Ruth Tenzer Feldman's Blog, page 6

What a Mess! Or Is it? Multitasking….

These days, the Janey II building site looks like a messy mix of construction bits with lots of muck and dirt and little cohesion. After weeks of drilling, and cementing, and pipe laying, and continuous reallocations of dirt, the Janey II seems to be taking forever.

I take comfort in the mess. The Janey II and Book Three are at the same stage: multitasking the foundation.

Here’s how I see it. Every major system and amenity offered in the Janey II is either generated in the basement/foundation o...

Social Media vs. Antisocial Moments

The Janey 2 on Facebook!

Live, from KMUN radio on the Oregon Coast and out into the ether…me! Thanks to Carol Newman’s expertise and welcoming spirit, I had a fine time with our interview last week. Now it’s back to butt in chair, and writing, rewriting, more writing, researching, thinking, thinking, thinking, and revising, and writing and so on and so on.

I get up in the morning, and before I’m fully awake, sometimes some character is giving me a scene or a phrase. I relish these moments, the...

The Boy on the Wooden Box: A Gem

Welcome to Day 4 of the blog tour for the Sydney Taylor Book Awards, presented annually by the Association of Jewish Libraries. Kudos to everyone on the list. As you can see from my last post, I took a “snow day” from my own writing to read Leon Leyson’s memoir, The Boy on the Wooden Box, which is one of two honor books for older readers. Leon, at age 10, was one of the youngest on Oskar Schindler’s list of “essential” Jewish prisoners for the factory he ran for the Nazi war machine. Thanks t...

Snowed In, Under, and By….

Snow. In Old Norse, snjor. In modern Dutch sneeuw. This winter, even in downtown Portland, those lovely crystals fall from the sky. What happens when they hit the ground, depending on your circumstances, is another story. For the construction crews at Janey II, snow meant several days off. My phone’s emergency management alert link…I didn’t know I had one!….urged me to stay indoors, away from wind and ice. I was to be officially “snowed in.”

As I watched the white from the warm side of the win...

Cementing the Prologue

The construction crew for the Janey II is done with their major drilling work, and so am I…pretty much. I’ve finished most of the foundational research for both halves of Book Three: Istanbul in the 1500s and Portland in 2059. I’m still having a few heart-to-heart “discussions” with my main characters, but that’s for another blog post. This one deals with a foundational part of Book Three that I want to be solid, solid, solid. The prologue.

Look at all that rebar. Look at all those braces. Loo...

Drill, Baby, Drill. Part II: The Future?

OK, so in the last post, I wrote about getting my facts straight for the sultan’s harem in 16th Century Istanbul. Let me tell you, there is a ton and a half of material about that time and place. I could spend the next six months researching that aspect of Book Three, but I’ll restrain myself. It’s one thing to drill down to get the solid facts and the juicy bits for a novel. It’s another to get so lost in the research that the novel never gets finished!

I could also spend the next six months...

Drill, Baby, Drill. Part I: The Harem

Back at the Janey II, they are still working on the foundation. So am I, which is not surprising. There is so-o-o-o-o much to research for Book Three. This week I’m drilling down into the depths of detail about the women’s quarters (the harem) in Topkapi Palace in the mid 1500s, during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. About 90% of what I learn won’t be part of the story, but the other 10% will be vital.

Here’s the tricky part. Back in the 1500s, the harem was a very private part of the c...

Janey II and Book Three: The Race Is On!

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the Janey II in all its precise architectural glory. Here’s what the new nine-story apartment and “mixed use” building will like on the outside. I also have diagrams of the interior as well. All done. Perfect. It just has to be built.

My next book, with the untitle of Book Three, also has to be built. A couple months back, I drew of picture of the main narrative, and I’m still drawing room diagrams, family trees, and association circles. Now I’ve started to wr...

Does Jack Still Do This on Christmas Eve?

Back in another part of my life, I once asked a friend named Jack about what he and his family did to celebrate Christmas. I was curious. Growing up Jewish in America, I knew plenty about the sort of Christmas they offered up on TV or sang about in holiday concerts. But the real Christmas? Everybody did it a little differently, right?

So I asked Jack, who was then a well-respected attorney, a Vietnam War veteran, a dad, and, I might add, my boss. “Do you do anything special every year?”

Turns o...

Can a Universe Have a Homecoming?

This Monday, December 16, 2013, at 7 pm, the Blue Thread universe will celebrate the launch of The Ninth Day by zooming down to a single spot on the olam: 732 NW 19th Avenue, Portland, Oregon. JOIN US! It’s officially the Koehler House, named for the German family who first lived there, but for me the angular blue-gray structure is the real-world inspiration for Miriam Josefsohn’s home inBlue Thread, a companion novel to The Ninth Day. And it’s still filled with my imaginary friends.

In the 19...