Robin Antalek's Blog, page 2

Emily Gray Tedrowe author of COMMUTERS

Commuters  (HarperCollins 2010) was the first book I was asked to blurb so it will always hold a special place for that reason, but also for the delicate beautiful story of two people falling in love at the end of their lives.  For those of you who have not read Emily Gray Tedrowe's book, I am not giving anything away.  The main characters are in octogenarian territory, one close, one already there, and this new union causes anxiety for every person in their lives, except them, mostly for selfish reasons.  Emily writes of this passion, of taking second chances, so effortlessly, so engagingly, you will be drawn into the world of this late-in-life couple and won't want to leave.  Among the notables that agree with me in this stellar debut novel are the Chicago Sun-Times, The Chicago Review, Kirkus, Booklist, Entertainment Weekly (Best New Paperback) as well as Target who named the book to their amazing Breakout Book program. Please welcome Emily to the blog, as always, I'll see you in the comments!

Moments in parenting, in writing: a mother reflects     
1) My first child, my daughter, is three weeks old.  I've moved past exhaustion into a nether-world of too-bright colors, too much caffeine, and very little humor.  When my mother-in-law offers to come over once a week to give me a break I'm so relieved I probably cry.  I cry a lot in those days.  It would be the first time I separated from my daughter—she even slept in bed with my husband and me—and the very idea is sad, is exhilarating.  What do I want to do? My mother-in-law asks.  Take a nap?  Go to a movie?  See a friend?
Write, a voice inside me says, against every inclination I have to sleep, sleep, sleep.  So that first day I trudge to a coffee shop down the block.  For a while I just sit there, off balance from the sudden proximity of other people.  I just want to be in bed.  Or holding my baby.  In bed holding my baby. After a while I open my notebook.  Whose thoughts are these?  Bit by bit, I pick up the thread and find my way back into the story.
(Thank you, Karri, for the gift of that time.)

2) She is now one year old.  I'm caught up in a short story about an imagined day in the life of Jim Croce, the (real) singer-songwriter.  What I need are photos, biographical details, music sheets—and I find them, online, but that's not enough.  I push my daughter in her stroller up twenty blocks or so to the main branch of Chicago's library.  Her face lights up at the sight of the looming gargoyles, but today we don't go to the children's room.  Instead, I hand her toys and rattles and contraband Cheerios while paging through reference materials, scribbling whatever looks useful, steadfastly ignoring the glances that come our way.  My daughter strains against her stroller straps, makes noises that are cheerful, and then agitated.  I unbuckle her and she crawls around the floor while I flip through Jim Croce's liner notes.  She cries and I breastfeed her, sitting at a table with researchers and street people.  It's a race against time now to get home before her nap, so I copy whatever I can, writing left-handed when I need to, a sweet girl on my lap and a story in my head.
(Thank you, library guard, for your patience that day.)

3) 5:15 am, my alarm goes off.  This is the worst part, I tell myself, that painful sound and the climbing out of a warm bed.  If I can make it through these moments (I can't always, especially after nights where we're up with a crying child), the rest gets easier.  Coffee helps.  And a quick bleary tour of the internet.  Soon enough I'm writing, slow at first and then faster, better, as the caffeine kicks in and I wake up to my novel.              We have two girls now, one infant and one preschooler, and they are sleeping upstairs while I write at my desk for this one hour before the sun comes up.  When it does, they'll be awake, and loud, and need milk and breakfast and diaper changes.  But for now, it's quiet.  I've shut off the baby monitors; my husband will hold them at bay if they wake up too early.  I can work now, one eye on the clock, both hands on the keyboard.
(Thank you, Courtney, for those mornings.)
4) My youngest is two and a half.  She's in her high chair, waiting for a snack.  I'm snappish, discombobulated, wishing I could be alone.  My novel has been on the market for three weeks, and I'm not handling it very well.  Several times, I get my heart broken when an editor says she loves the book, but eventually passes on it.  I check my email forty times an hour.  I bark at my kids.  I can't sleep.            When my cell rings, I'm spreading peanut butter on apple slices for a hungry, fussy toddler.  At the sight of my agent's number on the screen, my heart skips a beat.  She tells me that we have an offer for my novel, from an editor and a publishing company I hadn't dared to hope for.  Phone wedged between cheek and shoulder, I shriek and laugh and dance, to the delight of the startled girl in the highchair.  Minutes later, I get off the phone, dazed.  My daughter is puzzled; she's holds up what I've given her—a butter knife.  Later, we discover apple slices in the cutlery drawer.
(Thank you, Alice, for sharing motherhood and work with me.  And for that life-changing phone call!)
5)  It's a hot late-spring day and I fear I've already sweated through my fancy new silk blouse.  The girls are absorbed by a kids craft project but we're smack in the middle of a packed book fair and the crowds are making me nervous.  I'm also worried; will my husband make it from work in time to watch them before my panel begins?  It's the first event for my book tour, and I so wish I didn't have to be mom right now.  I don't have the luxury of pre-reading nerves, because I'm fending off two sets of glitter-glue hands from my black pants.            Courtney arrives, and we all go into the small auditorium.  I meet my fellow "first time author" panelists, and note that none of them have brought children.  In fact, there are no other kids in the rapidly filling room, aside from mine.  Crap.  Not for the first time, I doubt my ability to balance this hybrid mom/writer life.            While my youngest is kept busy (and quiet) in a discreet back row with my husband's iPhone, my older daughter, now 7, chooses to sit in the very first row.  Directly in front of me.  She clutches a copy of Commuters and beams at every word I say.  My heart fills, and when it's my turn, I find myself reading to her.  With love.
(Thank you to my daughters.  For everything.)
Emily Gray Tedrowe lives in Chicago.  Her first novel, Commuters, was named a Target Breakout Book and an IndieBound Next Notable pick.  Visit her on the web atwww.emilygraytedrowe.com

Greg Olear author of Totally Killer and Fathermucker

Greg Olear and I met on The Nervous Breakdown where he is a senior editor.  He and I are also published by Harper Collins along with Jessica Anya Blau (Drinking Closer to Home) 
and Susan Henderson (Up From The Blue), a talented group I still can't believe I belong to.... and it's been great getting to know all of them as we navigate the publishing world together.  If you hear writers are a snarky, unsupportive bunch, well, I haven't met any of them, quite the opposite.

Enough about us, this is about Greg, and I can't be more excited about his hilarious guest post. Greg is one of those writers who is articulate as he is witty, possesses an unnerving understanding of the celebrity sub-culture as reported by US Weekly, all the while being well-versed in a variety of topics both political and social and can write his way out of a damn paper bag. I had the honor of reading his forthcoming novel, FATHERMUCKER,  http://www.amazon.com/Fathermucker-Novel-Greg-Olear/dp/0062059718/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298985840&sr=1-1 about the day in the life of a stay-at-home dad who finds out his wife may or may not be cheating on him, and was honored to offer a blurb.  I could compare Greg's writing to a combination of Nick Hornby and Tom Perrotta, but I fear I would be doing Greg a dis-service, because his voice is distinctly his own.  Funny, at times tender, and always achingly and accessibly human, you will run to get this new book.  For now, until October 2011, we have Greg here on the blog.  As always, I'll see you in the comments!



Eight Reasons Why Stay-at-Home Dads Are Better Than Stay-at-Home MomsBy Greg Olear

A quick caveat, before you hit me with a rolled-up Ms. magazine: I don't really think stay-at-home dads are better than stay-at-home moms. That was just a ruse, to get you to click the link. Besides, everybody knows that the ideal child-raising set-up is not to have just one parent at home, but rather to be adopted by the Jolie-Pitts.
That said, if necessity dictates that one half of the couple remain at the hearth to keep the proverbial home fires burning, there are some advantages to having that person be Dad.  To wit:

1. We can fix stuff.Although there are probably dozens of women adept at re-tarring roofs and snaking drains, home repairs tend to fall under our bailiwick. If something stops working in our house, and I'm not around, here's what my wife does: she calls me in a panic. "The wireless router isn't working," she'll say, or, "The thermostat is on the fritz," or, "Help!  There's a bug," and that will end her involvement with the problem.  If Dad is the first responder, we can have the Internet humming, the furnace serviced, and the spider crushed before Mom even knows something's wrong.

2. We're good with heavy lifting.A friend of mine summed up the balance of power in married life thus: "All husbands are good for is schlepping stuff." He's divorced now, but he makes a good point. Not that women can't haul stuff—y'all do Pilates and yoga and spin class; you're strong—but I think even Betty Friedan would concede that when it comes to lugging canvas bags laden with $200 worth of juice boxes, tomato sauce jars, kitty litter, and cases of Caffeine Free Diet Coke, we're more genetically suited to the task.

3. Our material needs are simpler.Stay-at-home moms have a reputation for dowdiness that is completely undeserved.  You may keep your hair short, but you still get it cut, and colored, and blown out—not to mention the obligatory mani-pedi—with far greater frequency than the minivan gets an oil change. And just because your clothes are "comfy" doesn't mean there aren't closets full of them; my wife has more workout pants than I have articles of clothing period.  We SAHDs are simpler. A pair of jeans, a modest rotation of ironic t-shirts, a decent pair of shoes, a fifteen-minute trip to the barbershop every two months, and we're good to go.

4. We won't take up with the help.Painters, exterminators, plumbers, gardeners, landscapers, pool boys, UPS guys, electricians, movers—pretty much everyone who comes to work on the house during the day is a dude. Overworked and undersexed stay-at-home moms might be tempted by the strapping young buck with the weed whacker. Not us. Remember the bohunk who painted the Sopranos' dining room and wound up getting all flirty with Carmela?  Something tells me he wouldn't have put the moves on Tony.

5. Our presence makes our kids more confident.An important study at Harvard (Or was it Stanford? I don't remember, and I can't find it on Google, but I'm pretty sure someone posted it on Facebook a few months ago) found that having a father prominently involved with raising a child during the first two years is a big boon to said child's confidence going forward. Daughters in particular really benefit from having Daddy around. In short, the more time we spend with our little girls, the less likely they are to wind up on the sixteenth season of Teen Mom.

6. We're immune to mommy politics.Your friend Jen is pissed at your friend Lisa because Lisa never commented on, or even "liked," the photo Jen tagged her in on Facebook, and this afternoon, both of them are coming to a playdate at your house, so the contents of the diaper may hit the fan. This is the sort of thing that drives SAHMs insane. Not us dads. No one expects us to choose sides in internecine mommy battles. We're like the chaperones at a high school dance—we stand idly by the bowl of punch (or pot of coffee, as it were) and watch the drama unfold.

7. It's in our nature.Pop culture is full of these alpha males—the Gordon Geckos and Don Drapers, the Donald Trumps and Jack Welches—who get off by brokering million-dollar deals before breakfast (as the bearded douchebag in Die Hard so eloquently put it), just as the lion is generally thought of as King of the Jungle. In actuality, male lions just hang out while the females do all the hunting. Male humans have the same inclinations. We may put up a good front—here a sexist comment, there a war cry—but secretly, we like being househusbands. Most of us do not aspire to robber barony. Don Draper? We'd rather be Kevin Federline.
    8. One word: lollipops.You're all about, "Hey, try this delicious hummus," and, "You know what would be good? This organic kiwi." We're more liberal with the yummy treats. There's a reason it's called a Sugar Daddy.
GREG OLEAR is The Nervous Breakdown's senior editor and the author of the novels Fathermucker (Harper, October 2011) and Totally Killer (Harper, 2009), now available in French (Éditions Gallmeister).  He is a speaker at the Quais du Polar noir festival in Lyon.
Please follow him on Twitter (@gregolear), friend him on Facebook, visit his website (the cleverly-URLed gregolear.com), and, if it's not too much trouble, compose a Miltonic sonnet in his honor.

www.fathermucker.com

Jessica Anya Blau author of DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME

Jessica Anya Blau is one of the most daring writers I know.  Her first novel, THE SUMMER OF NAKED SWIM PARTIES was lauded by critics and readers alike for her depiction of a young girl coming of age in 1970's Southern California.  I was fortunate enough to read an advance copy of DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME, Jessica's amazing second novel.  Jessica returns with a story of a family gathered by their mother's beside after a heart attack in a story that moves between the present day and the past that shaped them.  The story is honest and heart wrenching and laugh out loud funny.

Today, Jessica is guest posting with a piece that showcases her unique view of the world.   I adore how this woman thinks... and I know you will too.  After you read this piece I'm pretty certain you're going to want to talk about it... so I'll see you in the comments!


FLUFFY VAGINAS 
Here's the setting: a hundred-year old house with a wrap around porch that is so big it has actual furniture on it: rugs, wicker with blue floral cushions, lamps on standing tables that are covered with chintz that drags to the ground.  It's late afternoon, spring, the light is so bright that that everyone is washed clean: wrinkles erased, zits irradiated into obscurity.  On the rolling green lawn the girls from my daughter's class, all in their blue and white uniforms are playing badminton, and chase, and lying in the grass picking clovers.  The mothers look over the porch rails, lemonade or wine in hand, eating little homemade things that have names I can't remember (they're goo-goo balls, my grandmother used to make them), everything in an appealing shape and arrayed beautifully on plate with white paper doilies beneath them.I turn to one of the mothers, Heidi, her face is dewy, glowing, velvety smooth.  Her blond hair is so glossy it looks like she's being lit for a Pantene ad.  Something is different about her, but I can't quite place it.  She always looks pretty, but now, she looks radiant."Are you getting Botox?" I ask."No.  Do I look it?" Heidi touches her face, smiles; she's not offended by the question."There's something different about you.  You look fabulous.""Well I got my vagina fluffed," she smiles and swaggers a little, like she's drunk.  "What do you mean fluffed?" I lean in closer, hoping to get details before someone else joins the group and the conversation is shut down."You know, fluffed!" Heidi lifts her elegant manicured fingers and flickers them, as if a vagina is a feather pillow that just needs to be aired."I don't understand-" the porch is growing more crowded, the teacher whom we are honoring for his birthday or some-such nonsense has moved to a wicker rocker; a gathering follows. (This guy is hot and so gets little parties like this thrown by the room mothers who wear flirty sheer tops and platform shoes to pick up their kids from school.  Believe me, Madame Bellows, the French teacher with hair like a silver Brillo pad is not getting birthday parties like this.) "Fluffed!" Heidi says.  "Fluffed!""What did it look before it was fluffed?" I am imagining shriveled dried bean pods or old banana peels or maybe hanging red wattles like on a turkey.   "It was long.""Your labia, you mean?""Yeah, the lips.  They were sort of hanging there.  Dead." Heidi is the archetype of the private school mother.  Blond, smart, quit a brilliant career to stay home with her kids.  Her mother went to this school and so did her grandmother.  Her husband and brothers went to the boys' school across the street.  When I moved to Baltimore, we had to find a private school for my daughters as the public schools had things like metal detectors, armed guards, and no library.  I grew up in Southern California where just about everyone went to public school—we walked there, we walked home, our parents never showed up, there was no such thing as a class party.  So my ideas about private school and some cushy private world with hushy-hush rich people were based on bad TV shows and the Friday Night Movie of the Week.  What I didn't realize, and what I discovered after about a year of showing up at that place seventy-eight times a year for only a fraction of the events, was that these rich private school, country club people are just as freaky as the rest of us.  They have drug-addicted siblings, affairs, divorces, self-loathing, insecurities, and most importantly a great sense of humor that can make any fundraiser fun.  And Heidi, like the rest of them, has a life way more interesting than her good looks reveal."So what did they do to them?" I asked"They fluffed them!" she said.  It was clear I wasn't going to get the diagram with the knife cuts, the lifting, the fat injections."Amazing that you get your vagina fluffed and your face looks like you've been air-brushed or something."Our conversation ends when more mothers join us and we are forced to talk about things like arthroscopic knee surgery and husbands who refuse to take out the trash.  But my mind is drifting.  Why is it, I wonder, that when we do something that makes us feel great, our face readily broadcasts it, like a TV screen that just can't lie.  And, when, I wonder, did a fluffy vagina become such an asset?  Does the generation above me know this?  For all we know, all those pretty old ladies with twinkling eyes, are really just women blessed with naturally fluffy vaginas.


Jessica Anya Blau is the author of newly released DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME, which has been called "a raging success" and "unrelentingly sidesplittingly funny."  Her first novel, THE SUMMER OF NAKED SWIM PARTIES, was picked as a Best Summer Book by the Today Show, the New York Post and New York Magazine.  The San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers chose it as one of the Best Books of the Year.  Jessica lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher College.  

On Consciousness and Freedom

I came across this snippet of a speech that David Foster Wallace gave at Kenyon College and wanted to share it with you....


On Consciousness and FreedomBut of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. 

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing. 

David Foster Wallace, Commencement address at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, May 21, 2005. 

New Books!

One of the absolute best perks of being a "published" author is that I have been asked to blurb advance copies of books! Woot!  Among the books I have blurbed two are coming out this month and the others spread out over the year.  I urge you to check out these talented authors!

DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME by Jessica Anya Blau (January 18, 2011) the author of the outstanding: THE SUMMER OF NAKED SWIM PARTIES returns with a family tale like no other as the siblings of an eccentric mother and father are called to their mother's hospital bed. http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Drinking-Closer-Home-Jessica-Anya-Blau/?isbn=9780061984020

UNDER THE MERCY TREES by Heather Newton (January 18, 2011) when Martin Owenby's brother disappears he must leave Manhattan for the rural life he escaped.  http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Under-Mercy-Trees-Heather-Newton/?isbn=9780062001344

HOME TO WOEFIELD by Susan Juby (March 8, 2011) YA author Juby ventures into adult fiction as she weaves together a cast of misfits all searching for their place in the world. http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Home-Woefield-Susan-Juby/?isbn=9780061995194

THE BIRD SISTERS by Rebecca Rasmussen (April 12, 2011) debut author Rasmussen tells the tale of sisters Milly and Twiss and how they became The Bird Sisters. http://www.thebirdsisters.com/

FATHERMUCKER by Greg Olear ( October 4, 2011) author of the fabulous TOTALLY KILLER, http://www.amazon.com/Totally-Killer-Novel-Greg-Olear/dp/0061735299 Olear returns with the day in the life of a stay-at-home dad whose wife may or may not be cheating on him.   I laughed, I cried.  This book is going to be HUGE.  You can "like" FATHERMUCKER here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fathermucker/139831399398492

James Claffey on Process

I met James Claffey the way a lot of people meet: Facebook.  I put out a call for writers to use my blog and James responded with this incredible peek into his daily writing routine.  I am always curious to know how a fellow writer works and James certainly has an inspiring way to start his day. I want to know about your process, what you need to get yourself in the creative frame of mind.  Leave a comment below!  

On Process ...   James Claffey

These daAwake at five, the dog is upside down on the bed, feet aloft, her long teeth bared, the occasional twitch of the feet perhaps her dreaming of chasing gophers about the ranch. When I switch on the coffee maker and wait for the final death-gurgle of the brewing water, I realize how lucky I am to be able to look at the sunrise over the rooftops of New Orleans. This is my view as I attend to my pages in the same black notebook I always use. My predilection for this particular notebook, the precise time, the .05mm nib pen, the familiar coffee mug, is a direct throwback to my childhood, when I was a fastidious, almost-OCD little boy who fretted about having his shirt tucked in, sleeves folded just-so, hair parted exactly in the same place before going out into the wet Dublin streets. On my way to school the cracks in the pavement used terrify me—knowing that if I trod on a line it meant the morning would be a bad one, probably one with a beating in store, or one where my lunch money would be "borrowed" by Smelly Tobin, because I was too afraid to say no. How I would squirm in my school jumper, the scratchy wool irritating my neck. But I never told my mother.Now I am older, my wife, Maureen, considers me to be "fastidious." She means "careful."  A creature of habit—when I find something I like I buy it in twos so I can have a standby if something happens to the first one. My writing notebooks are uniform—Moleskin, hardcover, 240 pages, lined. At three pages a day this means I complete each one in eighty days, unless I'm sick or otherwise unable to show up to the desk. When I'm done, I date the outside with a white sticker—beginning date to ending date. Maureen makes fun of my process. She uses any sort of notebook or journal, unlined preferably, adding illustrations of me, our dog, my little boy (her stepson) Simon. She is a "go with the flow" outside the lines type of woman. I was crestfallen when recently, Maureen and our friend, Britt, informed me I was categorically, not, a go with the flow type of person (between you and me, I think I already knew!).So, I write, every morning, in my notebook, stream of consciousness, vomiting my thoughts out, clearing the way for me to work on my book. Does it work? Not always. There are mornings when I chafe against the task and take forever to scribble what I must. Lately, I've migrated to writing in bed, a break from my hard-wired desk routine, a sign I am becoming, maybe not a go with the flow guy, but at least loosening up and breathing a little easier.  The words come easier now, the thoughts flow from the nib, and I watch their progress so I can take the label and stick it to the cover when I'm done.My morning writing routine sweeps the attic clean long enough to attend to the story—the unfinished novel, my MFA thesis, demands my attention. Chapter by verse, paragraph by peristalsis, my eye roves, picking here and there at the weeds, the self-referential "I" that peppers my text, the weak metaphors, the odd fragmented sentences, the issues that demand a clear head and a tight hold in order to be properly addressed. I'm excited to make these edits, applying a little spit and polish to the words, my mind purged of the things I worry about—changes to the English Department website, Christmas presents for family back in Ireland, what route to take driving back to California this holiday season, how tall my four-year-old, Simon, will be since we last saw him in August, why my teeth sting for no good reason whatsoever.And with the slate scrubbed off, the Scrivener file opened to "book," I hunt and peck my way around the keyboard looking for apt ways to say ordinary things. The novel comes and goes with no rhyme or reason, some days words torrentially spill their way onto the page, and other days they are clogged good and proper. Still, the art is in the showing up.

James Claffey is a writer/educator living with his wife, also a writer and artist, Maureen Foley, in New Orleans, LA.His website is: www.jamesclaffey.com
james compass points toward the future; his glass bottom toward the sky; and his bluebird eyes are two wars poignant, flitting for an avocado ranch. a master of french letters, james slipped out of Ireland one night when the moon turned a lonely ball shade of blue. he has never chanced back. his compass points toward the future; his glass's bottom points toward the sky; and his bluebird eyes are two wars poignant, flitting for an avocado ranch. the moon still dangles beneath like an unused homeland. james' letters are renown for their firmness and girth of meaning. like an irish elephant, he has not forgotten his many lost loves and he flies close to the rim of the world maintaining a mighty hold on his thick quill pen.

An Explanation For My Absence

I've written a piece for The Nervous Breakdown that attempts to explain where I've been for so long.

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/rantalek/2010/12/writing-your-next-book-is-like-bad-sex/

I hope you'll forgive me.

Justin Kramon author of FINNY

There are books and then there are books.  Finny by Justin Kramon falls into the latter category.  It is a sweeping tale of one young woman's life -- while some might label this book coming-of-age -- the narrative carries the main character, Finny, (actually Delphine) well beyond her post adolescence.  With humor and compassion, through Finny's story we experience it all: life, death, love, loss, betrayal and triumph. Without becoming maudlin or histrionic, Kramon handles the most emotionally charged scenes with tenderness allowing Finny to draw you into her world so deeply you will emerge blinking at your surroundings and that is simply the best kind of book.
During a marathon read this summer I finished this book in a day.  I'm pretty sure I ignored everything and everyone to do so.  When it was over I simply could not stop thinking about this book and so I did what every person does in the technology age -- I googled the author.  I found his site, http://www.justinkramon.com/ (with fabulous drawings of the characters) and "met" him on FaceBook.  When I asked him to guest blog and he accepted I was thrilled.

You need to buy this book http://www.amazon.com/Finny-Novel-Justin-Kramon/dp/0812980239/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286803473&sr=8-1 and then you're going to want to talk about Finny with your friends.  We can start below in the comments.  It's that good.  Trust me.  It's that good.

Please welcome Justin to the blog where he talks about one of his (and mine) greatest literary influences.  The incomparable Alice Adams.


ON ALICE ADAMS by JUSTIN KRAMON
I picked up my first Alice Adams story collection at a used bookstore in Iowa City, when I was in grad school, and looking for something to get me out of a writing funk I was in.  I'd read one of her stories in an anthology a few years before, and remembered liking it.  I thought Adams was very famous, since most of the stories in the collection had been published originally in The New Yorker, and I'd seen her name in a number of fiction anthologies.The collection, a book called To See You Again, was fantastic.  I admired the technique – the crispness of the writing, the fluidity of the transitions, the elegance of the narrative structures – but more than that, I had a huge amount of fun reading it.  The stories were absorbing, filled with humor and incisive psychological observations, unsentimental but respectful of the significance of everyday dramas and losses.  It was like reading gossip by a close friend, only much smarter and funnier than any gossip I've ever read.  And it felt just as real – the characters, the scenes, the settings – like I was being led into some secret viewing room on other people's lives.I was amazed by the range of emotions Adams could create in the course of a single conversation.  In a story called "Snow," a man named Graham looks across the dinner table at his daughter's girlfriend, a woman named Rose, and Adams writes:She looks almost pretty at that moment, but not quite; looking at her, Graham thinks again, If it had to be another girl, why her?  But he knows this to be unfair, and, as far as that goes, why anyone for anyone, when you come to think of it?  Any pairing is basically mysterious.In three meticulous sentences, Adams captures a story's worth of tiny disruptions and adjustments in Graham's mind: a slightly homophobic resentment toward his daughter's romantic choices, followed by a surprising moment of acceptance, and capped off by the realization of a sort of universal truth about the mystery of romantic relationships.  Adams transitions seamlessly between the story's narration and Graham's interior thoughts.  All of this in a glance across the table.Adams never calls attention to herself.  Her language is unpretentious, and I've always had a respect for writers who can express complicated emotions in simple language, language that has a conversational tone to it, that welcomes readers in rather than pushing them away.  She's not imprecise or careless, just not formal.  Her impulse is to include you rather than impress you.There's remarkable restraint in the stories.  In other writers' work, an intense moment of realization like this is often followed by a dramatic fight, or tears, or at the very least, a space break.  But Adams transitions right back into the conversation, and there are ten more moments just as vivid and honest and jammed with insight before the end of the scene on the next page.I'm a big fan of Alice Adams' work, both the stories and the novels, so it's been sad for me to find out that not many people read her anymore.  She died in the late 1990's, and a number of her books are out of print.  I don't know if it's because her characters and themes seem dated, but if that's the case, I hope it passes.  I don't think most people read quality fiction for its politics, but rather to be absorbed by the stories.Adams reminds me of what I want to do in my own work, of the priorities I have for myself in my writing, and the kind of writer I'd like to be.  My fiancée and I have passed Alice Adams books to each other for years, and by now we've gone through most of them.  There may be one or two I haven't read, but I think I'll save them for a time when I'm feeling down about my own work, and I want to pick up something inspiring, something I know I'll love.
Justin Kramon is the author of the novel  Finny , which the Baltimore Sun has called "the rare authentic coming-of-age novel," and of which the Boston Globe has written: "Dickensian...a talented young novelist...a dickens of a first novel." Justin's work appears in many magazines, and has been honored by the Michener-Copernicus Society of America, The Best American Short Stories, the Hawthornden International Writers' Fellowship, and the Bogliasco Foundation.  Now thirty-years old, he lives in Philadelphia.  You can read about Finny, watch the book trailer, and view sketches of the characters in the novel at Justin's website,www.justinkramon.com.

Kim Wright, author of Love in Mid Air

 Kim Wright has been generating a lot of notice for her novel: Love in Mid Air.  A gifted writer with an eye and ear for the nuances of our everyday lives, Kim took something close to her heart and said: what if? 
People Magazine had this to say about Love in Mid Air :  Wright understands female friendships, the interplay of love and envy, the way one woman's change of fortune can threaten the group's equilibrium.  Astute and engrossing, this review is a treat."(People Magazine [three and a half stars])Kim was a recent guest at the UCross Retreat in Sheridan Wyoming and she's written this wonderful post extolling the virtues of the artistic retreat.  Please join me in welcoming the lovely and talented Kim Wright to the blog!



I'm attaching this picture because I don't think without a visual aid I can adequately describe what an idiot I've been.  This is the view from my writing desk at UCross, a creative retreat for writers, visual artists, and composers in Sheridan Wyoming.
UCross is Crayola-colored, as simple and touching as if it was drawn by a child.  Blue sky, green grass, red barn.  Writing colonies are often situated in places much like this – maybe not the west but someplace simple and silent, far from the madding crowd.  They are these wonderful enclaves where artists can go – usually for periods from two to six weeks – and have unlimited time to work.  The size of the colonies varies; there are only eight residents at UCross, but there were twenty-four when I was at MacDowell in Peterborough, New Hampshire.  Large or small, colony life tends to follow a pattern:  Everyone meets for breakfast and then you scatter to your various studios to work all day.  Someone brings lunch and leaves it at your door.  Around six, everyone converges back at the main house for wine, conversation, and a dinner lovingly prepared by the staff.  You can get an insane amount of work done.  The conversations are electric – one person I met called it intellectual wi-fi, this strange humming energy you tap into that makes you think of things you'd never think of on your own. 
And oh yeah, these places are free.
The reason I'm an idiot is that it took me so long to get on the colony circuit.  My friend and fellow novelist Alison Smith had told me years ago I needed to start applying to colonies but I demurred.  They're hard to get into I told her. Which is true.   They're all located twenty-eight miles from nowhere.  Also true.  And then I told her that I didn't think that a colony stay would be all that helpful to my work.  I'm the sort of writer who gets up and goes at it hard for three or four hours each morning.  It seemed like colonies would be most helpful for binge writers, who would go on great tears of work, dashing off whole books in a single wild-eyed, caffeine driven sitting.  But for someone like me, who begins to reap diminishing returns after a few hours at the computer, it seemed like a waste.
And in that I was utterly, terribly wrong.
Here's what I didn't figure in.  A colony allows you to get totally away from your life.  The good stuff as well as the bad stuff.  I wept when I left my dog and I miss my friends and my exercise routine and my ballroom dance lessons and pretty yellow desk.  But the truth is, if you want to break new ground in your work, it helps to break away from it all – the comfortable as well as the annoying aspects of your day to day life at home.  In the middle of my first colony stay, it suddenly hit me that a retreat isn't about writing more.  It's about writing differently.  A few days out of my normal rut and I begin thinking things I'd never think back home.  I become experimental, open, looser, more fearless and direct.  I may still be writing four hours a day but they're four completely different hours than I could manage at home.
Looking out as I'm writing this, deer and wild turkeys are literally passing right beside my deck.  It's an hour away from suppertime and it's my turn to bring the wine.  The bad angel on one shoulder is whispering "Don't post this – it's hard enough to get into these places as it is."  But the good angel on the other side is saying "All writers should go to colonies.  It will give you more confidence.  It will transform your work."
So….get thee to the nearest Google and type in "writing colony."   What pops up could change your life.
Kim Wright is the author of the novel, Love in Mid Air and has been writing about travel, food, and wine for more than 25 years and is a two-time recipient of the Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Writing.You can contact Kim at kwwiley@aol.com.To see Kim on the Love in Mid Air trailer, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDzUay7RqBw

Susan Henderson's Debut Novel UP FROM THE BLUE

Susan Henderson's debut novel UP FROM THE BLUE is going to break your heart.  The young narrator Tillie Harris will take up residence in your soul as she searches for clues to her mother's disappearance.  The writing is lyrical, and the voice, simply irresistible.  
I met the lovely Susan Henderson in New York City at a reading I was doing at Pianos Lounge on the Lower East Side.  I was thrilled for the chance to get together with Susan and two other Harper authors, Greg Olear and Jessica...