The Last of Lasts...

Father's Day swept in this year on a bittersweet wind. I couldn't be with my father this year to honor him in what may likely be his last such celebration. But in my garden three hundred miles away, the currants hung, red fleshy globules. I spent the afternoon picking the lip-puckering berries, cleaning them, boiling them into juice. When I visit in two weeks, I will have jars of glistening ruby jelly for him to enjoy. His favorite.

Father's Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July... the flowering dogwoods, beach trip, my childrens' birthdays... the hummingbird, the taste of roast turkey, solid food, a day without morphine...

The last of lasts.

I am not sure next summer I'll be able to harvest currants without crying.


**


The Writing... HABITS DIE HARD up at Boston Literary Magazine. Kudos to writing friends Stephen Book, Greta Igl, Doug Mathewson, and Jane Banning, whose drabbles grace the same page.

DEFECTION continues to hang tough in the EDITOR UNLEASHED/SMASHWORDS Flash Fiction 40 Contest. I'm pretty flabbergasted - the popular vote ranks me in the Top 5 out of 280 entries, but the Pit Boss (Maria Schneider) decides the grand prize winner - as she should. Take a peek - tons of talent, and a fabulous lesson on writing concise fiction. Most gratifying? Every one of my Nudger writing buddies ranks in the Top 40!

HARBINGER*33 sets sail! Quite an honor to be a member of this amazing crew. More later, but the journey promises excitement - and fun.

Of course, still plugging away at PURE, prepping my submission to the summer workshop at Lesley University. Waiting to hear on several poems and flashes out for submission. Fingers crossed.

The Reading... Thirty pages from Middlemarch's grand conclusion. What fun sharing the epic reading with my Filling In the Gaps 100 Project reading buddies. Also made more fun by finishing the last two books on my sleek and sexy Kindle Dx. Next up... The Corrections (Franzen) and the July Debut Indie Pick.

Read hard, write hard... live and love hard. The days and the people who fill them pass too quickly...

Peace, Linda

Repeat After Me - June Indie Debut Pick

I MET DA GE ON A TUESDAY AFTERNOON IN THE FALL OF 1989. New York was orange and confident then, leaves breezing the curb and towers poking above the skyline. I was teaching English as a second language at a school called Embassy when he arrived two weeks and fifteen minutes late. He stood in the doorway watching the class with an expression it was hard to identify -- some combination of grin, smirk, and sneer. I thought he might be shy.

Thus begins the relationship of Aysha Silverman, ESL teacher rebounding after a college breakdown, and Da Ge, an engimatic, troubled dissident who fled China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Despite language and cultural differences, the two develop a sensitivity to the other's harbored secrets. Aysha falls in love with Da Ge long before he asks her to marry him as a step toward attaining US citizenship. Aysha becomes pregnant, but before she can share the news with Da Ge, he commits suicide.

The story spans two decades and continents, and Rachel DeWoskin bridges these spans with rich detail and evocative prose. Beijing comes alive, it's own character, as does the less foreign but equally exotic New York City. Besides the settings and cultures, the strong ensemble of secondary characters are not easily forgettable: Aysha's best friend Julia One, Embassy Student Xiao Wang, De Ga's father Old Chen, and Julia Two, the perky tween-age daughter. Most believable is well-drawn relationship of Aysha with her mother.

Da Ge haunted me days after I finished the book. Tough, vulnerable, secretive, I turned pages to find out what made him tick. His character and blunt insights on life Chinese and American are revealed best in the essays, submitted to his 'Teacher', that preface each section. Rereading these excerpts a secnd and third time reveal layers of Da Ge unnoticed the first time through.

This is a quiet novel, complex in it's rendering of love in all its forms. The story meanders from time period and country, at times without sufficient guideposts to orient the reader. But the prose itself is straightforward and honest, and interesting enough to give pause for appreciation. For me, the story comes alive when Aysha relates the breakdown leading to her hospitalization and withdrawal from Columbia.

She asks: How do people know what to filter out and what to leave in? maybe we're permeable, and insanity is the loss of that membrane; everything floods in and out, uncontrolled.

In truth, the mental illness angle surprised -- and delighted -- me; from the front flap cover, the only inkling is of Aysha's "nervous breakdown". But both protagonists suffer psychiatric maladies, and it is in this suffering that their relationship is idealized and consummated. As someone who purposively seeks out books that explore the intersection of the unquiet mind and the restive heart, the central theme of mental unwellness was a bonus.

THE AUTHOR... RACHEL DEWOSKIN certainly has "platform" - educated at Columbia University, she moved to beijing where she worked in public relations before taking a starring role in a Chinese soap opera likened to "Sex and the City." Repeat After Me is her first novel; her memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing was published in 2005.


THE PRESS... Small but mighty, OVERLOOK PRESS has one of the most eclectic portfolios of fiction and non-fiction among all the independent presses. Sympathetic to emerging writers, I troll here frequently, and suggest you pay a visit as well.

Repeat after me - this is a gem of a novel. Read it.

Peace, Linda

Ant you are...

Though once you seemed
to me mighty,
a mastodon,
lifting me through
throngs, across mine
strewn lands stronger
than anyone
or anything.
Rendered wizened
small from weeks of
radiation,
still standing but
weaving stubborn;
brave ant you are.


Father's Day approaches. Mine survived 7 weeks of aggressive cancer treatment last year. But the pain is back and 4 biopsies and a CAT scan later we are waiting. Again.

Hold your father close.

Peace, Linda

Job for Life

Promoted to Full Professor. With Tenure.

A good day.

I am so grateful for all I have: my students, my colleagues, my work, the freedom to think and express what moves me without fear of retribution - or worse.

Peace, Linda

Rejection

Rejected by a literary agent lately? Watch this, then get even... REJECTION

Via The Boy Who Could But Didn't - Ben Leto

Peace, Linda

Playing God

I'm not comfortable playing God in the garden, thinning the clusters of white peaches and picking off the Asian pears. Which to toss in the white bucket, and which to keep on the branch? The runty, dimpled fruit? The large, perfect orb sacrificed for two smaller, better spaced ones? Eeny, meeny, miney, moe? Who's to say the peach I choose for the compost is not the one that, if left to ripen on the sun-warmed tree, would be the most succulent, perfect peach?

I feel this same tension writing. Which character do I cull? What scene to annihilate? My finger trembles before striking the 'delete' key - am I making a mistake? Is that character or scene or word crucial to my story's integrity? How do I know?

But when it comes to my story, I am God. Some writers say their characters 'have their way' with stories. Certainly my characters appear to me at times much like a secret word appears under the divining planchette of a ouija board. But as God I can - and do - alter their characteristics and motivations in ways significant and small: their sexual orientation, their ethnicity, the placement of their tattoo.

When my laptop died last week, I had the opportunity to clean up my files. My hesitancy in editing and revising BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT is manifest in the 11 gigabytes of notes and revisions and drafts and even documents containing ALL my slices and dices. My first novel may well end up being my 'practice' novel, but this much is true: my confidence as a writer has grown, for no longer to I keep every iteration uttered by my pen for PURE.

***

<==== Speaking of playing God, google decreed my blog dead. I say: long live my blog. I'm rebuilding my cyber web, so please sign my guestbook.

***

May was... a month of passages: a favorite uncle died the day after he entered home hospice, several of my students gained doctorates, dead laptop, murdered blog.

Hoping for a quieter June.

***

THE WRITING... My mind is finally empty enough to write seriously. PURE full-steam ahead, along with two decent shorts and some micro-mini flashes. Have sent several poems out to find homes - fingers crossed.

THE READING... Finished the fourth book of MIDDLEMARCH. Quite enjoying Eliot, though she would've had a very difficult time finding an agent this century: verbose, pedantic and preachy in places, and not sure she 'hooked' me until nearly 100 pages in. Also picked up two Indie debut books from SOHO and OVERLOOK presses, and two more on order from TIN HOUSE and DZANC. Feeling very rich with the stack beside my bed.



Peace, Linda

In Memory - Lost Words Virtual and Cyber

My Dell laptop. Six years of faithful service. This morning booting resulted in nothing but a grey, quiet screen. No signs or symptoms of impending demise, just a peaceful death.

Something nudged at me this Saturday, though; I did a complete backup onto my external hard-drive.

Gotta listen to those gut feelings.

ALSO IN MEMORY - my original blog. Google gobbled it up one day, with no warning. Apparently old code, still lurking in my html and counting away my doomsday unbeknownst to me, was the mal-icious bearer. Reimported much here - looks familiar, hunh? - but lost widgets: lists, followers, contacts, all my creds.

SO PLEASE UPDATE YOUR URL, just add "linda-" before the old name. [linda-leftbrainwrite.blogspot.com]

And please - FOLLOW ME again and pass along your links in comments below if I've overlooked you.

Peace, Linda

Achtung!

Great article in defense of distraction, comps of New York Magazine, on the thrills and perils of twitter, Adderal, texting, and all the other multi-tasks we conduct.

The bad news? You can't be happy all the time.

The good news? You can pretty much focus all the time.

The future - 30 minute secular attention workouts, right there along with our daily dose of treadmill.

Happy. Long. Weekend.

Much needed.

Myself, I'm writing for a great Flash Fiction contest with Prizes! Money! Print Potential! over at EDITOR UNLEASHED. And catching up on Middlemarch. And just hanging with the family.

Peace, Linda

Apologize, Apologize!

I grew up on Martha's Vineyard in a house as big and loud as a parade - the clamor resonated along the entire New England coastline. Calliope whistling, batons soaring, trumpets bleating, everything tapping and humming, orchestrated chaos, but we could afford it. My mother was rich, her father's money falling from the sky like ticker tape, gently suppressing the ordinary consequences of all that noise.

Lovely, huh? One phrase best describes May's debut novel pick by Elizabeth Kelly (Twelve) - over the top.

The writing, the characters and story line are among the most flamboyant I've come across in some time. In this story of redemption, young Collie Flanagan serves as the plain vanilla center in the midst of his fabulously wealthy and eccentric family: his adulterous, boozing father, his cruel Commie mother, a pigeon-racing uncle, his morally upright prep-school failure of a younger brother, and the Falcon, Collie's newspaper baron grandfather whose largesse enables them all. In the midst of such a flamboyant family, Collie's only wish is to be ordinary. He manages sane stability until a tragic accident leaves him reeling, forcing him to figure out what it 'means to be a man'.

Apologize, Apologize! is a comi-tragedy, unwieldy in places yet elegaic in others. The first half of the story rips along with humorous alacrity, then takes a sudden turn toward darksome when the tragedy occurs. For me, this fulcrum is when the story comes alive; the first half seems a 'getting to know you' dance filled with anecdotes of growing up Flanagan that left me itchy for substance. My prickliness was enhanced by the somewhat superficial and stereotypical sketches of some characters (must all Irish be rip-roaring drunks?) and the somewhat unbelievable events. But the second half builds empathy for the protagonist who, until then, seemed pallid in comparison to his crazy kin. Indeed, I found Collie upstaged by his more colorful - and likable - brother Bingo. One of the saddest, funny books I've read - the story and the characters haunted me for several days and made me reflect on the graces of being less than superordinary.

The Author... Elizabeth Kelly is a Canadian journalist and former magazine editor. She lives in an old house in a small village in eastern Ontario with her husband, four children, dogs, cats, and fish.

The Press... Eh, I know, as an imprint of the Hatchett Book Group, TWELVE is quasi-Indy press. But I've wanted to read a book published by TWELVE for some time due to their mission of publishing one book a month in order to focus on the editorial and marketing attention such books deserve. APOLOGIZE, APOLOGIZE! is one of its rare fiction offerings.

Take a gander at this fine debut piece o' fiction, if for no other reason than the sheer joy of reading the elegant prose.

Peace, Linda

Bloody Tuesday

What I saw this morning
on my way to work -
red Rohrshach blotches
splattering the sidewalk
like breadcrumbs I
followed, the drops
trickling smaller,
wetter, trailing four
blocks past Sylvie's
pawn and check cashing,
the bus stop across from
Seven Eleven where my friend,
now dead, once worked,
jaywalking across to Stearns
Fine Jewelry, Starbuck's,
the Hippodrome, past nurses
and docs scrubbed blue
and green, I followed,
hound-hungry, ruby drops
sparkling in fine spatter
to emergency then bought
a latte, went to work...

--

So what did you see on your way to work?

THE READING... MIDDLEMARCH by George Eliot. A dense but fascinating read. Glad I'm reading this with the Project 100 Fill in the Gaps crew - it's tough going in spots. Finished my MAY DEBUT novel pick - look for my review later this week.

THE WRITING... Working on Chapter 2 of PURE. Putting my brain cells through this novel. Also readying shorts and poems for flight into the world.

MISCELLANEOUS... Once reason why those pre-publication reviews are often so vicious - From The CHRONICLE. And HINT FICTION makes history and gets an agent AND a deal. Yoo-hoo!

You Are What You Write

NATHAN BRANSFORD blogged a provocative post about writers and the way they self-identify as writers. He notes people don't tend to define themselves by their hobbies; rather, people tend to identify themselves by their work.

As he states...

"You can see this in the way people talk about writing: some people compare it to oxygen, i.e. something that they can't live without. They don't say, "I like to write, it's fun, I enjoy it." They say, unequivocally, "I am a writer. It's who I am."

I'm going to be honest here and say that while I don't judge people when they define themselves as writer, whatever their publication status, I find it a little unsettling when they make it an overly intrinsic part of their identity.

First of all, people just don't tend to define themselves by their hobbies. You don't hear anyone shout to the rafters, "I AM STAMP COLLECTOR!" or "I AM A CONNOISSEUR OF REALITY TELEVISION!" And until you're making a living at it, writing is a hobby. It's something you do in your spare time. (Right?)"

Righty-oh. My hobby in my spare time, oh between 5 and 7 am. Every day.

A good friend, one of my writing buddies, received his lay-off notice today. The subject line on his email? POP THE CHAMPAGNE. You see, he's been wanting more time to write, to pursue his 'hobby', but the day job has drained him for years.

I, for one, am rather tired of this culture that emphasis self-identity based upon the position one holds in a paid work-force, that favors the size of the paycheck and the length of the title.

I want to live in a world that values art and craft, meaning and beauty. That treasures the creative spirit that resides in every one of us.

Who Am I? I am what I write. I am writer, mother, wife, sister, lover, reader, singer, gardener, poet, potter, sculptor, jeweler, daughter, photographer, lampworker, mentor, professor.

Who are you?

Peace, Linda

Does Anyone Else Feel that Bittersweet Twinge

Of sadness now that April, month of poetry, is over?

A fabulous 30 days journeyed with fellow poets at POETIC ASIDES. Take time to peruse the more than 25,000 poems posted over the month.

I'm exhausted, from writing and reading.

What will May bring? I sense MIDDLEMARCH, a debut book review, maybe some good publication news, and writing focused on PURE...

Even before the acrid-sweet smell of urine and cedar assaulted me, I knew. No usual scurry and rustle of rodents swarming to greet me, their provider of food, water, and amphetamine. I dropped my bags at the door, cracking it open. My eyes adjusted to the crimson glow bathing the room, intended to keep the animals in a preternatural state of sleepy calm. On the left counter, caged white mice; Deepak’s last four metabolic syndrome controls plump from gorging three times their weight every day, bumped up sleepily against the Plexiglas.

But not my mice. Even in the diffused light, I could see all eight anorexic manic rodents curled into each other, shuddering with shallow exhalations of sleep. But when my gaze traveled to the second cage, I couldn’t discern any shadowy humps or sleeping forms. Just smaller shapes, chunks larger than droppings and food pellets but smaller than animals.




Back to business...

Peace, Linda