not consider his books in the same genre as those above, he might be pleased to know that Us (Harper Collins, 2014) influences my writing. Told from the husband’s perspective, Nicholls explores what happens to the Petersen’s well after the wedding vows are spoken. He encounters the tribulations of parenting a seventeen-year-old son at the same time his wife talks divorce. By combining humor and anxiety, Nicholls creates flawed characters and a truly relatable story. Could the title of this gem actually mean “us” the reader, rather than the Petersen’s?

Whether defined as fiction, women’s fiction, or chick lit for the mature woman, each of these stories appeals especially to women weighing the status of their own relationships and sorting through their own emotions.

“In the meantime, those looking for fun, feminist reads should take heed of the old cliché and not judge a book by its possibly pink cover.”*

 

*  “It’s the Return of Chick Lit—But Did the 90’s Most Divisive Genre Ever Go Anywhere,” by Sabrina Maddeaux on Medium.

Valerie Taylor is the author of the pink-covered debut novel, What’s Not Said (She Writes Press, 2020). The sequel What’s Not True (She Writes Press) will publish August 2021. Follow her at valerietaylorauthor.com and f acebook.com/ValerieTaylorAuthor.

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Road Tripping

Guest blog by Mary Helen Sheriff

When I was a child, I spent considerable time with my grandma Hootie on her balcony which overlooked Shore Drive in Virginia Beach. We’d count the RVs that passed by and daydream about renting one when I turned sixteen and taking a road trip together across the country. For many reasons this road trip never happened—in large part because neither of us was capable of safely driving an RV across the country.

By the time I sat down to write Boop and Eve’s Road Trip, Hootie had passed away, and I missed her easy company. Writing the novel was a way for me to imagine the road trip that never was–though Boop and Eve cover the American South rather than cross country and do it in a car rather than an RV.  I created the character of Boop as a way of spending time with my “grandma” in my imagination since I couldn’t in real life. Of course, as is the way with writing, Boop took on a life and character of her own, so while she’s inspired by my grandma, she’s her own person.

Independence, adventure, resilience–inherent qualities of road trips–also speak to the American spirit. I can’t help but think of road trips as celebrations of the pioneering spirit of our forefathers. In that vein, I’d love to highlight a few road trip novels to whet your appetite while you sit at home and wait for the world to return to normal when you can chart your own road trips once again.

It’s 1968 in Keeping Lucy by T. Greenwood when Ginny Richardson kidnaps her Down Syndrome daughter Lucy from her school for the “feeble-minded.” With the help of her best friend, the three flee from Ginny’s husband, his powerful family, and the government, who had legal custody of Lucy. Their road trip south takes them from Massachusetts to Florida on a brave journey that will test the bonds of love, friendship, and family.

In The Book of Polly by Kathy Hepinstall, Willow Havens takes a road trip with her cantankerous mother Polly from their home in Texas to Louisiana where Polly grew up. The town is so off-the-beaten path that they take the last leg by boat. Willow is hoping to learn some answers about her mom’s secret past. This bittersweet book beautifully captures the complexities of mother-daughter love. Polly will make you laugh out loud, while Willow tugs on your heartstrings.

Catherine Ryan Hyde’s Take Me With You is the story of a road trip to Yellowstone with recovering alcoholic August Shroeder, two brothers whose father is in jail, and August’s son’s ashes. It’s the story of strangers coming together to form unexpected bonds as they each face their demons. Hyde writes an uplifting tale of good, but imperfect people doing what they can to survive in difficult situations.

Finally, you might want to check out Kerry Lonsdale’s new novel Side Trip in which strangers, Joy Evers and Dylan Westfield, fall in love on a cross-country trip along Route 66. What follows is a story of romance, loss, regret, and healing. This is a novel you won’t be able to put down and won’t soon forget.

Next time you’re feeling homebound and stir-crazy, pick up one of these books and embrace the joy of the road, even if it’s only in your imagination. I’d love to invite the book-loving, road-tripping among you to the Facebook group @bookish.road.trip where we share book recommendations and travel experiences.

Mary Helen Sheriff is the author of the women’s fiction novel Boop and Eve’s Road Trip. Join her newsletter for more bookish recommendations and a free short story by visiting maryhelensheriff.com/free-short-story.

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Dysfunctional Families Everywhere

Guest blog by Heidi McCrary

As our New Normal continues, I relaxed on my sofa the other evening, and finally started reading the book-club favorite, Little Fires Everywhere. With a limited-series airing currently on Hulu, starring Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon, the timing seemed right to dive into the story of an affluent dysfunctional family. After all, nothing is more entertaining than reading about a rich family falling down a dark rabbit hole.

One only has to look at the popularity of the runaway bestsellers Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, and The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls to see the power of telling the story of curious family dynamics. And it never hurts to throw in a mother who is ill-equipped for raising children—something I am well aware of as my book Chasing North Star hits bookstores and lands on readers’ nightstands. While categorically a novel, it is inspired by my own upside-down childhood. So, if the world can have a multitude of books centered around the themes of westerns, wars, superheroes, and vampires, certainly there is room for one more story examining the underbelly of a family self-imploding.

But wait… Didn’t we all have a colorful childhood? After all, I grew up in the Mad Men era when mothers drank while pregnant, cars had ashtrays, and fathers could slap Timmy, the kid next door, for smartin’ off without repercussions from the law or Timmy’s father. How often have we told our children that we lived in a time without seatbelts and helmets? We basically ran ‘til dark, and found stuff to do that didn’t involve organized sports providing participation awards. Growing up, I didn’t acquire a single trophy, and I was too busy picking at scabs on my knees, and gnats out my hair to notice.

And apparently, I am in great company. As I a sat down with an interviewer recently to discuss the story behind the writings of my dysfunctional childhood, it took only minutes before I recognized that familiar look. A nodding head and smile told me that she understood my upbringing because she too had grown up under similar circumstances. As more read my story, I am hearing a thunderous theme of “I can so relate,” “That could have been my story,” and “let me tell you how messed up my childhood was.” If seated with a group on any four random people, I’m not even sure I would win the contest of My childhood was more effed up than yours.

Reese Witherspoon, one of Hollywood’s most influential voices for the empowerment of women, understands the power of family dynamics and how popular family dysfunction is for female readers. In a March 2020 interview with Variety, Ms. Witherspoon explains her reaction when she read Little Fires Everywhere, and her reason for wanting to produce and star in the TV adaptation. “When I read the book,” she says. “I just thought it was a beautiful exploration about different kinds of mothering.” Understated perhaps, but quite accurate.

But wait… Different kinds of mothering would indicate that there are actually a few of us who had normal childhoods. I have yet to find this family, but I will let you know when I do stumble upon this elusive anomaly. Or better yet, let me know when YOU find that family!

 

Heidi McCrary is the author of Chasing North Star. Follow her at heidimccrary.net and facebook.com/HeidiMcCraryAuthor

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