Randy Susan Meyers's Blog, page 41
March 13, 2012
Launch Day: THE BOOK OF LOST FRAGRANCES
How better to introduce a book, than to offer the first chapter?
The Book of Lost Fragrances
But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. —Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
Chapter 1.
Alexandria, Egypt, 1799
Giles L'Etoile was a master of scent, not a thief. He had never stolen anything but one woman's heart, and she'd always said she'd given that willingly. But on this chilly Egyptian evening, as he descended the rickety ladder into the ancient tomb, each tentative footstep brought him closer to criminality.
Preceding L'Etoile had been an explorer, an engineer, an architect, an artist, a cartographer and, of course, the general himself—all the savants from Napoleon's army of intellectuals and scientists now stealing into a sacred burial place that had remained untouched for thousands of years. The crypt had been discovered the day before by the explorer Emile Saurent and his team of Egyptian boys, who had stopped digging when they unearthed the sealed stone door. Now the twenty-nine-year-old Napoleon would have the privilege of being the first man to see what had lain lost and forgotten for millennia. It was no secret that he entertained dreams of conquering Egypt. But his grand ambitions went beyond military conquests. Under his aegis, Egypt's history was being explored, studied and mapped.
At the bottom of the ladder, L'Etoile joined the assembled party in a dimly lit vestibule. He sniffed and identified limestone and plaster dust, stale air and the workers' body odor, and a hint of another scent almost too faint to take in.
Four pink granite columns, their bases buried under piles of dirt and debris, held up a ceiling painted with a rich lapis lazuli and a silver astronomical star chart. Cut into the walls were several doors, one larger than the others. Here Saurent was already chiseling away at its plaster seal.
The walls of the antechamber were painted with delicate and detailed murals, beautifully rendered in earth-toned colors. The murals were so vibrant L'Etoile expected to smell the paint, but it was Napoleon's cologne he breathed in. The stylized motif of water lilies that bordered the crypt and framed the paintings interested the perfumer. Egyptians called the flower the Blue Lotus and had been using its essence in perfumes for thousands of years. L'Etoile, who at thirty had already spent almost a decade studying the sophisticated and ancient Egyptian art of perfume making, knew this flower and its properties well. Its perfume was lovely, but what separated it from other flowers was its hallucinogenic properties. He'd experienced them firsthand and found them to be an excellent solution when his past rose up and pushed at his present.
The lotus wasn't the only floral element in the paintings. Workers took seeds from sacks in storerooms in the first panel and planted beds in the next. In the following panel they tended the emerging shoots and blooms and trees and then in progression cut the flowers, boughs and herbs and picked the fruit. In the last they carried the bounty to the man L'Etoile assumed was the deceased, and laid it at his feet.
As more plaster fell and chips hit the alabaster floor, Abu, the guide Saurent had brought, lectured the men about what they were seeing. Abu's recitation was interesting, but the odors of perspiration, burning wicks and chalky dust began to overwhelm L'Etoile, and he glanced over at the general. As much as the perfumer suffered, he knew it was worse for Napoleon. So great was the commander's sensitivity to scent, he couldn't tolerate being around certain servants, soldiers or women whose smell disagreed with him. There were stories of his extended baths and his excessive use of eau de cologne – his private blend made of lemon, citron, bergamot and rosemary. The general even had special candles (they lit this dark chamber now) sent over from France because they were made with a wax obtained by crystallizing sperm whale oil that burned with a less noxious odor.
Napoleon's obsession was one of the reasons L'Etoile was still in Egypt. The general had asked him to stay on longer so he could have a perfumer at his disposal. L'Etoile hadn't minded. Everything that had mattered to him in Paris had been lost six years before during the Reign of Terror. Nothing waited for him at home but memories.
As Saurent chipped away at the last of the plaster, the perfumer edged closer to study the deep carvings on the door. Here too was a border of blue lotus, these framing cartouches of the same indecipherable hieroglyphics that one saw all across Egypt. Perhaps the newly discovered stone in the port city of Rashid would yield clues as to how to translate these markings.
"All done," Saurent said as he gave his tools to one of the Egyptian boys and dusted off his hands. "Général?"
Napoleon stepped up to the portal and tried to twist the still-bright brass ring. Coughed. Pulled harder. The general was lean, almost emaciated, and L'Etoile hoped he'd be able to make it budge. Finally, a loud creaking echoed in the cavern as the door swung open.
Saurent and L'Etoile joined the general on the threshold, all three of them thrusting their candles into the darkness to enliven the inner chamber, and in the flickering pale yellow light, a corridor filled with treasures revealed itself.
But it wasn't the elaborate wall drawings in the passageway, the alabaster jars, the finely carved and decorated sculptures, or the treasure-filled wooden chests that L'Etoile would remember for the rest of his life. It was the warm, sweet air that rushed out to embrace him.
The perfumer smelled death and history. Faint whiffs of tired flowers, fruits, herbs and woods. Most of these he was familiar with – but he smelled other notes, too. Weaker. Less familiar. Only ideas of scents, really, but they mesmerized him and drew him forward, tantalizing and entreating like a lovely dream on the verge of being lost forever.
[image error] Internationally bestselling author M.J. Rose, is the author of 12 novels (The Book of Lost Fragrances March 2012) and two nonfiction books including Buzz Your Book, co-authored with Douglas Clegg. Her novel The Reincarnationist was the basis for the Fox TV show PAST LIVES. Rose was a founding board member of ITW. She has been on The Today Show, CNN, Fox News, All Things Considered, in the NYT, O magazine, The Wall St. Journal and more. Rose was the creative director of a top NYC ad agency and the creator of Authorbuzz.com, the first marketing company for authors since 2005.Follow her on Twitter @MJRose.
March 6, 2012
Contraception & The VIDA COUNT: The Nightmare Connection
[image error]I woke up (just moments ago) with the proverbial pounding three am heart. I had a nightmare about trying to convince unresponsive authorities about young girls being attacked. The specifics of my nightmare don't matter (is there anything more boring than hearing someone recount their dreams point by point? It happened in my house, but different—ya know what I mean?)
As I trembled myself calm, the clinging details of the dream troubled me so much I had to take Gaviscom for my nausea as I tried to analyze it my terror. Trying to be logical, I analyzed the day, which I'd spent:
1) Writing about the VIDA Count: where they (VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts) examined leading and literary magazines and newspapers for the gender breakdown of writers, reviewers, and books reviewed . . .
2) Incorporating recent Republican positions about contraception into my essay about gender inequality in the media and . . .
3) Thinking about a conversation with someone whose daughter had been exposed to a sexual predator, which engendered revelations about my own childhood experiences with the problem.
How does this all come together? Bear with me for a few paragraphs.
Recently, the noisiest of Republicans seem eager to drive women back to the days before available
contraception, control of their bodies, or encouragement of pursuing higher education. As written in the New York Times, The Senate vote on "Republican effort to let employers and health insurance companies deny coverage for contraceptives and other items they object to on religious or moral grounds," was 51-48."
Which means that almost half of the Americans representing us in the United States Senate, were willing to give away women's right to have birth control included in their insurance based on 'moral grounds.'
Again, according to the New York Times, "the Virginia Senate adopted a revised bill on Tuesday that still requires doctors to perform an ultrasound on women before they have an abortion, but also says that women cannot be forced to have an invasive vaginal ultrasound."
It took a national uproar to stop Virginia from requiring women to undergo the humiliation of having a large probe put inside their vagina.
And in the 2011 VIDA count everything seems sadly status quo compared to last year's dismal gender breakdown. Examples include:
The New York Review of Books reviewed 17 works by women, 75 by men.
The Atlantic printed 64 articles by women, 184 by men.
The New York Times Book Review reviewed 273 women authors, 520 men.
(All was not news of inequality: Granta was close to parity, with articles by 34 women and 30 men.)
It was sadly interesting to me that the moment I posted the VIDA Count on my Facebook page, a male friend wrote: "The charts are useless without knowing the submissions breakdown. If the ratios between male/female submissions equal that of male/female pubs, then there's no point to be made. If the numbers are wildly different, and skewed to more male subs, then the numbers look good for females. If the sub numbers are skewed toward more female subs, then there's a potential problem."
It was depressing, and similar to reactions from some folks last year: Prove it! Maybe women aren't submitting! Maybe they're only writing stupid things about domestic crap!
In other words, no matter how much solid statistical evidence is presented, there are many who will only believe there is gender (oh, and how much racial and cultural!) bias after we've somehow proven that women and non-white men are out their submitting pieces as excellent and worthy as white men, and submitting them as often.
"Don't more men than women submit? This is what I hear from editors." I've read this opinion-written-as-fact too often, usually presented with a figurative airy wave, as though this knowledge is in the very molecules we breathe. If that is true, why is every writer's group I've ever taught, participated in, or witnessed, so weighted to females? Are all the males at home stuffing envelopes with their work?
Why the need to have this inequity proven beyond the numbers? Do folks think that publishing could be statistically different from the rest of the world?
… a new White House report shows that on average women still only make about 75% as much as their male counterparts. CNN March 2011
Roxanne Gay nails the issue in "Bitches Be Tripping,": "Whenever this conversation, this tiresome talk of women and men and fairness and parity, comes up, everyone immediately becomes defensive and morphs into statistical experts, trying to find ways to discredit the numbers or to manifest parity when clearly there is little or none. People belittle the issue, make jokes, dismiss the problem, offer pithy commentary, and otherwise avoid engaging the issue in any sort of meaningful way . . . This conversation is stalled. We keep trying to find ways to "prove" there is a problem."
There are many reasons why 'The Count' is important—not the least of which, to me, is how these micro-indignities and inequalities effect a girl's perception of herself, as she becomes a woman, and a boy's perception of women, as he becomes a man.
Equality is healthy for all people—men and women of all cultures and colors—but those in power will often fight longest and hardest just as they feel their advantage is slipping from their fingers.
Is this what is happening now?
In Texas there is a law where "Not only must doctors perform vaginal ultrasounds in many cases, but they must face the monitor toward the patient, making it hard for her to look away, and they must describe the image in detail."
A New York Times book reviewer recently called female author Jodi Kantor's book, "The Obamas," chick nonfiction. A year ago, the NYT described male author Joseph Ellis's similarly themed book "First Family: Abigail and John Adams," a "portrait of the couple with authoritative historical perspective."
In truth, both reviews were positive. Both would encourage readers, but one contains that taint of micro-inequity that serves to stab women's confidence with a thousand paper cuts.
Which brings me back to my three am nightmares, where these indignities sometimes land. After writing about the topic so many times, it seeps into one's psyche deeper than you think it might. You worry about your daughters and your sons growing up with swords of inequality still dangling over their heads. You worry that showing women as deserving written knocks makes them easier to harm in every way. You consider that violence against women and devaluing women in the media are remarkably connected.
A WHO multi-country study found that between 15–71% of women reported experiencing physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner at some point in their lives.
So, even as you are perhaps tired of repeatedly writing about the same topic, and certain that folks are finding you perhaps tiresome, you listen to Jennifer Weiner, a brave author who's taken more than her share of knock for keeping on topic, when she writes in the Guardian:
"Men and women committed to change are going to have to step up and speak out, (and, of course, risk being called shrill, hysterical, annoying or 'just jealous' of the attention the men receive when we do)."
Thank you, Roxanne.
Thank you, Jennifer.
Thank you, VIDA.
You make the nightmares a little more bearable.
February 27, 2012
Scent Inspired the Book; Her Book Inspired a Perfume
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The Story Behind The Book of Lost Fragrances
Several years ago, I went to a brocante – a flea market - in Cannes, France. It was a perfect morning to peruse antiques; warm with a little breeze to mingle the scent of fresh flowers with seaside town's fresh salty air.
One table that caught my attention offered an intriguing mix of items laid out as if they were resting on an elegant woman's vanity.
Next to a shagreen jewelry box – opened to reveal strings of pearls, was a pair of fine creamy white kid gloves. Sunshine glinted off the silver trim of a turquoise cloisonné hair brush set and illuminated the gold lettering on a group of leather bound books all about mythology.
There were also a dozen perfume decanters scattered around. Some were cut crystal with fancy repousee silver caps. Others were intricately sculpted pieces of glasswork - the kind created by Lalique and Baccarat in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Sadly all the bottles were empty except for one with an inch or so of thick, dark perfume coating the bottom. It was the least ornate flacon. A residue of glue was visible to show where a label had once been pasted. It was capped with a green ceramic stopper shaped into a lotus – a flower that I recognized from Ancient Egyptian tomb paintings.
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THE FRAGRANCE: if you pre-order The Book of Lost Fragrances now we'll send you a sample of Âmes Soeurs, the Scent of Soulmates, the exclusive fragrances created just for the novel by Joya Studios.
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As I daydreamed about the woman who'd owned all these treasures, I picked up the bottle, uncapped it and sniffed
[image error]In Remembrance of Things Past, Proust wrote about how the taste and smell of a Madeline returned him to his youth with an immediacy that nothing else ever had.
For me it was the scent in that bottle that returned me to a day years before.
Suddenly I wasn't in the square in front of the Hotel De Ville in that French town but was sixteen years old, standing on the hill overlooking Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, talking to a boy who I'd just met.
He was telling me about Plato's theory of soul mates.
And I was falling in love.
The scent in the bottle in the flea market was his scent. He'd worn a cologne – discontinued before he was even born – that he'd found in a house his parents had rented one summer.
It had been so long since I'd even smelled it – or even thought of it. But suddenly everything about that meeting – and learning about soul mates- and being sure I'd found one – and the tall boy with sly smile who had sadly long since died– came rushing back in that one inhalation.
The Book of Lost Fragrances is a very much a suspense novel weaving history into a tense hunt for a important treasure but the theme for book – an ancient scent that would help people identify their soul mates – came to life that lazy day in the South of France.
I bought the bottle from the antique dealer and it sits on a shelf with the rest of my perfume collection. I've never opened it again… I don't want the scent to evaporate any more quickly that nature will insist upon.
It's enough to know that memories lay captured inside and they were strong enough to inspire a novel.
Internationally bestselling author M.J. Rose, is the author of 12 novels (The Book of Lost Fragrances March 2012) and two nonfiction books including Buzz Your Book, co-authored with Douglas Clegg. Her novel The Reincarnationist was the basis for the Fox TV show PAST LIVES. Rose was a founding board member of ITW. She has been on The Today Show, CNN, Fox News, All Things Considered, in the NYT, O magazine, The Wall St. Journal and more. Rose was the creative director of a top NYC ad agency and the creator of Authorbuzz.com, the first marketing company for authors since 2005. Follow her on Twitter @MJRose.
JESSE, A MOTHER'S STORY: A Ferocious and Raging Love
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I started Jesse, A Mother's Story twice.
The stark beauty of this memoir hit me the moment I began. Marianne Leone's narrative, written with an unrelenting immediacy, yanked me into her world.
Leone's son Jesse owned me from his first moment on the page. By the end of the prologue, Leone had so engaged me that I put it aside. Because I knew how it would end. Because I was a coward. I'd already fallen in love with the family and I needed to build up courage to continue.
Sometime later I began reading again. This time, thank God, I couldn't stop, because Jesse, A Mother's Story gave me one of the greatest gifts of my reading life. I learned that you could go on. You could have utmost love, and then the worst possible pain, and, though you never lose the grief, you could still find that love. That connection between mother and child can continue to envelope you in your dreams and soul. Perhaps that's what keeps you from total madness.
Jesse, A Mother's Story is a written by a mother who loves her son with ferocity—the ferocity parents of disabled children needs more than others parents. Jesse Cooper had severe cerebral palsy, was unable to speak, and was quadriplegic and wracked by severe seizures. He was also stunningly bright, funny, and loving. His parents, Marianne Leone and Chris Cooper needed both rage and ferocious love if Jesse's light was to come out in full.
Leone writes so close that I felt the cigarette she held as she "paced the floor of our apartment above the store, smoking, crying and feeling helpless . . . Our session with the physical therapist was a disaster. She roughly stripped Jesse of his outside clothes, and he began to howl. "Well, I can't work with him if he's going to cry all the time," she said.
Jesse was failing physical therapy. Or was the therapist failing Jesse? To watch your child handled roughly is to have a piece of your soul crumple into ash."
Marianne Leone brought together a band of parents and professionals to fight the system—a battle that continues serving children in the region where Jesse went to school—ensuring her son and others could be fully integrated into the school system, get the services they needed, and write essays poems, like this one written by Jesse:
Courage is like one ant trying to cross a roaring stream.
It may seem impossible but you have to try.
Jesse and his parents lived not only with candor and courage, but with edgy humor and street-fighting reality. Jesse, A Mother's Story is not a worshipful account of saints, but of parents who reach into every pocket of strength they can access to help their child live fully in this world. Leone's narrative pulled me like a page-turning novel—I needed to know what would happen, especially when, despite promises made and a law guaranteeing Jesse's inclusion in a regular classroom, the school system fails not just by sins of omission, but by dedicated commission.
Leone's realizations of these sins—after sending Jesse's wonderful home aide, Brandy, to observe Jesse's school aide and teacher in his classroom—radicalizes her. Thinking that Brandy hates her job, as obviously they do, the aide, in front of a non-verbal, but totally cognizant Jesse, says "he don't belong here," and "between you and me, Brandy, we both know where he's gonna end up." Jesse's teacher talks in front of him, as though he were invisible, about the "life-expectancy of a CP kid," speaking with faux-sympathy, though in truth with criticism of Leone, about how Leone needs to "learn to let go."
[image error]Thus is set in motion a battle that ends up including the entire school district and a newly formed group of parents of special needs children, beginning with Leone's thoughts:
In the last few minutes I had joined the berserker tribe of mothers, those who go into battle without any armor but rage. Mad as dogs, fierce as wolves, they fight to the death.
We who are unaffected might turn away from the Leone-Cooper's story, from all stories like Jesse's. We might want to protect our own denial, but oh what a loss. Jesse, A Mother's Story has a plethora of happy endings before the ultimate sorrow.
That is what this book taught me: Sorrow doesn't erase joy. We can hold both.
I, probably like you, am a constant reader. Sometimes I forget titles even as I turn the last page. Some books are appetizers, some momentary candy, some are solid meals. The moment I finished Jesse, A Mother's Story I wanted to read it again. This book is an account of how we manage to rise further than we ever knew we could.
Leone does not sing her own praises in this book, but I can. She showed me a way. Mothers, even through moments of exhaustion, exasperation, even as they doubt they are up for the task, can find the way to lift that truck off their child. This book lives on my 'read again and again' shelf. Jesse, A Mother's Story was not a book of a disabled child, but a story of being able to move on after a tsunami has hit your heart.
Jesse, A Mothers Story releases today. If you are a parent, then you, like me, fear losing your child more than anything in the world. Screw up your courage and buy this book.
JESSE, A MOTHER'S STORY slideshow
February 15, 2012
How Long Does it Take to Get Published?
[image error]Recently, a thread in an online writer's community popped up, beginning with someone (who hadn't begun querying) asking why folks sent query letters to so many agents.
Did they have that many "dream agents?
Why not send to just one or two top choices?
And, really, how long does it take?
Answers flew in—achingly honest and reminiscent of everyone's distant and not-at-all-distant (often painful) publishing journeys. I thought back to how long it took me.
The answer? You got some time?
My published-too-young book: In my twenties, I co-wrote a nonfiction book (under my former—married—name, Randy Meyers Wolfson) Couples With Children. Co-author Virginia DeLuca and I, in our work with pregnant and post-partum women, saw that suddenly shaky marriages were of more concern than diapers. And we wanted to write. We bought How to Get Happily Published by Judith Applebaum, wrote a proposal and a sample chapter, sent it off and shortly thereafter had a contract. I won't go into the many mistakes we made after that (the only thing we did right was selling the book) but this 'easy' sell offered (extraordinarily) undeserved confidence.
Soon after, I got divorced. Now I was a single mother and talking about marriage and children seemed, um… embarrassing to say the least. And fiction was really my love. The nonfiction Couples With Children was left to languish.
In between raising kids, badly-chosen men, working in human services by day, and bartending by night, I co-wrote Novels 1 & 2 with Ginny: Two mysteries. Got an agent. We thought we had a series. Didn't sell books.
Moving on, still submerged in bad men and fantasy, still not applying myself to learning the deeper tenets of writing fiction, and skating on sheer want, I wrote Novel 3, which should have been titled: The Book That Helped Me Pretend I Wasn't Screwing Up, My Life By Mythologizing It.
No agent. No sale. No memory if I wrote a query. Probably not, because a friend insisted on sending it to his wife's cousin-the-writer, who called it… execrable? Deplorable? Tripe? He didn't soften the slam by deeming it poetic or lyrical. Because it wasn't.
Got depressed.
Had a drink or ten.
Thank goodness I had that inappropriate guy to lean on!
Fast forward: Sent kids through college. Lost bad guy/s. Found good one. Got serious about writing. Embarked on my homemade MFA and wrote my trilogy:
Novel 4:
Dove in. Joined a writer's group. Finished. Got an agent. As soon as she put it out for submission, I began writing:
Novel 5:
Showed it to said agent. She liked it so much that she replaced the now-limping and ten-times rejected # 4 (are you still with me) with newly minted # 5. And I began writing:
Novel 6:
Showed a bit to agent. She loved it. Said keep going! Meanwhile, she kept trotting out #5 to a few editors.
Then my agent turned more attention to representing a different genreand it seemed right for us to part ways. Leaving this agent was wrenching. The 'bird in the hand' theory pulled, but I felt a sweet spot with # 6, and felt that I needed the right person to represent it (aware many would find it dark.)
No hard feelings, a virtual handshake goodbye, and agent and I said goodbye.
Back out on the agent-hunting circuit, feeling like a confused divorcee. (Do I talk about the ex? Pretend it never happened?)
Six months later I signed with new (wonderful and current) agent. She read. She edited. I revised. She sold #6 (The Murderer's Daughters) in 8 days.
How long did it take to sell my debut novel from when I began writing fiction?
20+ years
Six novels
Three agents
What I learned:
1) To take heart from positive words embedded in rejections and believe the good things they said about my writing. Believe when they said 'the work just wasn't for them.' To take their criticisms seriously and pay attention to ideas generously passed on. (Well, not the one that said, "she was so over domestic violence.)
2) To believe that writing, like any craft, requires honing, and not to beat myself up over unsold books. They weren't wasted time—they were my education. I doubt Georgia O'Keefe sold her first paintings. Or Grandma Moses, who I feared I might pass in 'firsts.'
3) To surround myself with supportive writer friends and take heart from their success (even when I felt green and evil.)
4) To learn when to fold them.
5) To know when to hold on.
6) To realize there is no such thing as a pre-met 'dream agent' anymore than there is a pre-met 'dream husband.' The dream agent is the one who loves your book—because s/he'll make your dreams come true. You'll know them when you find them.
I held on through years of rejection, chanting the old joke:
How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Practice, practice, practice.
Getting my craft to match my passion and thoughts took many years. I would never have said it back then, at my personal ground zero, but I'm happy that it worked out as it did. The Murderer's Daughters was the right book for me to debut with. Had I sold any previous novel, I don't think I would have ended up feeling as right as I did.
I think, like with a partner, when you have the right material, there's a magic click, and you fall in love—whether it takes six books or sixteen years on one book.
Maybe that's how long it takes. As long as it takes to feel the click, and have someone else agree.
And now, making up for lost time, I just turned in Novel # 7, (The Comfort of Lies) and am on chapter 7 of Novel # 8, working with, yes, my dream editor at Atria Books.
February 14, 2012
Sad Songs? Yo-yo love? Love to love ya, baby? What kind of Valentine do you have?
These are the many types of relationships I've had: Sad. Obsessive. Pathetic. Boring. Are you kidding me? "Do you think he has a drinking problem?" Liar, liar, pant's on fire.
You name it. I had it. Now. At long last (it only took me . . never mind—many years) I have a no-sad-song love. Perhaps if during those never-mind years, I'd had a song-test, I'd have left bad-boy-hell sooner. Thus, as a Valentine's Day Public Service:
A Love Pain Meter:
1) If this song wrenches your heart, if you play it more than once, if it haunts you:
Diagnosis: Sad, obsessive relationship. Possible overlay of infidelity.
2) If you get misty listening to this:
Diagnosis: A loser who meant to do better. Cut it loose. Thinking it isn't good enough.
3) If you feel sorta empowered by this:
Diagnosis: Come on, being strong doesn't make the cheating any better. Say goodbye.
4) Bittersweet feelings come on for you when you listen to this?
Diagnosis: Don't think it's gonna happen. It won't. Even if he tells the truth. Not if this song rings. Find some true loving.
5) Are you listening to the all-time anthem of 'He's gonna leave his wife as soon as the kids grow up."
Diagnosis: He won't.
7) Is this your theme song?
Diagnosis: You know that guy you think of when you dance to this song? Don't ever go back with him.
[image error] Is this running through your head?
Diagnosis: He's a keeper
February 9, 2012
How Things Can Change: Looking Forward to Valentine's Day
It's sure nice to have love where it's not the sad songs that provide the theme. Thank you, Jeff.
February 5, 2012
Coming Attractions: OUTSIDE THE LINES by Amy Hatvany
No matter what is written, blurbed, or said about a new book, it's only upon reading those first few pages that I know if I will sink in. So, how nice to be able to present that most important part of an about-to-release book—unadorned—the first pages.
When Eden was ten years old she found her father, David, bleeding on the bathroom floor. The suicide attempt led to her parents' divorce, and David all but vanished from Eden's life
Twenty years later, Eden runs a successful catering company and dreams of opening a restaurant. Since childhood, she has heard from her father only rarely, just enough to know that he's been living on the streets and struggling with mental illness. But lately there has been no word at all. After a series of failed romantic relationships and a health scare from her mother, Eden decides it's time to find her father.
OUTSIDE THE LINES
The call came at three-thirty in the morning, a time slot predestined for the arrival of bad news. No one calls to tell you you've won the lottery in the middle of the night. Your boyfriend doesn't call you to propose.
The shrill of my cell phone dug into my dreams and wrenched me from sleep. This is it, I thought. He's dead. Six months ago, I'd given the morgue at Seattle General my number along with a copy of twenty-year-old picture of my father. "I don't care what time it is," I told the hospital administrator. "If he turns up, I'll come right away."
The picture was the last one I had of him. In it, his blue eyes were bright and his smile was wide. My father was a tall man, whip-thin, but sinewy and strong. He had wavy black hair like mine and wore it parted down the middle and to his shoulders, like Jesus. His expression in the photo gave no clue of the chemical anarchy wreaking havoc in his brain. It was invisible, this enemy that attacked his moods.
"This is not an illness," he insisted. "This is who I am." He pounded his chest with his fist in emphasis, in case my mother and I were confused as to whom he referred. The medications changed him, he said. They brought on such terrible mental inertia every one of his thoughts became an unwieldy, leaden task. He preferred the wild highs and intolerable lows to a life of not giving a damn. At first, as a child, I didn't blame him. After he disappeared, blaming him was all I did.
I dressed hurriedly in the dark of my tiny bedroom. Jasper lifted his head, wagged his tail two times then promptly put his head on my pillow and let loose a guttural sigh. He was ten – an old man of a dog. His brindle coat was wisped-through with silver; he slept pretty much twenty hours of the day. I happened upon him in the alley of one of my first restaurant jobs, luring him toward me with bits of pancetta. He wiggled his fat little puppy butt in response and I was a goner. I took him home that night.
Before leaving the house, I walked to the kitchen to put food in his bowl, then returned to my room and scratched his head. "Be a good boy, Jasper," I told him. "Make sure to bite any robbers." His tail gave one solid thump against my mattress in response to my voice but otherwise, he didn't move. He wouldn't venture to the kitchen until after six, our normal waking time. I joked with my friends that Jasper was the best and most predictable man I knew. With him, I'd shared my longest and most successful relationship.
It was early October and the chill in the air had taken on a crisp, palpable bite. I sat in my car for a few minutes with my hands tucked between my thighs waiting for the engine to warm up. My thoughts seesawed between the hope that the man lying on a slab in the morgue was my father and the prayer that it wasn't. I was ten-years-old the last time I saw him, numbly watching from our front porch as the medics took him away. This was not how I wanted our story to end – my father dead before I had a chance to heal the hurt between us. But at least it would be an ending. At least I could finally let him go.
After backing out of the bumpy gravel driveway on the side of my house, I maneuvered through my quiet Green Lake neighborhood and headed south. The street lights glowed eerily amber in the early morning fog as I drove toward downtown. The Columbia Tower loomed in the distance, about ten blocks from my destination. I'd spent enough time on the streets of downtown Seattle to have its geography stitched into the grooves of my mind. Off the Union Street exit, the hospital was to the east, a well-known homeless shelter fourteen blocks west, an illegal tent-city three blocks from there. I pictured the cobblestones of Pioneer Square and the railroad tracks beneath the Viaduct where so many of Seattle's homeless population dwelled. I wondered where they had found him. I wondered if he thought of me before he died.
This last question repeated in my mind as I parked in the hospital garage. I quickly found my way to the basement and was escorted into an icy room barely lit by bluish fluorescent bulbs. On my left was a wall that looked like a stainless steel refrigerator with floor-to-ceiling, multiple square doors. The air hinted of something black and fungal beneath an intense antiseptic overlay of cleaning products. I imagined that scent was death.
The technician who accompanied me into the room was the antithesis of what I expected a morgue-worker to be – all blond hair and surfer-boy good looks instead of brooding, bleached skin gothic. He stood next to me, smelling of spearmint gum. I heard the gentle pop in his mouth before he spoke.
"Are you ready, Ms. West?"
"Yes," I said. I was more than ready.
A dark-haired girl dressed in light blue scrubs stood by the refrigerator wall and opened one of the doors, pulling out a body beneath a white sheet. She stood back with her hands linked behind her in an at-ease stance. The blond technician reached and pulled back the sheet, folding it neatly across the dead man's chest. I kept my eyes on the substantial rise of the man's stomach. This is a mistake, I thought. My father isn't fat. He could have gained weight, sure, but that was another one of the side effects that made him forgo his medications.
The technician stepped back from the gurney and turned his head to look at me. "Is it him?"
I forced my gaze upward to the man's swollen, puffy face. His skin possessed a dusty pallor, as though someone had pulled gray cotton batting over every inch of his flesh. He had scraggly black eyebrows and a beard; his long hair was wet and brushed back from his face, falling in a spidery fan beneath the back of his skull. His eyes were closed.
"I'm not sure," I said. "It might be. Maybe. I haven't seen him for almost twenty years." My heart fluttered in my chest as I spoke. I didn't expect not to know. I thought I'd recognize him right away. Had my mind erased so much of him? "Can I see his wrists?"
"His wrists?" said the technician. The dark haired girl didn't speak.
"Yes."
The technician reached under the sheet and pulled out the man's limp, beefy arm, hairy side up.
I swallowed hard. "Can you turn it over, please?"
The tech gave me a sidelong look but he did as I asked. I looked at the underside of the man's wrist, posed and prepared for the sight of angry red and thickly knotted scars. I blinked a few times to make sure I wasn't just seeing what I wanted to see. But the gray flesh was smooth and bare. If the man was my father, it wouldn't be. That much I knew for sure.
Relief collided messily with disappointment in the back of my throat. "No," I said, releasing a breath it felt like I'd been holding since my cell phone woke me. "It's not him." A few errant tears edged their way down my cheeks.
"Are you sure? He fits the description. Except for the extra weight, but we figured maybe he'd gained it and you wouldn't know."
"I'm sure," I said. "It isn't him. But I can understand why you'd think it was." I wiped my face with the back of my hand. "How did he die?" I asked, gesturing to the man on the gurney. The man who was not my father. I repeated this phrase silently in my mind to make sure I actually registered it. It wasn't him. My father wasn't dead. There was still a chance I could find him
"Cardiac arrest," the dark-haired girl said. "His friends brought him in from Pioneer Square. They said he grabbed his left arm and just toppled over. He was dead before they got to the ER."
"Well, I hope you find out who he is," I said. He's somebody's son. Maybe even another person's father.
"It's not likely," said the technician. He snapped his gum, then looked guilty. "Sorry."
"That's okay." Death was normal to him; he was accustomed to treating it casually. He spent more time with it than life.
"Let me walk you out," the girl said.
"Oh, I'm fine," I said. "I can figure it out."
"I'm due for a smoke break anyway," she said, walking over to the door leading to the outside hallway and opening it for me. "It can get a little tricky down here with all the weird turns to get to the outside world. I think they make it that way so no one accidentally ends up down here if they don't really need to come."
"Okay." I looked one more time upon the man who was not my father. "Good luck," I whispered to him and both of the technicians looked at me strangely. Let them look. The poor man obviously had a rough life; he deserved a few well-wishes for wherever he ended up.
Moving along the dimly-lit corridor with the girl, I noticed our footsteps quickly fell into the same pattern, her white hospital clogs squeaking along the linoleum. We didn't speak.
"Can I ask you something?" she finally said when we turned a corner and arrived at the door to the hospital parking garage.
"Sure." I said, holding the door open for her to step through. We walked a little further stopping twenty feet or so from the door. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her scrubs. She shook one out of the pack and held it, regarding it thoughtfully before she spoke.
"So, I'm curious." Her voice echoed a bit in the almost empty garage. "Why are you trying to find your dad if he's been out of your life so long? I never knew mine and I could give a shit where he is. I mean, it's cool and all that you want to, but don't you think maybe he likes it better this way? Maybe he doesn't want to be found."
"He's sick," I said, shrugging as I scanned the garage for where I'd parked my car. "He doesn't even know he's lost."
* * *
Amy was born in Seattle, WA in 1972, the youngest of three children. She graduated from Western Washington University in 1994 with a degree in Sociology only to discover most sociologists are unemployed. Soon followed a variety of jobs – some of which she loved, like decorating wedding cakes; others which she merely tolerated, like receptionist. In 1998, Amy finally decided to sell her car, quit her job, and take a chance on writing books.
January 30, 2012
Hey Girl, Don't Worry, I'll Cook Dinner
Beyond the Margins finally persuaded Dell Smith's good friend Ryan Gosling to take time out of his busy schedule as an Internet meme to shine a little love our way. Give it up for a very special…Literary Ryan Gosling.
January 24, 2012
Book Titles: The Inside Scoop
"My definition (for myself) of a working title is: A title that doesn't work." Robin Black
Picture having a baby. You named that baby so soon after conception. Dear little Lev. It's the Russian version of your father's name. It has great meaning. Birth! The nurse places him in your arms. She smiles. Than she says, "Change his name. He sounds too much like a Jewish cowboy."
For the effort most authors put into titling their book, you'd think they'd get to see it splashed across the cover—but an overwhelming amount of us are told by our editors, "Love the book, hate the title. Find another one."
Marianne Leone says she "wanted JESSE: A MOTHER'S STORY to be THE RUNNING MADONNA, but Simon & Schuster thought it sounded like a workout book by the rock star."
In my unscientific study, only 17% of the author-respondents were able to keep their chosen titles. My original title for THE MURDERER'S DAUGHTERS was ADOPTING ADULTS, which I was told sounded like a self-help book. (Oh, they were right on the money there.) My editor chose the final title, tacking on 'a novel' when I insisted people would think it was a mystery.
No, they won't think that! Not with our cover.
Actually, yes, they do.
On the other hand, just yesterday, while bookclub skyping with the incredible women of Detroit, while discussing titles, one of the women who attended the Jewish Book Festival auditions, said one of the problems they have with vague titles is not remembering them, and that they remembered THE MURDERER'S DAUGHTERS.
So, what do we know, right? Robin Black wrote, "My original title was YESTERDAY'S NEWS. Random House rejected it on the theory that you never give reviewers a title they could, if so disposed, use against you. (Which is why you don't see more books out there called things like, "SUCKY BOOK.")
And then there are the titles you didn't know were taken: Cathy Marie Buchanan: "The original title for THE DAY THE FALLS STOOD STILL was THE RIVER WIFE. Sadly, my agent let me know Jonis Agree had just published using the title. Broke my heart for a hundred years."
So, when you buckle down to re-title your book, know that you're not alone. Here are just a few of the tools I've used (not including taking up an entire Thanksgiving dinner urging ideas from my family. Author, vanity is thy name.)
What the site say: "Want to know if you've got a killer title for your novel? Now, for the first time in literary history, you can put your title to the scientific test and find out whether it has what it takes for bestseller success. Are you brave enough to put your title to the test?"
What I say: I never found this especially helpful, but remarkably soothing for no reason I can think of. According to their paradigm, my current novel, The Murderer's Daughters had a 10.2% chance of being a bestseller—but so did The Help.
What the site says: Choose your words carefully. Don't use silly words like 'furry' and 'banana' – do you really want those words to be in your title? Each click of the button gives you ten titles – feel free to modify your words again and again until you're happy with your results.
What I say: If you have a conceptual idea of where you want to go with your title, ie: um, something about hunger. Yeah, hunger. And being fat. And the tyranny of the fashion industry on women. And cake, it actually helps feeds the obsession of finding the right title. I doubt it will lead you to 'it,' but it's a fun way to spin around words..
3. Brainy Quote
What the site says: Not much. They simply present a long list of topics and authors from Lucille Ball to the Dalai Lama.
What I say: Love this site. Easy, a broad range of ideas and topics, and I've yet to run into anything forcing me to sign up, give my email, or get out my credit card.
4. Literary Agent Rachel Gardner's Advice:
What she says: "Let's start by acknowledging a few things. The publisher is usually responsible for the final decision on title, and in the query stage, it's not that important. In fact, some agents have said they don't pay any attention at all to titles. But at some point, you're going to want to think seriously about this. Your title is part of the overall impression you're creating about your book. It can set a tone and create an expectation. Whether you're pitching to an agent, or your agent is pitching to publishers, I think you want to have the strongest title possible."
What I say: Gardner offers a great start for titling or re-titling your book (though I've spent far longer than 24 hours on this exercise.) Her advice is sound: especially as regards making lists and then putting it away. What sounds so smart at midnight, often reeks of awful the next morning.
5. ehow on Titles:
What the site says: "Unlike musicians or artists who can get away with obscure monikers such as "Opus 102″ or "Untitled," the title of your novel should be catchy enough to intrigue a prospective editor, short enough to not fill up the entire front cover, and memorable enough that your adoring public can enthusiastically chat it up at the water cooler instead of saying, "I forget the title but it was something about mutant lamprey eels."
What I say: Christina Hamlett has provided a clear concise guide to titling your book. I say, start with this article.
From Shakespeare to nursery rhymes to the Bible, we comb for titles. Have you written a book about infidelity? Then surely you've hummed "Your Cheating Heart." How about "His Cheating Heart?" or "Her Cheating Heart?"
And how about, after wrenching The Scarlet Letter from your guts, your editor changes it to The Red Cape of Shame? Of course, if an editor or better judgement hadn't intervened, Lord of the Flies might have been Strangers from Within, and The Valley of the Dolls would have remained They Don't Build Statues to Businessmen.
How often do titles stay the same?
I asked, and they answered.
Allie Larkin: The original title for STAY was "Savannah Leone and her Trusty Dog Joe," which, for some reason, I thought was brilliant. No one around me had said otherwise. Before we submitted to publishers, my agent said, "So, Allie, what are we going to do about the title?" And I was shocked! So I went back to my husband and friends and everyone said something to the effect of "Yeah, that title is awful." Then friends suggested titles. I think it was "Girl Meets Dog"(which I hated) for a week or two. And then I was in Wegmans looking at books and noticed a bunch of one-word titles and STAY popped into my head. So by the time we submitted to publishers it was STAY. I'm eternally thankful to my agent for calling me out on that.
Alyson Richman Gordon: THE LOST WIFE was originally "Lenka's Hands," title that I knew sounded a bit clunky. When I was asked to come up with a new title, I suggested "The Shadow Wife." When the publisher's editorial and sales team heard that, they thought it sounded like a vampire novel. I was rendered speechless, gave up making suggestions, and they came up with THE LOST WIFE.
Amy Hatvany: BEST KEPT SECRET was originally entitled "Every Other Mother," but editor didn't love. Went through about fifty different ideas, and I played with themes of mothers hiding their drinking, keeping it a secret, and finally landed on the right one. Drinking as a coping mechanism is too many mothers' best-kept secret, and considering the stigmatization of being an alcoholic mother, it's something many women view as being best kept secret.
Carla Buckley: My original title was "Flu Season," which my publisher said sounded like a how-to book on getting colds. Over the course of a year, I submitted over a hundred titles, some of which floated for a little while: "Out of Thin Air," "Flight Risk," "Six Hours". But then Random House stepped in and in a marathon meeting, came up with my title which my editor presented to me the next morning: THE THINGS THAT KEEP US HERE. My feeling was that I had just traded in my saddle shoes for sexy stilettos.con
