Evette Davis's Blog, page 4

Hurra! Libraries are Open Again

One aspect of our on-going pandemic that has not gotten a lot of attention was the total closure of our public libraries. In mid-June San Francisco signaled that it would slowly begin reopening its Main Library and neighborhood branches after more than a year of closure. For me, this was the equivalent of seeing the flowers budding on trees after a long, cold, lonely winter.

There are probably people out there that would argue that libraries are not an essential service and their closure was justified. But those of us who are card-carrying members of the Library Appreciation Society would beg to differ. Libraries are a critical “third space” and while I will not second guess San Francisco’s decision to keep the buildings closed, I will champion their re-opening and make the case that they should stay open, regardless of what comes next. 

Libraries are not just essential during a pandemic. They are essential, period; a key ingredient in the secret sauce necessary for a well-functioning, educated, literate, democratic society. Think about it: a library is a building stuffed to the brim with information and entertainment that is free to anyone regardless of their age, gender, religion, ethnicity, income or political persuasion. I’m entitled to the same information you are, and if we’re lucky, we can actually both read something at the same time. That is simply genius and without it, we are all lesser beings. 

But don’t just take my word for it. Check out these folks clapping and hooting as the Main Library re-opens. This kind of adoration is normally reserved for rock concerts, but in SF we love our libraries. 

As a writer I’m also dependent on libraries. There are only so many books about cemeteries, poisonous plants and ancient weapons I can collect. (More on that in a moment.) The library is my go to place for reference books – although I was disappointed once during a visit to Seattle to find that all of the books about witchcraft had been checked out. 

I am building my own library of sorts, too. Mostly because I have a voracious curiosity and a never ending need to research vampires, fourteenth century daggers fashioned to kill specific demons and deadly herbs for potions. My latest obsession is books about cursed objects. I’ve picked up a few gems recently including a lovely book about “literary curiosities,” which I sincerely hope is never a phrase used to describe one of my books! 

It’s nice to have your own reading library, but nothing compares to the real thing. If you haven’t recently, grab a mask and stroll over to your nearest library branch. Admire the shelves full of new releases and old favorites. Take a look at the folks sitting quietly in the corners reading and say a little thanks that one of life’s great pleasures is back.

Per yesterday’s newsletter…

Here is a super easy way to check out my new novel, 48 STATES, on Kindle Vella… It is being delivered right to your inbox!

Head to this link to follow and start reading my newest piece chapter—by-chapter. There are two chapters already live, so go catch up so you can get ready for the next one.

I’m so excited to finally be sharing this novel with the world, so I hope you enjoy 48 STATES.

48 States is on Vella!

Here is a super easy way to check out my new novel, 48 STATES, on Kindle Vella… It is being delivered right to your inbox!

Head to this link to follow and start reading my newest piece chapter—by-chapter. There are two chapters already live, so go catch up so you can get ready for the next one.

I’m so excited to finally be sharing this novel with the world, so I hope you enjoy 48 STATES.

Let’s All Disappear

I hadn’t planned on writing another newsletter for summer, but the reaction to my last missive inspired me to pen another post. The May/June essay was by far the most widely read thing I’ve written in a long time. (I tried to contact everyone who got in touch. If I missed you, know that I’m deeply thankful for your support.)

The big news is that I finished Book 3, the still nameless final installment of the Dark Horse Trilogy. The two-hundred-plus-pages are sitting in an evil pile on my dining room table staring at me, while I catch up on other tasks before going back and creating a second draft of the manuscript. I’m avoiding the book, if only for a little while, to gain some distance before I dive in and start editing. 

Over the years I’ve been asked repeatedly “why do you write?” I already have a perfectly good “day job.” I’ve also been asked, “Do you sleep? Watch TV?” The answer to both questions is yes, a little. But writing is my priority. I started writing fiction out of a sense of self-preservation. When we co-founded our company twenty-two years ago, Jessica Berg and I could count on one hand the number of women who worked in public affairs.  Although we’ve been lucky and had a few wonderful male supporters and mentors, the stress of being a trailblazer and just the general conditions of working in politics and crisis communications is a lot to manage. I transitioned to public affairs from the journalism world, where editors routinely smoked and drank themselves into an early grave thanks to the stress of making deadlines. If you go back two or three decades and look at the obituaries for Associated Press (AP) editors, few of them made it to 65 years old. All of the cigarettes and three scotch lunches caught up with them. Political consultants are not far behind, drinking their way through one bad press cycle to the next.  I was beginning to see how easily I could follow that path, if I didn’t do something.

A decade and five novels later, writing has stayed a consistent focus for me, even if it has had to play second fiddle (or third) to work, marriage and children. It’s also been a lifesaver, offering me an opportunity to lose myself in my imagination and use creativity as a way to nurture myself through stressful times. Jeff Tweedy, a singer and songwriter known for his work with the band Wilco, as well as a published author, was recently a guest on a NYT podcast where he recommended “disappearing” as an important part of being creative. Tweedy says, “I think it’s kind of what everybody wants all the time, is to be free from worry, unburdened by a sense of self. That’s what I think of as disappearing.”

His description is exactly what is happening when I write. I disappear into the words, into the places, into the moment I’m trying to create. The abrupt changes the pandemic caused, along with the realization that I have a daughter leaving home in a year for college, has only reinforced my commitment to writing.  Having something that is indisputably mine is a critical part of being happy. I’m not suggesting that everyone go out and become a writer, but I am suggesting that everyone find a passion and lean into it. Learn something new, carve out space to play music, garden, cook, hike, climb mountains or kayak in the Bay. The remedy for feeling adrift during the long years we walk this earth – the thing that will anchor you to this world – will be that passion. By looking for that special thing that connects you to this world – and helps you disappear – you are inching closer to becoming your true self, which is an amazing experience.  If you’ve ever read my novels, you know that my lead characters undergo all kinds of near-death experiences and transformations that allow them to truly know themselves. Luckily that kind of truth is something we can all experience; we don’t have to just read about it in books (well-maybe minus the near-death experiences).  

I hope you find something that becomes your passion, a pursuit that allows you to stop time and step off the merry-go-round of life for a few hours. I also hope you will follow me and my writing adventures by signing up for my newsletter and check out my novel 48 STATES, which I just published for the first time on Amazon’s Vella platform. If an entire book is too much of a commitment, maybe this chapter-by-chapter format will be just the thing for you! The story is separate from the DarkHorse Trilogy and imagines a very different trajectory for the United States. 

Send me a note and let me know what you’re doing to keep busy this summer. I’ll be at my writing desk, getting Book 3 ready for publication by the end of the year.

Heart Meditation and Saying Goodbye

We all grieve differently. After my father died, I waited for the tears to come but they never arrived. My sister Robin cried non-stop from the moment she got to San Francisco the day before his death. She wept openly when we arrived at dawn the next morning to find he’d already left this world. Even standing next to his body, that crisp April morning, nothing happened. 

Over the last four years, I’ve felt profound moments of grief watching the man who helped raise me to be strong and independent disappear before my eyes at the hands of dementia. The metamorphosis continued until our roles were completely reversed and he gave his life over to me to manage. 

His death was sudden, but not unexpected. The “mild” case of COVID he tested positive for on Inauguration Day this year was anything but, having spared him the obligatory fever and cough in favor of kidney failure weeks later. After more than a week in the hospital, we brought Dad to a board and care home in Burlingame to enter hospice. Forty-five days later he died, worn out by illness. Robin and I were fortunate not only that we got to say goodbye, but that we helped my father leave this earth on his own terms. 

In the midst of all of this, we packed up my father’s apartment, giving away most of his belongings. He would never have lived on his own again even if he’d survived, making his possessions useless objects that no longer had a purpose. The last time I openly wept was on the day we packed his things. I came across several boxes of his personal mementos I hadn’t seen since I was a child. Holding his pocket knife and the jade pinky ring he wore in my hands, I was reminded of the many evenings my sister and I eagerly waited for him to come home from work. He would go into his bedroom and take off his suit in favor of more comfortable clothing and remove the contents of his pockets and his jewelry and place them in a tray on his bureau. Holding those objects, I felt the full loss of the man I knew as my father, replaced by someone who did not know either the day or month of the year. 

By the time I checked into Cavallo Point in Sausalito on Mother’s Day weekend for a private retreat, almost a month had passed since his death and I’d still not shed a tear. The first day I was there, I walked the grounds and worked on my novel. The second day I had a massage and then met with a meditation specialist. As I lay on the massage table, she gently guided me through a series of techniques to relax my body and breath through my heart. Inhaling and exhaling with focus, I lost track of time and was only awakened from my meditative state when I was overcome with a strong sensation of falling. I raised my arms up off my chest to reach out and catch myself. When I mentioned this to my guide later, she smiled congratulating me on having broken through the superficial to the layers beneath. As we were finishing our session, I asked her how long it took for our mind to reveal what we learned in meditation. She remarked that it varied and I would need to be on the lookout for signs. 

I fell asleep early that night, perhaps in retrospect exhausted by my spiritual journey. The sun’s rays woke me the next morning and I eagerly pulled on my running shoes to get outside. As I made my way through the Lodge’s grounds towards the waterfront and a pier jutting out into the Bay in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, I was inexplicably overcome with emotion. I managed to make my way onto the asphalt where I plopped down cross-legged to sob. Feelings I’d long held inside finally broke free and I literally howled, my body releasing anger and grief that had long weighed on me. I’m not sure how long I was there but eventually the tears subsided, replaced by a feeling of lightness and relief at being released from so much sadness. I raised my eyes to the sky and said a prayer of gratitude for my meditation lesson and made a promise to continue with it in the hopes that leading with my heart would help me find more clarity in my life. 

I dedicate this newsletter to my father to celebrate his life and to say goodbye. I’m also sharing this experience because – without giving too much away – it pairs nicely with Book 3. Olivia must reconcile the complicated relationship she has with her father as a part of the story. Family traditions, honoring one’s heritage and destiny all play a role as she navigates what it means to be a daughter as well as her own person. Here’s an excerpt.

It’s not easy to be a leader in the shadow of another and yet all of us face those moments when we must separate and define ourselves. How do we process the flaws we see in our parents and manage life’s transitions? It is a coincidence that Olivia’s life and mine are so similar at this moment? If you’ve read my books you know there is no such thing – only fate and what she has in store for us. It’s my hope that all of us can learn to have the capacity to open our hearts to absorb what comes next, and have the grace and strength to endure it.

More On Music

Grant Lee Buffalo:  I’m in Love with a Band that Broke up 20 Years Ago

I want you to meet my new love interests: Grant Lee Buffalo. Too bad the band is from twenty years ago. What happened? How did I only now stumble on to the melancholy genius of these guys? No explanation.

Thank goodness for Spotify, which allows all of us to explore bands and music we would never know about otherwise, especially since we can’t go wading through record stores exploring music like we used to when ahem…some of us were teenagers, and especially in the middle of a pandemic. 

One of the songs that shot an arrow through my heart is Mockingbirds. It’s like it was meant to be on one of my playlists. Olivia struggles with feelings of doubt and encounters tragedy upon tragedy. I can imagine her saying something similar about devastation as if she could meet him/her on the street.  

Devastation at last, finally we meet

After all of these years out here on the street

I had a feeling you would make yourself known

You came along just to claim your place on the throne

Now I have been overthrown

Overthrown

Devastation my door was left open wide

You brought me into your heart then you swallowed my pride

I had a feeling you were hiding your thoughts

I made a note to myself I nearly forgot

Now I am overwrought

I’m overwrought

I don’t know what the songwriter had in mind, but for me this song really plays into my thinking about thrones and destabilization of old ways as a part of Book 3 and it makes allusions to other worlds and adventures gone bad. 

Salutations at last down on my knees

I heard the bugle this morn blast reveille

Woke from a dream where I was in a terrible realm

All my sails were ablaze I was chained to the helm

And now I am overwhelmed

I’m overwhelmed

I haven’t yet, but I should really send these guys a love note for inspiring my writing. If you haven’t you should check out their songs. Do you have a band or song that really captures your attention or mood? Send me a link and we’ll feature it on our social media.

Why I Love New Orleans

I miss New Orleans. I was there last March and arrived back home in San Francisco just as the Shelter in Place (SIP) was about to be issued. It was surreal to go from a place full of people to a city emptied out overnight. Of course New Orleans soon had its own shutdown, but I had been in the thick of the French Quarter for a week with its teeming masses and the juxtaposition was jarring. I miss being in New Orleans and hope to return soon. 

I’ve always wondered if I had a choice about Olivia and New Orleans. Did I choose the city or did it cast a spell over me? It’s too late now to care because the city is embedded in Book 3. Olivia’s family history is connected to the founding of what is one of the most captivating places in the world. Like Miami, at times it doesn’t feel like you’re in the United States, its architecture and multilingual population giving it an international feel.  At times, like in Miami, it doesn’t feel like you’re in the United States; it’s architecture and multilingual population give it an international feel.

When I was there in March I wandered through graveyards and churches looking for images that would inspire me—soaking up the creative and artistic energy of the city. It was my second visit to New Orleans for the book and it helped cement the places and people who are pivotal to Olivia and the story itself. The portrait below caught my attention the minute I saw it inside the Voodoo Museum. I immediately appropriated it for my story. This is how it ended up working in the third book, which is still unnamed.

“ I quickly shoved the soil into a small velvet bag under the watchful gaze of an unknown woman hovering overhead. “Be quick cousin,” Sabine urged. “I could lose my tour guide license if they catch us.”

I looked up at the cool grey stone statue, the angel’s hands folded in prayer above us and said a small one myself that we would not be caught in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 stealing dirt. That was no way for me to kick off working for a presidential candidate and I didn’t want Sabine to have trouble with the locals, but we needed the purloined earth for my alter. It was already hot as hades outside, and I did not relish prolonging our time in the humidity searching for our final ingredient. Fortunately, we were undetected and walked out with our prize tucked safely away in my purse.

We walked back to the Voodoo Museum which was closed for lunch. My shirt clung to me as we stepped inside the wood paneled storefront. It was difficult to know where to look first. The place was a mix of history and merchandising. Several photos of the great voodoo priestess Marie Laveau hung on the walls as well as portraits of dozens of other people. There were shelves lined with Gris-Gris kits to make good luck charms. I followed my cousin past the cash register and down a narrow hallway, stopping to stare at a painting of a woman who was the spitting image of her.

“Is this your great, great grandmother Isabel? I asked.

Sabine nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve been told many times I look just like her.”

“It’s true,” I said. “You two could be twins.”

Have you been to New Orleans or do you live there now? Do you have a favorite photo you’d like to share? Send it to me and I’ll feature it in an upcoming social media post.

Does the Tattoo Change the Woman?

I waited a long time to get a tattoo. I put it off for twenty years while I fretted that it would give people the wrong impression about me as I started my public relations firm. Then I was worried it would somehow damage my credibility when I became a mother. But I never lost interest in the idea.

In March 2020, just before the pandemic came into full swing, I visited New Orleans to write for a week and jumpstart Book 3. It’s easy to be consumed with people watching in such a sexy city, and I saw some folks with great art on their bodies. 

The day after I came home, San Francisco issued its Shelter in Place (SIP) order and life as we know it pretty much came to a halt. The whole swiftness of the change, the dramatic way in which our lives were upended inspired me to give more credence to my desires. I started wearing temporary tattoos and spending more time with my writing. Like many of you, I was on Zoom all day, but my need to be so buttoned down was diminishing and people didn’t seem to care.
I began investigating local tattoo artists and found one – unfortunately his studio was closed for most of the year. I finally got started on November 11, 2020 with my first piece and expect to do the second half in May this year, which will feature birds in flight.

The entire process of getting a tattoo is much more comprehensive than one might imagine. At least it was for me with Brucius. He spent a lot of time examining the kind of feather, its size and orientation on my arm. The time it took to set up a sterile space and to make me comfortable all lent itself to a sense of preparation and transition. As soon as the needle hit my skin and the pain began, I felt a transformation taking place. While mildly uncomfortable, the pain was also spiritual and it marked the line between before and after. The time when I was unwilling to seek out the things I wanted and the time after. 

I write a lot about the transformation of women. In my stories the changes that take place have to do with becoming warriors and defining their own destinies. In fiction the stories are dramatic, like finding out you are the daughter of a witch and have to learn how to defend yourself from a list of enemies you never knew existed. But in our everyday lives, women transform themselves as they leave behind their worries and fears or someone else’s expectations. We grow from girls to women and along the way collect experiences about our bodies, our minds and the world around us that change and redefine us. Did getting a tattoo change me? In subtle ways, it did. If only because I had the courage to do something that I’d wanted to do for two decades and in seeing it done, I gained a little more control over my destiny.

Playlists Are the Characters

Music has always been an important part of my life. I have memories of listening to Cheap Trick’s Live at Budokan as a kid, and then as a teenager experimenting with everything from Japan to Aerosmith as I explored music and self-identity.  

As a writer, I’ve used playlists as a way to inspire myself and also to bring me closer to my characters. It’s not unusual for me to listen to music for thirty minutes to an hour before I write. I often go for walks and listen to the playlist for one of my books to help me think through plot lines. A friend of mine in the music business once characterized my taste in music as moody and reclusive. That’s probably not far off.  

In the Dark Horse Trilogy books, William – one of the main characters – is a musician and a record collector, so my playlists reflect the music he plays as well as music that inspires the manuscript.  For 48STATES, a novel in progress, the soundtrack is really about the state of mind for two people living in a dystopian future on the run as fugitives. 

For the Trilogy, it’s difficult to pick my favorite songs because they all play a role or have a purpose, so instead I’m going to pick 5 songs to describe: 

Sympathy for the Devil, Rolling Stones.  I may be the only person in America who didn’t like the Stones until I was older. It took me that long to understand the blues and the complexity of the music. This song in particular narrates the background themes of the Trilogy nicely. 

Rhiannon, Fleetwood Mac. This song is sexy and magical and reminds me of Olivia as she comes into her own as a woman. It’s also about desire, which is a big theme in the books. 

Paint my Face, The Devil Makes Three. This is a band that plays a huge role in the playlists for the Trilogy. This song in particular reminds me of the relationship between Olivia and her father. Gabriel has something to teach Olivia, even if she doesn’t understand it at the time. 

The Vampire of Time and Memory, Queens of the Stone Age.  When I first heard this song, it sent chills down my spine because it just seemed to encapsulate how Olivia was feeling by the end of DARK HORSE. I think I listened to it about 100 times in the course of writing the novel.

Woman King, Iron & Wine. Okay, not an exaggeration to say this song is the background music for Olivia’s journey. 

What kind of music do you like to listen to? Send me an email at fleshandbonepublishing@gmail.com and let me know!

When Life is Stranger than Fiction

 I love this photo of the Skystar in Golden Gate Park.  For me, it’s  simultaneously romantic and creepy – the lights sparkling in the twilight of an emptied almost dystopian landscape thanks to the pandemic and San Francisco’s shelter in place order.  It’s the kind of thing you would read about in THE STAND or STATIONS ELEVEN, some artifact of fun abandoned by illness. And yet here we are watching it unfold in real time as we deal with the ravages of COVID 19. 

The notion of facts being stranger than fiction is something I decided to play with in the third and final installment of the Dark Horse Trilogy. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t read a story about the temperature of a city or state exceeding previous records, or the loss of a species, or about some kind of weather phenomenon never seen before because of the warming of the planet. I wondered if I could weave that theme into Book 3 using Stoner Halbert – the evil political consultant of the series. As he travels the country for his work, he leaves behind scenes of devastation that mimic the headlines. Fires breakout, local bee colonies die and ice and hail fall from the sky damaging property.  I take things even further by suggesting that his need for power is actually damaging the fragile balance of good and evil in the world. I borrowed that concept from Ursula K. Le Guin whose Earthsea Series has been a great inspiration to me as a writer. 

In Book 3 politics also takes on a stranger than fiction feel when Olivia is called out for being a witch by Stoner’s allies as part of a plan to discredit the candidate she’s helping. Set in today’s social media landscape where rumors spread like wildfire, Olivia’s status as a witch serves as a play within a play. She is a witch called on to use her powers as part of her job, but she is also identified as a witch as part of a propaganda campaign. The press covers the absurd allegations as if they were a salacious joke, but the people behind her outing are deadly serious.  Here is how it plays out in the book: 

I looked over at Elsa expecting her to agree with me, but she barely acknowledged me, her focus on a video playing on her laptop.

    ‘What are you looking at?” I asked. 

    “You,” she said. “I’m looking at a video about you.”

    “What the hell are you talking about?” Josef asked. 

Rather than tell, Elsa opted to show. She pivoted her screen and restarted the video. There, clear as day, despite our best efforts to destroy the images, was me being hit by the car and not falling down or even moving during the impact. That image was followed by a grainy picture of me floating in the reservoir just before the EMT must have come to rescue me. Elsa increased the volume just as the pastor began speaking.

“This is Pastor Richard Goodbury. Do you remember that I told you that there is evil among us and that women who do not heed the word of God will suffer the wrath of the Lord? Well, here is proof that there are witches among us, working to corrupt our way of life. Behold a woman who does not die and like her ancestors hundreds of years ago, floats to the top of the water when she should have drowned. These are signs that the devil is among us. Keep an eye out for this woman. She must be brought to us to answer for her sins.”

“Merde, that is not good Olivia,” my father said. 

“When did you arrive and where is Madeline?” I asked. 

“About an hour ago. I dropped her off at the hospital to assess things, and I drove straight here to meet you,” he said. “I walked in as this video was playing. Who is this man?”

“His name is Pastor Goodbury and he is the leader of an on-line religious movement that is shadowing Dianna’s campaign and advocating violence on biblical terms,” William said. “Somehow they managed to get footage of Olivia being hit by the car and coming out unscathed.”

“Can we destroy the video?” Gabriel asked. 

“It’s already been viewed a half a million times,” Josef said peering over Elsa’s head at her laptop.

I pressed my fingers to my eyes to stop the pressure. Stoner was everywhere at once and nowhere at all. We were being hunted and distracted while Dianna continued on without her supernatural escort. I needed to get a control of things or our mission was going to fail. “We have five hours to plan our next steps and get this bus back on schedule,” I said. “Let’s go to Sabine’s hotel room and order room service. We need a private place to eat and hash out a game plan.”

You’ll have to wait for me to finish the novel to see how it all ends, but I can tell you things get hot for Olivia as she tries to stay one step ahead of Stoner. Do you have an example of something that seemed stranger than fiction? Send me a note and tell me all about it – Evette