Cathy Lamb's Blog, page 42
December 2, 2016
Can I Say That My Very Best Friend Is On Sale For $2.99?
My Very Best Friend is on Kobo and Amazon for $2.99 if you need to go to Scotland in your head, repair a crumbling cottage, hang out with a man in a kilt, or make new friends who get a little wild now and then with revenge and bar fights.
December 1, 2016
Amy Impellizzeri And Secrets Of Worry Dolls
Hello everyone,
I’m handing my blog over today to my friend and fellow author, Amy Impellizzeri.
This is one of the most touching, memorable blogs I’ve read about another family member. Amy writes about her grandmother, her black and white TV, tuna melts, lipstick stained cigarettes and clinical depression. It’s a beautiful, and sad, look into someone else’s life.
(Need a book for the holidays? I’d highly recommend Amy’s Secrets of Worry Dolls.)
By Amy Impellizzeri:
My newest novel, Secrets of Worry Dolls, is about mothers and daughters. And since I am both of those things, it might be tempting to read something personal into my characters. But I have to admit that there is someone else I thought of often as I wrote this story. In fact, Secrets of Worry Dolls is dedicated to my Grandmother, Lois, In Memoriam.
“Because her legacy both haunts and inspires me daily.
And because she would have gotten a really big kick out of having a book of mine dedicated to her.”
***
My earliest memories of my grandmother include the rabbit-eared television set and the overstuffed eggplant-colored sofa in her two-bedroom apartment where I used to go for sleepovers as a little girl. Bright lipstick-stained cigarette remnants piled high on a television tray table by the sofa. Coffee and milk were served in mis-matched china cups. Store-bought lemon cookies were served up as decadent desserts.
Mine was no ordinary Grandma.
When I visited her, meals were served at the local diner where my grandmother was considered a regular. Poached eggs, black coffee and unfiltered cigarettes were called breakfast. Tuna melts, black coffee and unfiltered cigarettes were called dinner. Grandma would drive us to the diner in her manual Dodge Dart and home again to watch the news on her small black and white TV. Once a year we’d watch the Miss America pageant instead of the news, relying on the broadcaster to tell us the colors of the women’s gowns. She’d let me read her Shel Silverstein collection, or browse through the rest of her library of dog-eared books. I don’t think my grandmother owned a single book she’d only read once. We’d turn in early, and I’d sleep in a thin sleeping bag on the hard floor and she’d snore loudly in her bed above me.
The older I get, the more I cling to this collage of images I want forever connected to my grandmother. They are uniquely mine, and they represent a thin sliver of time when my grandmother was – for all intents and purposes – well.
My grandmother was diagnosed with clinical depression when her two young daughters were still toddlers. I have mostly overheard details about my mother’s childhood, and have unraveled a past in which my grandmother was largely … Gone. Later, when I was born, somehow my grandmother came back into the picture – for her own version of maternal redemption in the form of Dodge Dart sleepovers.
And in those years that I knew her as a young child, my grandmother was independent. Happy even. A working, single woman with her own bank account and a reserved corner booth at the local diner. To my young eyes, she seemed quite fearless. Quite interesting. If you had asked me then, I would have told you that I wanted to be just. Like. Her.
The deterioration occurred largely in my later teen years. Remission over, the disease of her mind emerged from the shadows, swallowing her whole. The sleepovers ceased. No more driving. No more diners. Dinners out were on the hospital psych ward where she began spending more and more nights.
More overhearing. More unraveling.
And then. An unexpected diagnosis came when I was 25 years old. My grandmother had an inoperable malignant brain tumor that was going to kill her at the premature age of 66. Which meant she would never be healed of her mental illness.
Her legacy became fear. My fear of having wished to be just. Like. Her.
And truth be told, that might have been her legacy always, except for the fact that fifteen years after my grandmother’s death, my mother called me. “I have something for you. Your grandmother’s sister found something she wanted you to have. A folder. Do you want it?”
Yes. Please.
My grandmother, you see, was a writer.
***
I waited until my husband was at work and the kids were all occupied and then I sat on the middle of my bed surrounded by sheaves of paper I pulled out of the lilac-colored folder. I stared at them. Fifty-year old thin sheets – created on a typewriter before my birth, with little “x’s” over some of the letters for corrections. I rubbed my hands over the pages knowing that she had touched them. I sorted through her essays about the diner. About her sisters. Former neighbors and lovers. Letters to her favorite newspaper columnist. It was hard to focus on the words because the emotions swirled almost palpably on the pages. I found a five-page stapled essay that began with a quote from Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana.”
“O Courage, could you not as well
Select a second place to dwell.”
My grandmother wanted to be courageous and fearless. She wrote about moving toward healing, and resolutions, and love. But her writings – like her life – ended abruptly. I couldn’t help but wish she had written a better ending for herself. A more hopeful legacy.
So I did. As I closed the lilac-colored folder, I resolved to live – and write – a more hopeful story than fear.
Yes, Secrets of Worry Dolls is about mothers and daughters. But at its core, Secrets of Worry Dolls is a story about legacies; it’s about tragedy and survival. And while I think it’s probably true that we can’t write anyone’s story but our own, I also believe that no one’s story is ever really written in stone.
Visit with Amy –
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ImpellizzeriAmy
Website: http://www.amyimpellizzeri.com/
November 30, 2016
The Brain Drain And A Deadline
I am going back to bed to work.
Today is the day I start the seventh edit of my eleventh novel.
My eyes are fuzzy, I am doubting every single word I’ve written, and I can’t remember when I last washed my hair.
This is what happens when a deadline looms like a fanged, mean monster.
One would think that after writing ten novels this would get easier.
It does not.
One would think that I would have this writing stuff down, understood, memorized.
I don’t.
One would think that I could toss an imaginary character into the universe, with a twirl and a swirl, and a story would emerge like magic, with cool characters and a throat gripping plot line, and I’d slug down coffee, fill in the blanks and that would be that.
Tra la la.
Never. That has never happened.
In fact, in some ways it’s gotten harder to write books over the years.
It’s a brain boggler (I think I just made that phrase up) to try to think up new characters, issues and sub plots, structures and themes, that are completely different from what you’ve written before.
It’s like trying to pull out your molars with a toothpick.
It’s like trying to stand on your head while tap dancing.
It’s like trying to do a back flip through sludge.
Which is why I’m going back to bed.
To edit. Slash. Delete. Write. Repeat.
I may well lose my mind. My brain might drain out of my head.
Wishing you a happy day from bed.
November 27, 2016
Need A Christmas Read? Need Wine?
Need a Christmas story with a happy ending? Want to escape to Montana for a little romance?
Do you need a laugh?
I have two short stories waiting for you by the fire, written especially for all the elves out there who require some Christmas magic and wine/scotch to get through the holidays.
A Very Merry Christmas is on Santa’s List for $2.99 on kindle.
https://www.amazon.com/Very-Merry-Chr...
(This short story was in Holiday Magic years ago.)
Christmas in Montana, in the Our First Christmas anthology, is only $5.99. Mrs. Claus put it on sale.
https://www.amazon.com/Our-First-Chri...
November 24, 2016
I Hope Your Oven Didn’t Look Like This
Once again, my magnificent cooking skills are on display as I hop into the kitchen and cook my dear family a turkey.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
(And yes, all three of our fire alarms went off.)
Pumpkin Pie Smiley Faces Or Wine
Happy, happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Wishing you a holiday filled with fun relatives and excellent food.
If there is neither, then I am wishing you wine. Or pumpkin pie with a smiley face.
Cheers.
November 22, 2016
Watering A Corvette, Burying The Body
If you need a book to get you through the relatives and teeth grinding political talk over the turkey…”Henry’s Sisters” is less than $5 on kindle and mass market paperback and “The Last Time I Was Me” is less than $7 on kindle and mass market paperback.
One character waters her cheating ex husband’s Corvette, the other one participates in anger management class and buries a body.
Pass the stuffing.
AMAZON:https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...
November 21, 2016
A Little Brother And A Monster Cake
Who are your thankful for? Why?
This is my little brother, Jimmy.
He is the one I dedicated “The Language of Sisters” to.
I bought him this monster cake for his birthday because I knew it would make him laugh. (He didn’t want his photo on facebook!)
Jimmy is Wendi’s husband and Noah’s father. He was in the Army Reserves for eight years. He was a professional sky diver. He’s a firefighter and a paramedic.
Jimmy spends every day at work helping other people. It’s what his whole professional life is about. He comes in on what will be, for many of them, the worst, or one of the worst, days of their lives. He’s calm, he’s competent, he’s experienced.
He gets some pretty hard calls, as you can imagine. Terrible situations. Crying and chaos. Fire and smoke. Accidents, heart attacks, burns, deaths, blood, diseases, the ravages of people on drugs.
And he helps. He fixes. He solves. He comforts.
He and his family have always been there for me and my family, during good times and very bad times. I know they always will be.
Jimmy makes me laugh. He makes scrumptious food, especially his cinnamon monkey bread, which he brings for Thanksgiving at my house every year. It is our tradition to eat the monkey bread as an appetizer. It is odd, we know this, we do.
My brother is one of the best, most loyal friends of my life.
And that’s why “The Language of Sisters” – there’s a wonderful brother in there! – is for him.
It’s a little thank you for being an outstanding little brother.
November 15, 2016
Books on Sale, Cheap and Sweet
Hello everyone,
A few of my books are on sale in case you are needing a fall book, a Thanksgiving book, or a book to read because you want to laugh and cry (More laughs, fewer tears, I hope).
My Very Best Friend, $2.99 on kindle.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P53BX3K/...
The Last Time I Was Me, $6.99 on kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Time-Was-... 75&sr=1-6&keywords=cathy+lamb
Henry’s Sisters, $4.99 on kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Henrys-Sisters...
October 31, 2016
Happy Halloween From The Ghouls
Happy Halloween!
Tonight, Innocent Husband and I will sit outside wearing our scary ghoul outfits. We will be very, very quiet and still, like ghoul statues, until the kids get to within about three feet of us and then we will yell, “Boo.”
Those trick or treaters love it even when they jump two feet in the air.
Then we give them a Hershey bar.
Yes, this is our annual Halloween date night. We know it is rather pathetic. We do.
