Tema N. Merback's Blog
May 22, 2016
The Impossibility of Doing It All
Lately, I wake with a series of panic attacks. None of that compression in my chest, or inability to fill my lungs with air, has anything to do with writing. No, it’s the mounting self-inflicted pressure of having to complete a blog post, catch up on e-mail, check out my Twitter accounts, and, of course, there’s Facebook. I’m fairly certain, when I decided to become a writer and allow my creative juices to churn out bestsellers, this wasn’t what I had in mind. But, then again, I haven’t quite reached that bestseller status yet, so perhaps this is my comeuppance.
Often, I’m amazed at what other authors accomplish. Churning out books in 8 weeks’ time, writing a blog (sometimes 2 or 3) every week, belonging to 50 groups on Facebook and posting regularly (in some cases every hour) about their books, their drop in sale price, their blog appearances, their upcoming book-signings. You name it, like flies on sherbet, their postings are everywhere: Amazon, Smashwords, Goodreads, LinkedIn, ReadersInTheKnow, Kindle this, Kindle that, Tweet, Tweet, Tweeting, the list goes on-and-on. Is it possible that they have a team of elves, secret slaves tied up in the basement, maybe a high school cheerleading squad, or a full-time personal assistant with staff at their beck-and-call? Where do they find the time to do all of this, and still write their next book?
What I find the most annoying is all the advice writers shell out about writing. I’m not ungrateful, everyone wants to know the secret to success and is anxious for those precious tips, but, what is the most important tip they can give you, or the one that should be the most important? It’s to write, stupid! Yes, W-R-I-T-E! All of the rest of it doesn’t mean a darn thing if at the end of the day you haven’t written 300 or 1,000 words in your manuscript. For me, that requires plotting time to boot. I have to visualize that next chapter. Hell, I have to smell it, taste it, touch it, wrap my arms around it, do everything with it, but have sex with it, and, actually, I do that too, since my novels are very sexy. And, because I’m a bit of an obsessive/compulsive (I didn’t know this until I started writing), I have to reread everything I write countless times and self-edit as I go. I can’t just let go and give birth to 50 pages. 10 yes, 20 once in a great while, but most likely I’ve gone over those 10 or 20 pages’ innumerable times perfecting them, cutting this, changing that, only to consider throwing the whole damn thing out and starting again. You know the idiomatic expression, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”. What that means, is it’s important to be “careful not to completely reject an idea, practice or concept on the grounds that part of the argument is faulty or even bad. Instead, it must be reviewed in its entirely, and if needed, to revise it—but to still retain what is good and helpful”. It’s a fine line, and a battle I’m constantly fighting. “To be or not to be?” In the case of my writing, to keep or not to keep, that is the question?
What is strange, and I didn’t know, is that my process of writing is uncannily similar to Ernest Hemingway’s. I am not comparing myself, it has probably more to do with a psychological flaw than anything else. I certainly don’t plan on killing myself anytime too soon. But, unbeknownst to me, until I wrote this post and went searching for Papa’s advice, his process of writing, reading and editing as you create your novel, are exactly the habits I employ, and why I now consider myself to be compulsive.
brand_fyi_bsfc_116472_sfm_000_2997_15_20140905_001_hd_768x432-16x9So without further ado, I give you a snippet of his advice to writers. Says Papa: “The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time… Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work. The next morning, when you’ve had a good sleep and you’re feeling fresh, rewrite what you wrote the day before. When you come to the interesting place and you know what is going to happen next, go on from there and stop at another high point of interest. That way, when you get through, your stuff is full of interesting places and when you write a novel you never get stuck and you make it interesting as you go along. Every day go back to the beginning and rewrite the whole thing and when it gets too long, read at least two or three chapters before you start to write and at least once a week go back to the start. That way you make it one piece. And when you go over it, cut out everything you can. The main thing is to know what to leave out. The way you tell whether you’re going good is by what you can throw away. If you can throw away stuff that would make a high point of interest in somebody else’s story, you know you’re going good.”
And my favorite part of Papa’s advice is the following: “Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. That’s the true test of writing. When you can do that, the reader gets the kick and you don’t get any. You just get hard work and the better you write the harder it is because every story has to be better than the last one. It’s the hardest work there is. I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write I feel like shit. I’ve got the talent and I feel that I’m wasting it.”work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. That’s the true test of writing. When you can do that, the reader gets the kick and you don’t get any. You just get hard work and the better you write the harder it is because every story has to be better than the last one. It’s the hardest work there is. I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write I feel like shit. I’ve got the talent and I feel that I’m wasting it.”work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. That’s the true test of writing. When you can do that, the reader gets the kick and you don’t get any. You just get hard work and the better you write the harder it is because every story has to be better than the last one. It’s the hardest work there is. I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write I feel like shit. I’ve got the talent and I feel that I’m wasting it.”work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. That’s the true test of writing. When you can do that, the reader gets the kick and you don’t get any. You just get hard work and the better you write the harder it is because every story has to be better than the last one. It’s the hardest work there is. I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write I feel like shit. I’ve got the talent and I feel that I’m wasting it.”
Wait, speaking of compulsive, I’m starting to itch just thinking about those emails filling up my inbox as I write this post. Now I know why Hemmingway drank. Oh, I forgot, he didn’t do any of this virtual stuff, he just wrote. Perhaps, the best advice as we attack this difficult job of writing is to just take a deep breath, because, let’s face it, it’s impossible to do it all. There are not enough hours in a day, or in a night for that matter.
Speaking of night, as of late, when the Facebooker’s and the Tweeter’s curl up in their nests the virtual highway becomes a road less travelled, I find myself contentedly propped up by pillows, in bed, with my laptop balanced on my lap, coffee in my hand, and all sound and distraction suppressed, contained, and relegated behind a closed door. In this cave of silence, I write and rewrite, listening to my inner voice, or voices (psycho that I am), and channeling the advice of one of my favorite author’s Ernest Hemingway.
Coming 2016 – One More Time is Not Enough (The Only One) #3
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/belle.ami.96...
Twitter: @BelleAmi5
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/belleami96/
Website: http://belleami.us
onemoretimeisnotenough
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Often, I’m amazed at what other authors accomplish. Churning out books in 8 weeks’ time, writing a blog (sometimes 2 or 3) every week, belonging to 50 groups on Facebook and posting regularly (in some cases every hour) about their books, their drop in sale price, their blog appearances, their upcoming book-signings. You name it, like flies on sherbet, their postings are everywhere: Amazon, Smashwords, Goodreads, LinkedIn, ReadersInTheKnow, Kindle this, Kindle that, Tweet, Tweet, Tweeting, the list goes on-and-on. Is it possible that they have a team of elves, secret slaves tied up in the basement, maybe a high school cheerleading squad, or a full-time personal assistant with staff at their beck-and-call? Where do they find the time to do all of this, and still write their next book?
What I find the most annoying is all the advice writers shell out about writing. I’m not ungrateful, everyone wants to know the secret to success and is anxious for those precious tips, but, what is the most important tip they can give you, or the one that should be the most important? It’s to write, stupid! Yes, W-R-I-T-E! All of the rest of it doesn’t mean a darn thing if at the end of the day you haven’t written 300 or 1,000 words in your manuscript. For me, that requires plotting time to boot. I have to visualize that next chapter. Hell, I have to smell it, taste it, touch it, wrap my arms around it, do everything with it, but have sex with it, and, actually, I do that too, since my novels are very sexy. And, because I’m a bit of an obsessive/compulsive (I didn’t know this until I started writing), I have to reread everything I write countless times and self-edit as I go. I can’t just let go and give birth to 50 pages. 10 yes, 20 once in a great while, but most likely I’ve gone over those 10 or 20 pages’ innumerable times perfecting them, cutting this, changing that, only to consider throwing the whole damn thing out and starting again. You know the idiomatic expression, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”. What that means, is it’s important to be “careful not to completely reject an idea, practice or concept on the grounds that part of the argument is faulty or even bad. Instead, it must be reviewed in its entirely, and if needed, to revise it—but to still retain what is good and helpful”. It’s a fine line, and a battle I’m constantly fighting. “To be or not to be?” In the case of my writing, to keep or not to keep, that is the question?
What is strange, and I didn’t know, is that my process of writing is uncannily similar to Ernest Hemingway’s. I am not comparing myself, it has probably more to do with a psychological flaw than anything else. I certainly don’t plan on killing myself anytime too soon. But, unbeknownst to me, until I wrote this post and went searching for Papa’s advice, his process of writing, reading and editing as you create your novel, are exactly the habits I employ, and why I now consider myself to be compulsive.
brand_fyi_bsfc_116472_sfm_000_2997_15_20140905_001_hd_768x432-16x9So without further ado, I give you a snippet of his advice to writers. Says Papa: “The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time… Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work. The next morning, when you’ve had a good sleep and you’re feeling fresh, rewrite what you wrote the day before. When you come to the interesting place and you know what is going to happen next, go on from there and stop at another high point of interest. That way, when you get through, your stuff is full of interesting places and when you write a novel you never get stuck and you make it interesting as you go along. Every day go back to the beginning and rewrite the whole thing and when it gets too long, read at least two or three chapters before you start to write and at least once a week go back to the start. That way you make it one piece. And when you go over it, cut out everything you can. The main thing is to know what to leave out. The way you tell whether you’re going good is by what you can throw away. If you can throw away stuff that would make a high point of interest in somebody else’s story, you know you’re going good.”
And my favorite part of Papa’s advice is the following: “Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. That’s the true test of writing. When you can do that, the reader gets the kick and you don’t get any. You just get hard work and the better you write the harder it is because every story has to be better than the last one. It’s the hardest work there is. I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write I feel like shit. I’ve got the talent and I feel that I’m wasting it.”work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. That’s the true test of writing. When you can do that, the reader gets the kick and you don’t get any. You just get hard work and the better you write the harder it is because every story has to be better than the last one. It’s the hardest work there is. I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write I feel like shit. I’ve got the talent and I feel that I’m wasting it.”work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. That’s the true test of writing. When you can do that, the reader gets the kick and you don’t get any. You just get hard work and the better you write the harder it is because every story has to be better than the last one. It’s the hardest work there is. I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write I feel like shit. I’ve got the talent and I feel that I’m wasting it.”work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. That’s the true test of writing. When you can do that, the reader gets the kick and you don’t get any. You just get hard work and the better you write the harder it is because every story has to be better than the last one. It’s the hardest work there is. I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write I feel like shit. I’ve got the talent and I feel that I’m wasting it.”
Wait, speaking of compulsive, I’m starting to itch just thinking about those emails filling up my inbox as I write this post. Now I know why Hemmingway drank. Oh, I forgot, he didn’t do any of this virtual stuff, he just wrote. Perhaps, the best advice as we attack this difficult job of writing is to just take a deep breath, because, let’s face it, it’s impossible to do it all. There are not enough hours in a day, or in a night for that matter.
Speaking of night, as of late, when the Facebooker’s and the Tweeter’s curl up in their nests the virtual highway becomes a road less travelled, I find myself contentedly propped up by pillows, in bed, with my laptop balanced on my lap, coffee in my hand, and all sound and distraction suppressed, contained, and relegated behind a closed door. In this cave of silence, I write and rewrite, listening to my inner voice, or voices (psycho that I am), and channeling the advice of one of my favorite author’s Ernest Hemingway.
Coming 2016 – One More Time is Not Enough (The Only One) #3
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/belle.ami.96...
Twitter: @BelleAmi5
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/belleami96/
Website: http://belleami.us
onemoretimeisnotenough
Share this:
July 12, 2015
Security Threat to the United States
The greatest threat to the security of the United States and the world is the destabilization of the Middle East and the rise of a nuclear Iran. My solutions are as follows:
1. Defund the United Nations and throw them out of the United Sates. The UN is a cesspool of influence peddlers, overtly dedicated to the interests of the Muslim world. Let them disseminate their destructive influence elsewhere. Without US funding or support, the UN will crumble and can be replaced by a more constructive organism.
2. Open the floodgates for the US to begin exporting oil. The US possesses the largest reserves of high-quality light oil in the world. The world’s refineries prefer light oil over the heavy oil that comes from Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Canada. The shale revolution has made possible almost limitless supplies of high-quality light oil that can be produced from the greatest nation on earth, the US. We need to become self-sufficient and not import any foreign oil. Currently, we import over 9 million barrels a day, which is ridiculous and self-destructive. It will require several years to convert heavy oil refineries to light oil production. This can be accomplished by granting tax credits for refinery conversion. In fact, this would actually lower the price of gas in this country as light oil is less expensive to refine. How can we allow Iran to export unlimited supplies of oil and deny US producers export rights?
3. No deal with Iran unless they come to the table with reasonable concessions, including, full, unhampered inspections of their nuclear facilities. They must stop supporting worldwide terrorism, and they must stop their proliferation of ballistic missiles. They must also recognize Israel’s right to exist, and reverse their policies and pronouncements for the destruction of the US and Israel.
4. No funding, money, or charity to the Middle East, particularly the Palestinians until the Mullahs and the Imams stop teaching and preaching anti-Semitism/Israel and anti-American hatred and recognize the sovereignty of the State of Israel as a Jewish State.
5. Recognize Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel, and recognize Israel’s right to exist by every Arab nation, signed, sealed, and delivered. Once this is done, all of it, we can recognize, help establish and support a two-state solution.
6. In lieu of a two-state solution, if not possible, then as originally defined by the UN, the West Bank would become part of Jordan which has a very large Palestinian population, and Gaza would become part of Egypt, both are basically Sunni Muslim countries and compatible.
7. I now I give you a small taste from my upcoming book Once is Not Enough, by my pseudonym Belle Ami, that is to be released in 2015. It addresses a practice and simple solution that would reduce emissions of Co2 in our environment. The practice is called no-till farming, and it is amazing that no one seems to address really practical ways to solve the environmental problems we face.
“With an estimated increase in world populations over the next thirty years to exceed two billion people, the demand to feed those people will create an insatiable need for arable land. That need will also lead to dramatic increases in environmental destruction and pollution. The most successful and feasible answer to this problem is conservation tillage and soil management. By improving the soil quality, we reduce soil erosion. Over the last forty years, we have lost nearly one-third of all arable land due to erosion. Crop yields from soil eroded land tend to deliver nearly ten percent less production. As for pollution, water runoff from agriculture is the most serious contaminant of our waterways, not only destroying aquatic habitats, but contaminated water increases the need for water treatment and dredging. There is also significant scientific evidence that traditional farm practices of soil tillage contributes significantly to global warming. When soil is tilled it oxidizes releasing greenhouse gasses greater than no-tilled soil. Not to mention the impact of CO2 emitted from fuel usage by tractors and farm equipment. It is estimated that conservation tillage, if implemented worldwide could reduce fuel use by forty to fifty percent. Improved farming techniques also result in improved land management and biodiversity, inviting diverse species to thrive.
“It is shocking to consider that even in Europe, conservation tillage and sustainable farm practices are not being utilized even as I speak. Conservation tillage provides real solutions to the need for increased food production without destroying the eco-system, or the environment. It lessens our dependence on fossil fuels and reduces our consumption of natural resources. Most important, it saves future generations from inheriting a barren landscape.”
Miles paused for effect. “This is a goal that is reachable. We have the technology, what we need is the implementation, and the will to change. Farmers in developing nations need to be convinced that sustainability is profitable. The Penguin Trust has the ability to partner up with NGO’s, governments, and companies, whose focus is on conservation and environmental sustainability. This is where our investment in the future must lie.”
And that, my friends, is how to address and solve problems.
1. Defund the United Nations and throw them out of the United Sates. The UN is a cesspool of influence peddlers, overtly dedicated to the interests of the Muslim world. Let them disseminate their destructive influence elsewhere. Without US funding or support, the UN will crumble and can be replaced by a more constructive organism.
2. Open the floodgates for the US to begin exporting oil. The US possesses the largest reserves of high-quality light oil in the world. The world’s refineries prefer light oil over the heavy oil that comes from Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Canada. The shale revolution has made possible almost limitless supplies of high-quality light oil that can be produced from the greatest nation on earth, the US. We need to become self-sufficient and not import any foreign oil. Currently, we import over 9 million barrels a day, which is ridiculous and self-destructive. It will require several years to convert heavy oil refineries to light oil production. This can be accomplished by granting tax credits for refinery conversion. In fact, this would actually lower the price of gas in this country as light oil is less expensive to refine. How can we allow Iran to export unlimited supplies of oil and deny US producers export rights?
3. No deal with Iran unless they come to the table with reasonable concessions, including, full, unhampered inspections of their nuclear facilities. They must stop supporting worldwide terrorism, and they must stop their proliferation of ballistic missiles. They must also recognize Israel’s right to exist, and reverse their policies and pronouncements for the destruction of the US and Israel.
4. No funding, money, or charity to the Middle East, particularly the Palestinians until the Mullahs and the Imams stop teaching and preaching anti-Semitism/Israel and anti-American hatred and recognize the sovereignty of the State of Israel as a Jewish State.
5. Recognize Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel, and recognize Israel’s right to exist by every Arab nation, signed, sealed, and delivered. Once this is done, all of it, we can recognize, help establish and support a two-state solution.
6. In lieu of a two-state solution, if not possible, then as originally defined by the UN, the West Bank would become part of Jordan which has a very large Palestinian population, and Gaza would become part of Egypt, both are basically Sunni Muslim countries and compatible.
7. I now I give you a small taste from my upcoming book Once is Not Enough, by my pseudonym Belle Ami, that is to be released in 2015. It addresses a practice and simple solution that would reduce emissions of Co2 in our environment. The practice is called no-till farming, and it is amazing that no one seems to address really practical ways to solve the environmental problems we face.
“With an estimated increase in world populations over the next thirty years to exceed two billion people, the demand to feed those people will create an insatiable need for arable land. That need will also lead to dramatic increases in environmental destruction and pollution. The most successful and feasible answer to this problem is conservation tillage and soil management. By improving the soil quality, we reduce soil erosion. Over the last forty years, we have lost nearly one-third of all arable land due to erosion. Crop yields from soil eroded land tend to deliver nearly ten percent less production. As for pollution, water runoff from agriculture is the most serious contaminant of our waterways, not only destroying aquatic habitats, but contaminated water increases the need for water treatment and dredging. There is also significant scientific evidence that traditional farm practices of soil tillage contributes significantly to global warming. When soil is tilled it oxidizes releasing greenhouse gasses greater than no-tilled soil. Not to mention the impact of CO2 emitted from fuel usage by tractors and farm equipment. It is estimated that conservation tillage, if implemented worldwide could reduce fuel use by forty to fifty percent. Improved farming techniques also result in improved land management and biodiversity, inviting diverse species to thrive.
“It is shocking to consider that even in Europe, conservation tillage and sustainable farm practices are not being utilized even as I speak. Conservation tillage provides real solutions to the need for increased food production without destroying the eco-system, or the environment. It lessens our dependence on fossil fuels and reduces our consumption of natural resources. Most important, it saves future generations from inheriting a barren landscape.”
Miles paused for effect. “This is a goal that is reachable. We have the technology, what we need is the implementation, and the will to change. Farmers in developing nations need to be convinced that sustainability is profitable. The Penguin Trust has the ability to partner up with NGO’s, governments, and companies, whose focus is on conservation and environmental sustainability. This is where our investment in the future must lie.”
And that, my friends, is how to address and solve problems.
April 16, 2015
Holocaust Remembrance Day
Today is Yom Hashoah, the day of remembrance for the six million Jews that were genocidally murdered during the Holocaust. It seems fitting that I should remember my own small part in ensuring that the world never forgets. In 2010 I self-published my novel In the Face of Evil which I based on my mother Dina’s survival of the Holocaust. Happily, Dina survived, and was liberated seventy years ago today at Bergen Belsen. In the years that followed, she created a life of renewal, dedicating herself to her husband and children. She was the only survivor of her immediate family. Only two other cousins of her extensive family of uncles, aunts, and cousins would remain when the ashes of the crematoriums of Auschwitz and Treblinka finally stopped raining ashes upon the blood soaked earth.
My journey to bring Dina’s story to life was fraught with obstacles from the beginning. I was unable to secure a traditional publisher (perhaps I didn’t try hard enough). I was a first time author (I’ve written three more books since then under my pseudonym), and it was my first time on the race track without any “how-to” as far as PR, social media, and marketing. I made lots of mistakes. First, thinking I could self-edit and not have a professional editor. That ended with me having to pull the book when the comments were scathing as to the amount of errors present in the manuscript. Then a lawyer who had read and loved my book, even with all the erratum, contacted me and offered her FREE services to edit the book, which she considered an honor. I will be eternally grateful Jennifer Livingston, you certainly gave more than you got. Soon after, on a lark, I submitted my book for the National Jewish Book Awards, and received Finalist recognition for my labor of love. I was on a roll. Now, after writing three more books, and having improved significantly in my writing, I would love to edit, perfect, and republish In the Face of Evil, but alas, I’m busy with the editing of a new book, and the creation of the next one after that. Perhaps, one day I will return and update In the Face of Evil. I have received so many reviews that expressed disbelief that this book is not a bestseller. In fact, to this day I am rated 4.62 stars on Amazon and 4.23 stars on Goodreads, which is strutting with the stars by any measure.
My family and I have been blessed to still have Dina with us, and of sound mind. Well, as sound of mind as an eighty-six year old can be, or for that matter as sound of mind as her significantly younger daughter is.
In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day I leave you with an excerpt from In the Face of Evil. It is a passage that takes place on April 15th, 1945, the day Dina was liberated from Bergen Belsen.
“It feels like years since we got here, yet I know it is only a few months. Starvation has taken its toll and my body has shrunk to that of a small child. My pashak swims on me, I have no breasts and my menstruation has never come. Death lurks in the shadows for all of us, but lately I feel the cold hands encircling me in an icy embrace. I eat less and sleep more, happy to slip into the darkness of dreams where I relive my childhood. I dream of my mother’s cooking, of holiday meals with my family. The dreams are so real that sometimes I wake in pain having bit my tongue, my mouth pungent with the metallic taste of blood.
I know that I am dying and I feel tranquility… peace. Sometimes my soul rises out of my body and I see myself lying below. All the pain and hunger have left me. I am nearly free of the ties that bind me to this life. Like a butterfly I glide across the sky, now and again lifted by the fingers of the wind. I barely hear Lusia, who calls to me in my stupor. Her voice is a distant echo from far away, calling me, but I pay her no heed. I am soaring toward the sun.
Someone is shaking me! DYNKA, DYNKA, WAKE UP! WAKE UP! YOU HAVE TO GET UP! WE ARE LIBERATED! THE ENGLISH ARMY HAS LIBERATED US. THE WAR IS OVER!”
“Let me sleep, Lusia, why are you telling me lies? Go away and let me die. Please, do not tease me!” I am falling from the sky, plunging to Earth.
“Get up, we are free! The English are sharing their food. We are moving into the Nazis’ housing in Bergen. I swear, Dynka, the war is over! You are not going to die! Not now!”
Pulling me to my feet with her arms supporting me, she leads me outside. Now I am surely living in a dream. Everywhere I look I see handsome men in uniform smiling at me. No one ever smiles in Bergen-Belsen. Perhaps I am dead already. All around me everyone is smiling, laughing and crying with joy. It is surreal, I am still not able to comprehend the reality of the moment until I see a group of Nazi SS women being led away, their hands on their heads, fear in their eyes. With whatever strength I have left I pick up a stone and throw it in their direction. I hit Aufseherin Bormann squarely on her temple and she winces looking at me, her face now hideously gray and lined with fear. Suddenly I am filled with strength as my blood soars through my veins. With the joy of revenge pulsing through me, I spit in her direction.
In the Face of Evil: Based on the Life of Dina Frydman Balbien
My journey to bring Dina’s story to life was fraught with obstacles from the beginning. I was unable to secure a traditional publisher (perhaps I didn’t try hard enough). I was a first time author (I’ve written three more books since then under my pseudonym), and it was my first time on the race track without any “how-to” as far as PR, social media, and marketing. I made lots of mistakes. First, thinking I could self-edit and not have a professional editor. That ended with me having to pull the book when the comments were scathing as to the amount of errors present in the manuscript. Then a lawyer who had read and loved my book, even with all the erratum, contacted me and offered her FREE services to edit the book, which she considered an honor. I will be eternally grateful Jennifer Livingston, you certainly gave more than you got. Soon after, on a lark, I submitted my book for the National Jewish Book Awards, and received Finalist recognition for my labor of love. I was on a roll. Now, after writing three more books, and having improved significantly in my writing, I would love to edit, perfect, and republish In the Face of Evil, but alas, I’m busy with the editing of a new book, and the creation of the next one after that. Perhaps, one day I will return and update In the Face of Evil. I have received so many reviews that expressed disbelief that this book is not a bestseller. In fact, to this day I am rated 4.62 stars on Amazon and 4.23 stars on Goodreads, which is strutting with the stars by any measure.
My family and I have been blessed to still have Dina with us, and of sound mind. Well, as sound of mind as an eighty-six year old can be, or for that matter as sound of mind as her significantly younger daughter is.
In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day I leave you with an excerpt from In the Face of Evil. It is a passage that takes place on April 15th, 1945, the day Dina was liberated from Bergen Belsen.
“It feels like years since we got here, yet I know it is only a few months. Starvation has taken its toll and my body has shrunk to that of a small child. My pashak swims on me, I have no breasts and my menstruation has never come. Death lurks in the shadows for all of us, but lately I feel the cold hands encircling me in an icy embrace. I eat less and sleep more, happy to slip into the darkness of dreams where I relive my childhood. I dream of my mother’s cooking, of holiday meals with my family. The dreams are so real that sometimes I wake in pain having bit my tongue, my mouth pungent with the metallic taste of blood.
I know that I am dying and I feel tranquility… peace. Sometimes my soul rises out of my body and I see myself lying below. All the pain and hunger have left me. I am nearly free of the ties that bind me to this life. Like a butterfly I glide across the sky, now and again lifted by the fingers of the wind. I barely hear Lusia, who calls to me in my stupor. Her voice is a distant echo from far away, calling me, but I pay her no heed. I am soaring toward the sun.
Someone is shaking me! DYNKA, DYNKA, WAKE UP! WAKE UP! YOU HAVE TO GET UP! WE ARE LIBERATED! THE ENGLISH ARMY HAS LIBERATED US. THE WAR IS OVER!”
“Let me sleep, Lusia, why are you telling me lies? Go away and let me die. Please, do not tease me!” I am falling from the sky, plunging to Earth.
“Get up, we are free! The English are sharing their food. We are moving into the Nazis’ housing in Bergen. I swear, Dynka, the war is over! You are not going to die! Not now!”
Pulling me to my feet with her arms supporting me, she leads me outside. Now I am surely living in a dream. Everywhere I look I see handsome men in uniform smiling at me. No one ever smiles in Bergen-Belsen. Perhaps I am dead already. All around me everyone is smiling, laughing and crying with joy. It is surreal, I am still not able to comprehend the reality of the moment until I see a group of Nazi SS women being led away, their hands on their heads, fear in their eyes. With whatever strength I have left I pick up a stone and throw it in their direction. I hit Aufseherin Bormann squarely on her temple and she winces looking at me, her face now hideously gray and lined with fear. Suddenly I am filled with strength as my blood soars through my veins. With the joy of revenge pulsing through me, I spit in her direction.
In the Face of Evil: Based on the Life of Dina Frydman Balbien
June 16, 2014
Remembering Anne Frank
Having just passed the anniversary of the birth of Anne Frank, I find myself remembering her short yet unforgettable life.
Anne Frank was born June 12, 1929, my mother Dina Frydman was born June 20, 1929, one week later. Anne was born in Frankfurt, Germany, but her family moved to Amsterdam when she was four years old to escape the rise to power of the Nazis. My mother was born and lived with her loving family in Radom, Poland. Interestingly, Amsterdam and Radom lie approximately 773 miles apart, and nearly perpendicular to each other on a map. On September 1, 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland, both Dina and Anne’s lives would change forever.
During the chaos and destruction of World War II my mother, Dina Frydman and Anne Frank suffered as innocent victims of atrocities no child should ever endure. They were enslaved, starved, humiliated, and treated as sub-humans. At an age when they should have been dreaming of their future and flirting with young men, instead, they watched as their families were torn apart, and their world of hope and dreams died an agonizing death.
Before the war, both young girls showed academic promise and lived in a future that promised upward middle-class mobility due to their hard working parents. However, their dreams of a normal life would soon be quashed by the military might of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi machine and his planned, orchestrated, march of death to create a Juden free Europe.
It was at the death factory of Auschwitz that fate would first bring them together. My mother arrived in Auschwitz on July 7, 1944, in a cattle car from Pinoki, an armaments factory in Poland, where she loaded ammunition and gun powder onto trains bound for the Eastern front. After being discovered in their secret hiding place in the annex on August 4, 1944, Anne and her family were arrested and deported to Westerbork Concentration camp in the Netherlands. On September 3, 1944, Anne and her family were transferred to Auschwitz.
Both girls were now at the factory of death that was Auschwitz. However, my mother, on October 10, 1944, was miraculously chosen by Mengele, the dreaded doctor who bore the terrifying sobriquet of the “angel of death”, to leave Auschwitz for a satellite-camp of Auschwitz named Hindenburg. At Hindenburg through the freezing winter of 1944 she marched through snow drifts in cardboard shoes without a coat, wearing nothing but a striped Pashak, to an armaments factory as a slave laborer where she welded parts for submarines. Anne would remain in Auschwitz with her mother Edith and her sister Margo until January of 1945. Her mother, Edith, died shortly before the sisters were shipped out of Auschwitz. With the failure of the Russian campaign the Nazis began to fall back to Germany when the tide turned against them. But, even with the pressure of a losing war, and the knowledge that they could not win, Hitler and his henchmen remained true and dedicated to one purpose, the genocide of the Jews.
It was in January 1945 that Dina and Anne’s paths converged completely at Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen was the most hopeless place on the face of the earth. When Anne and Dina arrived in cattle cars there were nearly 100,000 inmates stuffed into barracks that housed approximately 500 inmates each. In deplorable conditions of filth and disease, they slept on rags on the ground, starving, waiting to die.
Of all of the barracks in Bergen-Belsen, somehow Dina, Anne, and Margo ended up in the same crowded building. Not only the same barracks, but literally their spot of ground was but a few feet apart from each other. In such conditions of daily death and starvation, you might wonder how my mother has such a clear recollection of Anne and her sister Margo. Why in heaven's name would she even notice two young women that spoke a different language than her, lying on the ground, when everywhere as far as the eye could see were the starving, the dying, and the already dead?
If it is our humanity that defines us, then therein lies the reason that Dina noticed Anne and Margo. Nearly stripped of empathy and humanity, all that remained was the memory of love and family. Every time my mother had to drag herself outside to go to the bathroom, or to clean herself, she had to step past two dark-haired sisters who clung to each other. They spoke Dutch, but it was not hard for my mother to understand what was being said. The younger sister, Anne, was desperately trying to keep Margo alive with words, with prayers, with comfort. Dina in every way imaginable related to the drama that was playing out between Anne and Margo. She was struck by this love between sisters and the fact that they had somehow managed to remain together. Dina would have given anything to have her sister Nadja with her, but Nadja and Dina’s entire family had perished in the gas chamber at Triblinka in August, 1942, leaving her an orphan. It is understandable that Dina would be drawn to these devoted sisters. Dina could see that Margo was dying of typhus and she felt Anne’s pain as she watched her desperately try to keep Margo alive. When Margo died it was obvious to my mother that Anne gave up. She too was sick with typhus, but it was the loss of Margo that deprived her of the will to live.
Anne died two weeks before the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the British Army on April 15, 1945. Dina, barely alive, survived. At the time of liberation there were approximately 60,000 inmates, and 13,000 corpses piled upon a wall of death around the camp.
Anne left a diary that her father published after the war, The Diary of Anne Frank. This heartrending young girl’s last testament to life has been read by over 400 million people, immortalizing her forever as a young inspiring voice. I wrote an award winning novel, In the Face of Evil, about my mother Dina’s years, before, during and after the Holocaust,
lest we forget.
Anne Frank was born June 12, 1929, my mother Dina Frydman was born June 20, 1929, one week later. Anne was born in Frankfurt, Germany, but her family moved to Amsterdam when she was four years old to escape the rise to power of the Nazis. My mother was born and lived with her loving family in Radom, Poland. Interestingly, Amsterdam and Radom lie approximately 773 miles apart, and nearly perpendicular to each other on a map. On September 1, 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland, both Dina and Anne’s lives would change forever.
During the chaos and destruction of World War II my mother, Dina Frydman and Anne Frank suffered as innocent victims of atrocities no child should ever endure. They were enslaved, starved, humiliated, and treated as sub-humans. At an age when they should have been dreaming of their future and flirting with young men, instead, they watched as their families were torn apart, and their world of hope and dreams died an agonizing death.
Before the war, both young girls showed academic promise and lived in a future that promised upward middle-class mobility due to their hard working parents. However, their dreams of a normal life would soon be quashed by the military might of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi machine and his planned, orchestrated, march of death to create a Juden free Europe.
It was at the death factory of Auschwitz that fate would first bring them together. My mother arrived in Auschwitz on July 7, 1944, in a cattle car from Pinoki, an armaments factory in Poland, where she loaded ammunition and gun powder onto trains bound for the Eastern front. After being discovered in their secret hiding place in the annex on August 4, 1944, Anne and her family were arrested and deported to Westerbork Concentration camp in the Netherlands. On September 3, 1944, Anne and her family were transferred to Auschwitz.
Both girls were now at the factory of death that was Auschwitz. However, my mother, on October 10, 1944, was miraculously chosen by Mengele, the dreaded doctor who bore the terrifying sobriquet of the “angel of death”, to leave Auschwitz for a satellite-camp of Auschwitz named Hindenburg. At Hindenburg through the freezing winter of 1944 she marched through snow drifts in cardboard shoes without a coat, wearing nothing but a striped Pashak, to an armaments factory as a slave laborer where she welded parts for submarines. Anne would remain in Auschwitz with her mother Edith and her sister Margo until January of 1945. Her mother, Edith, died shortly before the sisters were shipped out of Auschwitz. With the failure of the Russian campaign the Nazis began to fall back to Germany when the tide turned against them. But, even with the pressure of a losing war, and the knowledge that they could not win, Hitler and his henchmen remained true and dedicated to one purpose, the genocide of the Jews.
It was in January 1945 that Dina and Anne’s paths converged completely at Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen was the most hopeless place on the face of the earth. When Anne and Dina arrived in cattle cars there were nearly 100,000 inmates stuffed into barracks that housed approximately 500 inmates each. In deplorable conditions of filth and disease, they slept on rags on the ground, starving, waiting to die.
Of all of the barracks in Bergen-Belsen, somehow Dina, Anne, and Margo ended up in the same crowded building. Not only the same barracks, but literally their spot of ground was but a few feet apart from each other. In such conditions of daily death and starvation, you might wonder how my mother has such a clear recollection of Anne and her sister Margo. Why in heaven's name would she even notice two young women that spoke a different language than her, lying on the ground, when everywhere as far as the eye could see were the starving, the dying, and the already dead?
If it is our humanity that defines us, then therein lies the reason that Dina noticed Anne and Margo. Nearly stripped of empathy and humanity, all that remained was the memory of love and family. Every time my mother had to drag herself outside to go to the bathroom, or to clean herself, she had to step past two dark-haired sisters who clung to each other. They spoke Dutch, but it was not hard for my mother to understand what was being said. The younger sister, Anne, was desperately trying to keep Margo alive with words, with prayers, with comfort. Dina in every way imaginable related to the drama that was playing out between Anne and Margo. She was struck by this love between sisters and the fact that they had somehow managed to remain together. Dina would have given anything to have her sister Nadja with her, but Nadja and Dina’s entire family had perished in the gas chamber at Triblinka in August, 1942, leaving her an orphan. It is understandable that Dina would be drawn to these devoted sisters. Dina could see that Margo was dying of typhus and she felt Anne’s pain as she watched her desperately try to keep Margo alive. When Margo died it was obvious to my mother that Anne gave up. She too was sick with typhus, but it was the loss of Margo that deprived her of the will to live.
Anne died two weeks before the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the British Army on April 15, 1945. Dina, barely alive, survived. At the time of liberation there were approximately 60,000 inmates, and 13,000 corpses piled upon a wall of death around the camp.
Anne left a diary that her father published after the war, The Diary of Anne Frank. This heartrending young girl’s last testament to life has been read by over 400 million people, immortalizing her forever as a young inspiring voice. I wrote an award winning novel, In the Face of Evil, about my mother Dina’s years, before, during and after the Holocaust,
lest we forget.
March 10, 2012
One Can Only Wonder at the Ideas that are Bought and Sold on the Internet
Having researched and written a book on the Holocaust I feel particularly well versed in the history of that ignominious chapter of human history. I also understand well humankind’s propensity to disavow and rationalize the blight of its offenses and to relegate them to the distant past. We all yearn to be forgiven for our sins and given a second chance. In recent years, the United States close ties to Israel have become the fuel for a new kind of virulent anti-Semitism. All one has to do is to go on YouTube and watch nearly any video with relation to Israel and you can read a firestorm of comments, most treading dangerously close to pure unadulterated hatred of Israel (you can easily substitute the word Israel with the designation Jews), its right to exist and most importantly the United States support of that right to exist. One can also find this particular type of hatred expressed by misguided Jews (self-hatred) on Jewish Media sites and it is rampant in organizations such as J Street. As happened during the 1930’s when a world-wide depression gripped the economies of the world and the “time immemorial” scapegoat, the Jews, became the target for the world’s troubles, so it seems that same scenario is smoldering, albeit less obviously, again today. Today, however, it is cloaked in concern for the Arab world (Arab Spring), an armed and nuclear Iran (nuclear holocaust), and our own national problems at home (unemployment and weak recovery). Hidden beneath this cloak of concern and equanimity lies the same bald faced intolerance and distortion that somehow it is Israel that stands in the way of world peace, and that it is Israel that is the source of our unfortunate involvement in the Middle East, and it is because of our relationship with Israel that we were attacked on 911 and are considered the “Great Satan” by the Arab world, and that our relationship with Iran would be sublime were it not for that “little shitty country”.
Even the rise of Ron Paul, in some ways, is tied to this perception of the inequity of our continued support of Israel. This is a perfect example of politics gone awry. In a world that has become ever smaller due to the internet highway, virtual revolution and global economies that are so closely linked, witness the fluctuations of the stock markets every time Greece sneezes, it seems paradoxical to be suggesting that isolationism would serve our best interests. Yet, there is a growing contingency of our society that would have you believe that we would be better served by cutting off all financial support to the international community and in particular Israel. I have great respect for many of Ron Paul’s ideas, particularly in terms of the “gorilla in the room” the Federal Government (King Kong) which needs to be reduced, reformed, reorganized and restructured from “soup to nuts” or “tax system to special interests”, that is another conversation. I also agree that we can no longer afford to be the “policeman” of the world. However, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint, Ron Paul’s lack of diplomatic acumen and foresight makes him unelectable. Yet, it is still fascinating and worrisome to observe his growing cadre of faithful followers, especially among the younger population who are increasingly worried about the world that they will inherit.
The truth is so malleable in the hands of adept pundits that I often find myself feeling on the verge of tearing my hair out when I listen to them. As my anger builds my blood seethes in my veins and pounds in my skull until I am forced at times to respond with comments on various media websites. I don’t really like to waste my time doing this as it only encourages the brainless to bombard me with their blathering (my new favorite word for what I mostly hear from the media and people who comment on YouTube, etc.). I would much prefer spending a few minutes on Facebook catching up with my friends and engaging in benign conversations. Yet, grudgingly, I find I must sometimes take the time to posit an argument or clarification to the justifications and immoral platitudes that are so generously put forth as the truth of God, country and personal belief from all of the predator cruisers of the internet. The only good that comes of any of this is naught, as they are not really in the market to discuss and rationally argue their theories. Mostly they blather so as to disseminate their vile hatred with a pungent sampling of poor grammar, indescribably inept spelling, English language inadequacies and deficiencies, and a healthy dose of curse words. I believe Lenny Bruce said it best “Feh!” “Feh!”
It seems that as the world becomes more technologically advanced and we become ever closer to our global neighbors in cyberspace, we “thinking” folks must become ever more discerning and questioning of what we encounter as “gospel truth” on the “information highway”. We would be wise to disabuse ourselves of truths built on lies and instead indoctrinate ourselves in history, economics and politics so as to better wade the tsunami of blathering (there’s that word again) that assails us.
Even the rise of Ron Paul, in some ways, is tied to this perception of the inequity of our continued support of Israel. This is a perfect example of politics gone awry. In a world that has become ever smaller due to the internet highway, virtual revolution and global economies that are so closely linked, witness the fluctuations of the stock markets every time Greece sneezes, it seems paradoxical to be suggesting that isolationism would serve our best interests. Yet, there is a growing contingency of our society that would have you believe that we would be better served by cutting off all financial support to the international community and in particular Israel. I have great respect for many of Ron Paul’s ideas, particularly in terms of the “gorilla in the room” the Federal Government (King Kong) which needs to be reduced, reformed, reorganized and restructured from “soup to nuts” or “tax system to special interests”, that is another conversation. I also agree that we can no longer afford to be the “policeman” of the world. However, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint, Ron Paul’s lack of diplomatic acumen and foresight makes him unelectable. Yet, it is still fascinating and worrisome to observe his growing cadre of faithful followers, especially among the younger population who are increasingly worried about the world that they will inherit.
The truth is so malleable in the hands of adept pundits that I often find myself feeling on the verge of tearing my hair out when I listen to them. As my anger builds my blood seethes in my veins and pounds in my skull until I am forced at times to respond with comments on various media websites. I don’t really like to waste my time doing this as it only encourages the brainless to bombard me with their blathering (my new favorite word for what I mostly hear from the media and people who comment on YouTube, etc.). I would much prefer spending a few minutes on Facebook catching up with my friends and engaging in benign conversations. Yet, grudgingly, I find I must sometimes take the time to posit an argument or clarification to the justifications and immoral platitudes that are so generously put forth as the truth of God, country and personal belief from all of the predator cruisers of the internet. The only good that comes of any of this is naught, as they are not really in the market to discuss and rationally argue their theories. Mostly they blather so as to disseminate their vile hatred with a pungent sampling of poor grammar, indescribably inept spelling, English language inadequacies and deficiencies, and a healthy dose of curse words. I believe Lenny Bruce said it best “Feh!” “Feh!”
It seems that as the world becomes more technologically advanced and we become ever closer to our global neighbors in cyberspace, we “thinking” folks must become ever more discerning and questioning of what we encounter as “gospel truth” on the “information highway”. We would be wise to disabuse ourselves of truths built on lies and instead indoctrinate ourselves in history, economics and politics so as to better wade the tsunami of blathering (there’s that word again) that assails us.
