Claire Fullerton's Blog: A Writing Life, page 7

Book Review: Girl on the Leeside

Because I once lived in a small town in Connemara, at the gateway of the Irish-speaking area called the Gaeltacht, I look for those novels that depict the region as it is, for once one has spent significant time there, its ways and means register in the soul with perpetual resonance, leaving one forever nostalgic for what can only be described as the west of Ireland’s consciousness. It isn’t easy to capture, for all its subtle nuances, yet author Kathleen Anne Kenney has done just that in writing Girl on the Leeside in the manner the region deserves, which is to say this beautiful story is gifted to the reader with a sensitive, light touch.

Girl on the Leeside is deep in character study. Most of what happens concerns the human predicament, no matter where it is set. More than a coming of age story centered on twenty seven year old Siobhan Doyle, it is a story of the path to emotional maturity, out of a circumstantial comfort zone, (which, in this case, is perfectly plausible, due to its isolated and insular Irish setting) into all that it takes to overcome one’s self-imposed limitations to brave the risk of furthering one’s life.

In utter fearlessness, Kathleen Anne Kenney invites the reader to suspend disbelief in giving us an otherworldly character that speaks to the inner fairy in those who dare to dream. Small and ethereal Siobhan is orphaned at the age of two by her unconventional mother, and father of unknown origin. She is taken in and raised by her mother’s brother, Keenan Doyle, the publican of his family’s generational, rural establishment called the Leeside, near the shores of a lough tucked away in remote Connemara. Introverted, with little outside influence, she is keenly possessed by her culture’s ancient poetry and folklore. She is a natural born artist, gifted with an intuitive grasp on words and story, a passion shared by her Uncle Keenan, yet so pronounced in her that she walks the line between fantasy and reality. It isn’t easy to redirect one’s invested frame of reference in the world, if it isn’t completely necessary, yet necessity arrives at the Leeside, when American professor of ancient Irish poetry and folklore, Tim Ferris, comes to compare literary notes with Siobhan and Keenan. It is this catalyst that sets the wheels in motion of a heartfelt, insightful story that involves the willingness to grow. All throughout, author Kathleen Anne Kenney explores the myriad fears that get in the way, and shows us the way to triumph.

Girl on the Leeside is a deceptively soft read. It is so laden with beautiful imagery, so seamlessly woven with radiant poetry that it lulls you into its poignancy and holds you captive, all the way to its satisfying end.

Review: The Dead House by Billy O'Callaghan

I’ve been following author Billy O’Callaghan’s career with rapt enthusiasm, since I fortuitously came across him last year on LinkedIn. That he is Irish caught my attention, and as I delved further, I discovered he is the author of three short story collections, all of which I’ve read, all of which, to me, are in their own league and genre of what can only be classified as literary excellence. And so it was that I awaited the release of The Dead House, O’Callaghan’s first novel, and subsequently tore through it in three sittings. It’s the type of book you can’t put down, yet when you do, it stays with you.
In a first person voice unlike any other I’ve ever come across, O’Callaghan gifts us with a story that unfolds in just the way you’d want to hear it by the fireside: it is confessional, it is insightful, it is no-nonsense and direct, yet wields evocative words slipped in so seamlessly that the reader is pulled into the fantastic story in cresting waves that move the story forward while explaining the inner workings of the narrator’s vantage point. The reader understands the narrator, art dealer Michael Simmons, right out of the gate. He lays his cards on the table with no apology as he tells about his client, young, vulnerable, and frail painter, Maggie Turner, with whom he cultivates a mentor-like relationship verging on that of siblings, as he guides her career. That Michael is devoted to Maggie’s overall well-being helps us understand his acceptance of her capricious tendencies, and so it is that when Maggie decides to move from London to an isolated, desolate seaside location on Ireland’s rugged west coast, Michael has reservations, yet chalks them up to her artistic temperament needing artistic space.
The Dead House’s story is centered on one fateful night, during a weekend house party at Maggie’s renovated, pre-famine Irish cottage that involves a small group of friends, a bottle of whiskey, and a Ouija board. Everything careens in spine-tingling plausibility from there, in a dynamic that begins in seemingly harmless fun, yet quickly turns off-kilter with unintended consequences that sneak up over the readers shoulder with such disturbance that this book is best not read at night. And yet I’d be hard-pressed to label The Dead House a ghost story; though it is that, it is more. It is a treatise on friendship, a look at the ambiguity of new love, a tip-of-the-hat to Ireland’s storied past, and a lyrical love song to the unfathomable beauty of Ireland’s haunted, windswept terrain.
Let me now confess something I’ve never done before, after reading the last line of this book: I went back to the first page and began again. The reason I did this is because I was nowhere near ready or willing to let the narrator’s voice go; I was too invested, I was too concerned, and the fact that the story is so suspenseful that I read it with white-knuckled urgency made me fully aware, even as I read, that I simply had to go back and revisit its artful language. I’ll site an example of O’Callaghan’s genius with language here: “Another Sunday. Christ, the fools that time can make of us.” But I’m gushing. Because O’Callaghan deserves it.
All praise The Dead House. Do yourself a favor and get ahold of this book. It will be available in America come spring of 2018, but, if you’re American, you can do as I did and order online through O’Brien Press.

On Researching Como, Mississippi

As I await the June, 2018 publication of my third novel, Mourning Dove, which is a Southern family saga set in 1970’s and 1980’s Memphis—a sins-of-the-father, cause and effect story that took me two years to write, I’m spending my time doing what any writer would do to stop themselves from climbing the walls: I’m writing another novel.
This novel began as a story about female friendships, yet fifteen pages into it, I began to write the narrator’s back-story, as it seemed important to the development of the story, whose theme concerns the ramifications of displacement. And as the setting begins in Memphis then takes the reader to the lake at Heber Springs, Arkansas, I wanted the narrator to be from somewhere outside of, but close enough to Memphis to make the story plausible. And so I chose Como, Mississippi to set the narrator’s backstory, which is 45 miles south of Memphis, in The Delta of Mississippi’s Panola County. For many months, as the story took on a life of its own and the narrator’s back story evolved into the main focus, I realized the problem was that I’d never been to Como, Mississippi, but now I will report that I have.
Three weeks ago, I had cause to go to Memphis. I have a childhood friend named Louise who demanded I come for her birthday party. Louise is a real Southern belle, and if you’ve ever had the good fortune of knowing one, you’ll know there’s no refusing their iron-fisted way of dealing with the world. Most of the Southern belles I know could run a country through the power of suggestion, and Louise is no exception. After I booked my plane ticket, I figured I’d make the trip to Como, as long as I was in the South.
Let me digress by saying that although I now live in California, I grew up in Memphis, in the type of climate where everybody knows everyone, and if they don’t, they know someone that does. When I told a Memphis friend that I planned on going to Como to research the book I’m writing, her immediate reply was, “You should call Denise Taylor, you know her, right? She’s married to a fifth generation, Como farmer, they live down there.” So, I called Denise Taylor, and although it had been twenty years since I’d seen her face, it was as if we’d talked the day before. Southerners are refreshing this way. What you have to understand is if you’re born to any part of the South, you’re in it for life because Southerners have a tribal mentality and will never let you go.
And so it was that I set up a meeting with Sledge Taylor. If I could come up with a name that suggests a more prominent tie to the history of The Delta, I would, but I’m not convinced one exists. Let’s just say that within twenty minutes of meeting Sledge Taylor, at the Windy City Grill on Como’s Main Street, it came to me that his family all but put the railroad ties in the ground of the train tracks that run though the center of town. After a “plate lunch” at the Windy City Grill, and an introductory conversation that seemed to acclimate us, we took to the sidewalk of Main Street, where I received a tutorial on the history of every building standing in a shot-gun row, along the way to Holy Innocents Episcopal Church, which sits A-framed at the edge of town, beneath a flourishing oak tree, its red-painted double doors graced with two gold crosses, below a porte-cochere. I’m captivated by historic churches. I find them eerie and ominous, in an evocative, soul-stirring way. Holy Innocents Church, built in 1872, has a feeling inside its venerable walls that speaks of the town’s history, and many if its’ ten, cathedral stain glass windows memorialize a prominent local dating back as far as 1892. Its pine pews grace either side of its smooth, oak floors, covered down the center aisle with red carpeting leading to a raised altar, which the sun illuminates through a magenta and cobalt stain glass window. Because a writer’s job is to place the reader in each scene, I spent much time taking notes in the church, covering every visual detail, for I’d already written a scene in my book that takes place in a Como church, and the more specific the detail I could add when I returned to my manuscript, the better. I wrote down every facet that caught my eye: the names and colors of the books in the slat of each pew; the height of the cistern holding the holy water; the number of windows on each side, and the pitch and height of the roof.
My reason for visiting Como had little to do with historical facts and dates, it was essentially for the purposes of creating a strong sense of place. Its one thing to write a scene where a character runs through a field to a pond, and another to lift the event up by describing the low sky as the character trips through winter’s faded tangle of kudzu and ochre rye grass. Although I had no set agenda, I gathered most of what I wanted by looking through the window of Sledge Taylor’s truck as we drove for hours through the countryside on the outskirts of Como’s town proper. There, all manner of indigenous foliage set the scene on both sides of the narrow, unmarked roads: oak, elm, hickory and cherry create dappled canopies over Johnson, Bermuda, crab grass and Virginia creeper, creating a fecund mulch of forest litter on the earth’s sodden floor. In my notebook, I wrote down Taylor’s answer to all of my questions. I wanted to know the exact name of every endemic tree, shrub, and blade of grass; what changes were vested upon the area seasonally, and what was planted in the fertile fields in which month. All of this I planned on working into my story, which is decidedly character driven, yet I’d heard it said by one of my favorite authors that land is destiny, and it hit me as a salient truth. One’s environment effects one’s consciousness, shapes one’s attitude, and cyclically influences one’s life. And rather than spend my time with my guide as if I were conducting an interview, I simply let him do the talking. I wanted to learn what he deemed worth telling, and I paid rapt attention to the manner in which he spoke, for there’s little more telling about a region than its accent and turn of phrase. And further, because I’d never been to Como and knew little of its hallmarks, I thought it best to sit back and let Sledge Taylor do the driving to wherever he thought it important to go. When one is a stranger in a strange land being shown around by a local, it’s best to keep one’s mouth shut, lest they squelch the spontaneity of the moment by boxing their host in with the inconsequential. Had I done otherwise, it may have diverted my guide from turning up a particular driveway. Would that I could write the name of the historic plantation I saw in Como, but because it is currently a private residence, it is bad form to do so. If I were writing nonfiction for a Southern magazine, that’d be one thing, after I’d been granted permission. But as it was, I was simply along for the ride, when Sledge Taylor drove to his friend’s house.
The house was massive. Red-roofed, two storied, and four pillared, it loomed on hundreds of acres of manicured, velvet land replete with mature oaks and elms, rolling down to a screened cabin’s porch facing the edge of a pond. It was a family seat, built in 1902, passed down through generations. As we scratched up the gravel driveway, its caretaker met us as if by divine timing, for our visit was unplanned. Employed by the family for thirty nine years, he greeted my guide by addressing him as Mr. Sledge, and I was suddenly reminded of the formal courtesies of the South, which included an immediate hospitable offer to come in and tour the house, as its occupants were in residence elsewhere.
We circled round back and entered the house through the kitchen, whose entrance rose from a series of weathered brick steps, beneath a heavy, twisted muscadine trellis positioned just so, to abate the sweltering, Mississippi summer heat. Every spacious room downstairs had a crown molded ceiling that towered at nine feet. Beneath area rugs, the wood floors flowed through the dining room and living room, straight to a screened front porch, furnished with leather club chairs beneath a ceiling fan. In the central, catacomb of the entrance hall, two bedrooms opened at the left, adjoined by a dressing area and attendant, ivory-tiled bathroom. In the center, a wooden staircase rose to a second floor landing with a view of the grounds as far as the eye could see. Upstairs, three more bedrooms, one with a series of avian prints on the walls, a mantled fireplace, and two mahogany framed, matelassé covered beds. All the bedrooms were furnished with antiques. Some had four-poster beds, tall chests of drawers, and porcelain artifacts tucked in nooks and crannies, besides built-in book shelving, housing family photographs, giving the overall impression that the house’s interior was geared towards the preservation of history. Mounted on some of the walls were portraits painted in oil: austere, looming facsimiles, with eyes that followed you everywhere, bordered in muted gold frames. And it’s fascinating what you can learn, when being given a tour of an old house in Mississippi: I learned there’s a problem in the area with ladybug infestation, that the insects swarm the window screens by the millions, and lay their eggs to the point where the light can’t get through the windows. It was not a glittering, ostentatious plantation house, boasting in pomposity; it was a shop-worn, elegant house, pitched to a functional practicality that gave it a warm, sophisticated edge, in a way that lived and breathed and spoke of safe haven.
All told, I spent five and a half hours touring Como, Mississippi with Sledge Taylor, and I can tell you now I got the gist, but am fully aware that there is much more to the story of this historic, Delta region. I was so enamored of what I saw, that I’m already thinking there’s another novel to be set in the area, so sylvan and inspiring is it, for all its rural, earthy, authenticity.
What I learned from my trip to Como is that it’s best to approach research for a book with a very loose agenda. With regard to my experience, the wisest thing I could have done was just as I did: shut my mouth and let my guide take the lead.

On Writer's Block

I don’t believe in writer’s block, because I believe everyone has their own writing process. The task is to honor whatever it is. When I begin a novel, I have a story to tell, and my aim is not so much to entertain as to say something about the complexities of living through the art of story. I’m fascinated in the deep-seated emotional life within all of us. I firmly believe most people hide a significant part of who they are, and in my mind, there are many possibilities for why this is so: fear of not fitting in; of being misunderstood; unreasonable expectations from someone close and domineering; or perhaps the weight of psychic and emotional baggage accrued from any number of avenues. It’s our emotional life that shapes much of our fate, and I never underestimate its motivational significance. Because this is a subject that intrigues me, I weave it into all of my books, for I want to tell more than a story; I like to give the reader suggestions on how the story came to be because I think we are all subject to cause and effect.
When I have a novel in mind, I know its beginning, middle, and end, which gives me a story line, yet I’m more concerned with the book’s message. I go into writing a book with both considerations in play, and allow the book to breathe and grow. Because I realize that most of us play out our lives in contrast and comparison to other people, and that our lives are somehow reflective of the people, places and things around us, I use characters as triggers for cause and effect within the story. It is the interplay, the exchange between characters that gives a story meaning, and I’ll go one further to say it’s the characters in a book that show us who we are.
All this said, I take my time writing a novel, for I believe it has its own life force. I have yet to write anything wherein I did not pause and reflect in the process, which is exactly why I’m not a believer in writer’s block. I believe the story is within me, flying around on the wings of inspiration, and my job is to let it make itself known, in its own terms then put it into words in my own timeframe.
I’ve heard it said by some writers that even when they’re not writing, they’re writing in their head. This makes perfect sense to me, and it takes mineral patience and iron trust to fenagle the weight. If a writer can do this, then it allows for a living, breathing work in progress to create itself. As for writer’s block, I never claim it. When in downtime, I tell myself I’m only taking a breath.

Why a Writer Should Never Quit

It took me years to call myself a writer. For a long time, I thought in order to call myself a writer, I’d have to be making a living at writing; that many people had to know I exist. This is nowhere near the current case for me, and who’s to say if it ever will be? What’s on my mind in this moment is that twice, in the last month, I’ve read posts tap-dancing around the question of “When does a writer quit?” Quit because of what? I asked myself. The question sounded to me like a temper tantrum, like a challenge to the Gods to take our toys and go home should we not receive the gifts we expected in our timeframe. Who are writers trying to appeal to, and further, why? I think writers should ask themselves these questions so they don’t get frustrated, should it come down to the meager fruits of their labor. I use these questions as a reality check every so often, because I recall years ago thinking all I wanted was to be in the game; have a book available in the world; that it would be enough. And in this moment of blog post confession, I can honestly say having two books out in the world is enough, and what happens from here is not my business. Except that it is a business. To Continue: https://cffullerton.wordpress.com/201...

Review: The Stolen Child by Lisa Carey

Because I once lived on the western coat of Ireland, and because author Lisa Carey once lived on the island of Inishbofin, I've been following her career for many years, and have loved all four of her Irish themed books. And so it was that I eagerly awaited the February 7th release of her fifth book, The Stolen Child. It is a story much like Ireland herself: deceptive in its riddled nuances, more than the sum of its parts. The soul of the story creeps up on you. It takes patience and willingness to allow the magic to take hold, and when it does, it is not by possession. The Stolen Child spins the kind of magic that lulls at the core of your being; affects your consciousness, waits for you to piece it together until you understand. There is little overt in this languid novel, which, again, is much like Ireland. It is a desperate story through and through, yet in the hands of author Lisa Carey, it resonates with mythical beauty, gives you a sense of timelessness, and holds you fast by its earthy, brass tacks.
In pitch-perfect language, Carey wields dialogue specific to the west coast of Ireland’s desolate environs. It is an understated language, upside down to outsiders, but once your ear attunes, you are affronted by the superfluousness of other tongues. All primary characters in The Stolen Child are women. They live cut-off from the mainland of Ireland’s west coast, twelve miles out, upon rocky, wind-swept, St. Brigid’s Island, during the one year time frame of May, 1959 to May, 1960. It is a timeframe fraught with the looming inevitability of the islanders’ evacuation from their homeland, with its generational customs and ties, to the stark reality of life on the mainland, with its glaring and soulless “mod-cons.” Most of the characters are conflicted about leaving the island, save for the sinister Emer, who has her own selfish agenda, centered upon her only child Niall. Her sister, Rose, is the sunny, earth-mother, unflappable sort, who only sees the buried good in Emer, whereas everyone else on the island shuns her, for her malefic, dark ways, which they intuit as dark art. Emer has one foot on the island and the other in the recesses of the fairies’ manipulative underworld. It is the American “blow-in,” Brigid, the woman with a complicated past, who has her own ties to the island from her banished mother, that cracks the carapace of Emer’s guarded and angry countenance. Together, the pair explore an illicit relationship, but when it snaps back, Emer retaliates with a force that effects the entire island and twists her worst fears into fate.
The Stolen Child is magnificently crafted, for it is a sweeping story set on a cloistered island, which has nothing to recommend it save for its quays, its view, and its eponymous holy-well. This is a novel rife with character study that is quintessentially Irish, yet applicable far afield. In themes of motherhood, hope, desperation, and hopelessness, the characters take what little they have and wrestle it into making do. It is the power of steel intention that drives this story, and the reader receives it from all conceivable angles. I recommend The Stolen Child to all who love Ireland, to all who love an exceptional, creative story, and to all who love language used at its finest. All praise to the author Lisa Carey. I eagerly await the next book.

Book Review: One Good Mama Bone

Once you attune yourself to the voice of this emotionally evocative story, it’ll submerge you in language like water running in a creek bed. Author Bren McClain takes the reader to a down on its luck farm, in the esoteric pocket of rural 1950’s Anderson, South Carolina and delivers lines, such as “Get the by God out of my clean yard” and “He’d probably be drunk as a coot and trying to have relations with his common law.” It is McClain’s uncompromising use of language that gives us the consciousness of each character in this purpose driven story, who are all linked to each other by the common pursuit of raising a steer to enter into the 1952 Fat Cattle Show and Sale, with dreams of winning the monetary prize awarded to its Grand Champion. Every character has its own agenda, and the best and worst of human nature is depicted as we follow the motivation of each principal character to the destination of one fateful day. One Good Mama Bone opens with a birth’s gripping drama and never turns the reader loose throughout its breath-catching, suspenseful build. It gives us a protagonist in single mother Sarah Creamer, who doggedly fights the constraints of poverty and wrestles with her own beaten down identity, all in the name of selfless love for her young son, Emerson Bridge. Sarah’s quest tugs at the heartstrings with the lure of her incremental maternal awakening, as reflected in her relationship with a mother cow named Mama Red. That this story contains a nemesis in the contentious, self-serving cattleman Luther Dobbins, who throws up one heart-stopping obstacle after another on the road to Sarah and Emerson Bridges’ goal keeps the pages turning to the very end. I loved this book for the mood that descended every time I returned to its pages. It’s a rare book that hands you a life you can slip into, and an even rarer writer that’ll give you a million reasons to do it.

There is no There to Get To

I tend to be a stream of consciousness writer, in that I write whatever it is I’m thinking. I don’t labor as long as I’m putting ideas on paper, and there’s a quiet ease that ensues from not looking over my own shoulder. This is how I began writing in the first place. I began by keeping a journal I knew nobody would ever see. No one suggested I keep a journal; I simply felt compelled at a young age from the resounding depth of that interior chamber that tells a person who they are. In truth, I have a running inner monologue that deciphers the world, and it is this I call upon when writing. There has never been a time when I didn’t write. I’ve used it as a way of interpreting the world for as long as I remember. What began as a desire to understand myself evolved into a daily habit, then one bright day, I turned through my journals and discovered, not only had I been documenting my life, I had a particular way of experiencing its vagaries. Once I realized this, my writing came into focus. I thought maybe I could forge a career. I sought to articulate at such a pitch that there would be no misunderstanding. I began paying scrutinous attention to word usage, craft, and flow, reasoning that the more clarity I brought to language, the better the chance for a reader’s understanding. Here’s what happened as I stayed the course: I fell in love with the act of writing. I learned it is a deepening process predicated upon development, with no there to get to, only the experience of the personal path.
There was a time when I was confused by this. I thought calling myself a writer meant I had to achieve a sanctioned plateau that gave me permission to continue writing. I was wrong about this, and have only recently figured out why. The world didn’t have to tell me I am a writer before I became one. I didn’t recognize I became one the day I followed the call by putting pen to paper in my journal. No number of published books or lack thereof will alter this salient truth; not for me or anyone else. Being a writer begins with giving yourself permission to be one. However you choose to experience it is ultimately in your own hands.
I believe all writers care about writing for the same reason, which has something to do with the desire to compare notes in this business of living. Whether we’re published, or by whom is not the point, the point is all writers are on the same path, propelled by an inexplicable urge to communicate, however or wherever it is they tell their story. It is enough, to me, for its own sake. The real merits of writing lie intrinsically in its pursuit. For a writer, there is no there to get to, there is only the fulfilling, soul-driven act.

What Price an Author's Politics?

I don’t believe I’m the only one disenchanted with the current state of affairs on FaceBook. Rather than launching a campaign in broad strokes of generalities from a supercilious pulpit, I will keep things simple and try my best to articulate where I’m coming from as an artist, for writing, to me, is a high art.
Like legions the world over, I joined FaceBook to stay connected with many people I’d lost touch with over the years. I grew up in Memphis, which means I’m a Southerner, and Southerners are raised in packs attendant to other packs. The domino effect of this reaches into the hundreds. And I care about all my pack members, so I considered the advent of FaceBook a gift that kept me connected, now that I’m a transplanted Southerner living in California.
And then I cultivated a writing career. I, like other writers, was therefore obligated to do my share of marketing and promotion for my books, and Facebook is, perhaps, the most viable avenue to do so. In short order, my list of “friends” grew longer, and I, wanting to help my fellow writers, turned around one day to discover I was connected to unfathomable numbers of authors I would have never known otherwise. And it thrilled me. I will always be fascinated by those who create, be they a writer, musician, dancer or painter. Give me your art, says I; it softens the blow of the human experience. In my opinion, there is such beauty in this world, and it is the artist’s God-given aptitude that points this out. It has been my pleasure and honor to help promote other authors, and there is safety in numbers in this business of living, if one is lucky enough to come across others of their ilk. Like begets like, or so it seemed to me, but lately I’ve become soul-sick and heart-confused while looking at FaceBook, and I’m trying to get to the bottom of why.
I feel hoodwinked, led into the miasma of a bait and switch. I came to Facebook because of friendship and art, but now it seems I’m being held prisoner for political ransom. I know the arguments: freedom of speech, a forum for “voice,” and all the other rights people stand up for. I’m not suggesting any of this is wrong, but I do question its appropriateness. Just because one can doesn’t mean one should, and the irony for an author is pontificating politically automatically polarizes their followers. There’s no sense in not admitting this, and those that don’t might be assuming their followers completely agree with their views, yet if this is the case, then why preach to the choir?
I think authors should seriously think through posting their political view on FaceBook, and weigh it for the potential ramifications to their career. After all, the way an author shows up in the world begins with deciding how they want to be perceived. I had this question posited to me recently, when my literary agent asked me to articulate “my brand.” It’s going to matter when my next two novels come out, and currently there is wisdom in establishing and investing in my base. I’m thinking the more streamlined and specific I can be, the better.
Readers align with us for stories. Reading stories gives many suspended quarter in a hectic world. Readers don’t necessarily need to know who the person is behind the story. If an author is doing it right, their stories will speak volumes to answer the question, without detracting from the author’s mystique.
I’m not saying I long to be seen as mysterious, only that I like the idea of my stories speaking for themselves. As for who I am, I’ll let the readers decide, and willingly leave politics to the political pundits.

On The Writing Path

And so the game changes.
It’s been a fast moving beginning to 2017, but I’ll digress to say that 2016 ended with a cliff hanger, which meant while most people were reveling in the holidays, I waited for the new year to begin and decided I might as well work  on my fourth novel, so I wouldn’t climb the walls over the fact that my third novel was at issue! But things are on track now, and I recently signed a contract with Julie Gwinn, of The Seymour Literary Agency, for representation. There are irons in the fire as I write this, but far be it from me to jinx anything, so I’m going to share a bit about my literary journey over the past few years, in hope that it will lend insight and encouragement to my fellow writers.
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