Tuesday Tidbits

The month winds down. Grant proposals in, students' dissertations read and passed, a pound of asparagus from the garden picked and roasted every day. The lilacs scent my garden, along with viburnum. The restlessness dissipates...

Three more poems to write. Hallaluah. This year, NaPoWriMo exhausted me. Too much going on, and (stupidly) I commenced running PURE through my Nudgers at the same time.

And my heart's in PURE, not the poems. So.

That said, I have a few poems with decent bones, words I can turn over when I'm more engaged. And the practice itself, the diligence of writing in response to a prompt is a phenomenal opportunity. Like this, in response to the prompt 'regret':

A Snowy Day Spent Otherwise

Your eyes scrunch from sun casting icicle
rainbows on blank pages, under eyelids,
rebuking you; a high-pitched whinny snakes
through walls, under skin despite the frantic

looping mantra… focus on the word, focus
on the... a pencil slams, clatters to
the floor, feet stomp down the hall
to parted curtains. The yard gleams

in treacherous beauty. A snowball shatters
glass; through melt smear a pink-cheeked child
slides down crystalline hills, whooping joy.
What is more important than the visceral

act of throwing limbs against slatted wood,
feeling air and icy shards smack against chin
and nose, your daughter, your only born,
pounce on you at ride’s end? Her face lights up –

she spies you at the darkened window. The muse
hisses in your ear; your eyes scrunch…

(I remember the day, a rare snow day; the kids off from school, the sun glittering on the icy hill, the kids laughing and I... chose to work. Me bad.)

==> CINDY PON's debut SILVER PHOENIX: Beyond the Kingdom of Xia hits the shelves TODAY! Young adult fantasy with an Asian flair - BUY IT!

==> If you're looking for reading inspiration, check out this new blog: FILL IN THE GAPS 100 PROJECT. Fifty of us - writers, readers, editors, all passionate about BOOKS - listed our top To Be Read lists, along with reviews. A special YAY! to Emily Cross for organizing what started as a comment thread over at EDITORIAL ASS.

==> Accepted into Lesley University Writing Workshop for late July in Cambridge, MA. Very excited - great faculty (including Julia Glass). Imagine - an entire week of writing, workshopping, and talking about writing. In my old stomping ground... yippee!

Keep on writing - and reading. Peace, Linda

United Authors

Last year, at a health policy conference, I sketched out a similar paradigm for a brave new publishing world on a cocktail napkin with an economist friend. David Hewson may be on to something...

Now, just need the venture capital... Peace, Linda

Hint Fiction - up to the challenge?

For the micro-mini-flashers amongst you, check out this new fiction form...

Contest. 25 words or less. Due April 30, day after someone's birthday. Judged by Stewart O'Nan. Sounds like fun - wanna party?

Peace, Linda

MUDBOUND, April's Debut Pick

Henry and I dug the hole seven feet deep. Any shallower and the corpse was liable to come rising up during the next big flood: Howdy boys! Remember me? The thought of it kept us digging even after the blisters on our palms had burst, re-formed and burst again. Every shovelful was an agony - the old man getting in his last licks. Still, I was glad of the pain. It shoved away thought and memory.

I didn't plan to review MUDBOUND (by Hillary Jordan; Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill) this month. But when my intended selection tanked (couldn't read past the first two chapters) and I walked into CONSTELLATION BOOKS, the independent book store located in my wee town, the cover beckoned and the proprietor gave an enthusiastic two thumbs up.

I was not disappointed.

In MUDBOUND, the consequences of two of the greatest atrocities of modern 'civilization' - World War II and Jim Crow - are seamlessly served upon two families, one white and one black, farming in the Mississippi delta. Laura, the educated, almost-spinster follows her new husband Henry (and his crusty, bigoted 'Pappy') to farm cotton. Black sharecroppers work the farm, including Hap, a farmer and man of God in the black community, and his wife Florence, wise in the ways of birthing. But the two most compelling voices were the two sons returning from overseas: Jamie, the charismatic white bomber pilot, and Ronsel, the black tank sargeant who has tasted a bit of better freedom on his tour of service. Both return to a world little changed, even though both are irreversibly altered, suffering from what we now know as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and coping with their return home in very different ways. This story follows each character's path to redemption in the wake of overt racism and a war fought thousands of miles away.

The writing is very accessible, straightforward, and compelling. Hillary Jordan tells the story alternating all six voices in first person with each voice distinct. No mean feat. Having each voice tell his or her story made the book come alive, and without spoiling the ending, made the resolution of MUDBOUND all the more powerful. A heartrending tragedy not easily forgotten, MUDBOUND won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, an honor sponsored by Barbara Kingsolver and bestowed on works of fiction that address issues of social justice.

About the Author: Hillary Jordan grew up in Texas and Oklahoma, and spent 15 years as an advertising copyrighter before obtaining her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. She lives in Tivoli, New York.

About the Publisher: ALGONQUIN BOOKS is based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (my alma mater - go heels!) and publishes leading fiction and non-fiction books, many with a Southern focus. Some feel this is one press that flies under the radar; I agree. I've read several stupendous titles from the impressive portfolio of this can-do publisher, including Alison Bass' SIDE EFFECTS, a fabulous expose of antidepressant drug development, regulation, and marketing in the United States.

Happy reading... Peace, Linda

Dishing the Biz...

Another round of agents chit-chatting it up at P & W: Anna Stein, Jim Rutman, Maria Massie, and Peter Steinberg.

Fascinating. Confounding. Bad news/good news: the health of the industry sucks, and so do synopses.

Enjoy. I think...

BOOK REVIEW up over the weekend. April's book pick wasn't my intended, but it is a gorgeous, moving story about injustice and justice... been busy, busy, busy and the reading's suffered.

Peace, Linda

Windmills

For some reason, windmills tinge my mood with melancholic nostalgia. Not sure why - I'm not Dutch - but seeing these strong yet graceful structures flail at the air reassures me. Perhaps it's that windmills turn something invisible - the air - and transforms it into power that intrigues me. We visited Williamsburg on the way home and this mill was my first glimpse of the village.

Spring break took us down to North Carolina to celebrate my father's 71st birthday. He still looked frail, though better than three months ago, his spindly arms listing at his side, the skin of his face drooping from the 7 weeks of radiation and chemo. But he stood there, stalwart, stubborn, pushing his breath over his candled cake.

A good trip.

The Reading... The Nudgers are full throttle again, running our novels through each other's discerning eyes and itchy red pens. So far I've read the first chapters of Among Us, a sci-fi story; Under the Devil's Club, a mystery; and Flashes from the Hot Zone, women's lit/comedy. All great stuff.

The Writing... Twelve pages away from finishing beta-reader revisions on Brighter than Bright; tomorrow, the book will rest before a final run-through for typos. I find myself emotional as I near the end, as if parting with a dear friend. The first chapter of PURE almost ready for posting to my Nudgers. And of course, a poem a day. Fell behind over vacation, but caught up late last night.

I leave you with inspiration found in the garden and in response to the prompt: a memory.

Mother Memory

Cutting rhubarb in the rain,
the mottled leaves
thick with mud and slugs,
I wonder if these five plants,
robust now, will stand
another season
in this shaded corner.

If not, next spring
my husband will surprise me,
bearing rhizomes, golden
gifts, then plant them
so my garden will be
as my mother’s, and her
mother’s, and, perhaps, all
our mothers’ before.

Later, like my mother,
I’ll slice the stalks
into chunks for pie.
Mine has strawberries,
though she says
‘ruins the rhubarb’,
so she’d make sauce
and eat from the pot,
still warm, spoon
clanking against the sides,
a sigh of a smile
trespassing her face.

In her eyes, my mixed fruit
splendor makes me a bit
of a rebel; she taught me well.
But tendering these stalks,
making the pie,
heralds me a holder
of apron strings,
honoring our history
unmarked with words
or trophies, and therefore,
all the more important.

I wonder how my daughter
will make her pie.



Peace, Linda

Butterfly

I've read - and written - quite a few poems these first 3 days of National Poetry Month, but the best thus far, this simple acrostic -

Beauty
Under a Rainbow
Tiny
Tickles
Earthly beauty
Rainbow
Flying Rainbows
Loveable Cuddleable
Yellow-winged
~Lea, Age 6


The Reading... Two new books: The Soul Thief (Charles Baxter) and Apologize, Apologize (Elizabeth Kelly). Finishing up Chuck Bock's Beautiful Children. Still reeling from Hamilton's exquisite A Map of the World.

The Writing... Three poems (Money, City of Believe, The Problem with the Time Travel machine). Sixty pages from the end of beta-reader edits in the never-ending BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT. Working on PURE, getting ready to post the first 10k words with my writing group - nervous anticipation.

Outta here for a week visiting my family, so read hard, write harder. I leave you with an excerpt from City of Believe, in response to the prompt: outsider.

Here, in the City of Believe, everyone prays,
a fervor never noted in backwater Carolina
or stiff-backed Unitarian pews. Here, big black
women clamber on the metro clutching quilt
covered books close, apostalytic fingers
twitching to the glory of God,

amen child.

Two rows down yarmulked manchild, earlocks fuzzing
from wetfull morn, sways with prayer, holy
words dripping silent but heard, his mutter
murmur adding to an imam’s turban-tight
keening, sikh’s singing, Buddha’s koans… I break

through the throbbing throng, up stairs bloodstained,
carcassed with sweat and peanut shells, and blink; light
accosts a vision… Here, on the corner, the buttoned-
down, suited-up savior dude waves salvation tracts,
bullhorning oracles falling short of earbudded,
shelled-in selves, bobbing to suburban-fueled sturm.
Here, in the City of Believe, folks pray, earnest, more
fervid; my contempt for their desperate faith shorn
smooth, eclipsed only by my envy.






Peace, Linda

A Fool for Rhythm and Rhyme

April is the National Poetry Month. YIPPEE!!!!!!!!! For the next 30 days, I'll celebrate all things poetry: the words, the poets, the blogs, the lit zines, the presses, the community.

Let's get to it...

READ IT... Get your daily fix at POETS.ORG. Delivered daily to your local inbox.

WRITE IT... Inspired? Then write a verse or two yourself and post it at POETIC ASIDES. Blog host Robert Lee Brewer sponsors the Poem-A-Day (PAD) Challenge. Write a poem a day and win a nifty badge and certificate - poetry's answer to NaNoWriMo. New this year: guest judges who may choose your ditty for a PAD anthology.

ENJOY IT... And now, one of my favorite online poetry sites: BOSTON LITERARY MAGAZINE. Curl up in your comfiest chair with a good poem and a glass of wine... ahhhhhh...

Please, join me in daring to disturb your universe. Peace, Linda

Happy Dancing Day

Hey! Busy, busy churning out hypotheses this week, but JON STROTHER interviewed me on all things writing on his blog MAD UTOPIA. Check it out. More importantly, check out his very cool Picture Prompt Haiku. Loverly...

Thank you Jon for the props. You have a knack for the art of interview!

Also up today... drum roll, puh-leez... the 6 day countdown until 6S:V2 (Six Sentences: Volume II) makes its grand debut. Very cool pieces included in this micro-fiction anthology. A couple of ditties from YT, but also contributions from Rick Moody and Neil LaBute. Booyah!

Thank you Rob - you rock!

Peace, Linda

Great Girlz

You know who they are: the Girlz who tell you when your POV switches, who tell you (with love) when your writing sucks, who red ink your manuscript until the pages turn pink. They're the budz who cyberlob you dark chocolate and boxes o' wine when (yet another) rejection dings in the inbox. The Girlz are the first to scream YAY!!!!!!! when good fortune lands in your lap.

The Ya-Ya Sisterhood of the Writing World.

Today, MAGS the MAGNIFICENT tapped me with her royal scepter. She's a cool Sister indeed; quirky and fun and hard-working, yet always there with a shoulder to cry on. And she's a mighty fine writer, with two edgy novels under her belt. (She's seeking representation, btw, and you better grab her before she's gone-gone-gone...)

My turn to tap the next batch of Sisters...
DEBORAH
GRETA
PAIGE
MOONRAT
CINDY

You Girlz are blogless, but I induct you anyway: KIM and MARG; already inducted: TWIZZLE BABY. And if I could, I'd make you honorary Girlz: JOHN and STEVE.

Thank you SISTERS! For your enthusiasm, your guidance, your open hearts. You've made the journey worth infinitely more than the destination. Peace, Linda

Small World Serendipity

Traveled home from Philly on Amtrak late yesterday afternoon. The train's packed, the quiet car full, and I trudged through three cars before I found a seat. The woman by the window has her laptop out, jacket and bags strewn on the seat I wanted to make mine. I felt badly asking her to move her stuff, but damn if at fifty bucks I was going to stand in my Italian leather pumps for an hour to Baltimore.

I hoisted stuff in the overhead for her, slid into my seat, pulled out my netbook to work on novel edits. I was cranky, in need of a glass of wine or chocolate, but there were too many folks cramming the aisle. Somehow, we started talking, about grant proposals I think, and the convo morphed into one of the best chats I've had in ages: the academic charade, career-mommy balance, the bloom of new passions wrought at mid-life.

You know, the important stuff.

So she asked me what it was I really wanted to do, and of course I told her: write.

I describe Ben, my protagonist in BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, and she asked me a very simple question: "Where's he from?"

And I replied, "He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but he's from Larchmont, New York."

"Why," she said, "That's where I'm from."

Small, small world. At any rate, she helped me pinpoint which streets in Larchmont have million-dollar manses with views, confirming my google-mapping exercise from the night before.

The Reading... Rereading Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World. So intricate and intense. Stuyding now for structure and form, how she molds voice. Next up: Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book and a quirky memoir called My Lobotomy. And a lot of medical papers on treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease complicated by depression and anxiety. Sigh.

The Writing... All three beta readers' comments IN. Processing, processing... I hope to wrap up in the next week or so, as April 1st marks the beginning of the Nudge-Nudge Collective's Novel #2 Initiative. It WILL be intense, and will last more than a year - that's how long it takes for six people to critically read 6 novels-in-waiting. The Day of the Fool also marks NaPoWriMo. Yikes.

Peace, Linda

March Debut Book Pick: Still Alice

Even then, more than a year earlier, there were neurons in her head, not far from her ears, that were being strangled to death, too quietly for her to hear them. Some would argue that things were going so insidiously wrong that the neurons themselves initiated events that would lead to their own destruction. Whether it was molecular murder or cellular suicide, they were unable to warn her of what was happening before they died.

I love the poetic sensibility of this epigraph opening Lisa Genova’s debut novel Still Alice, a haunting tale about a poorly understood and largely untreatable condition - Alzheimer's Disease. A form of dementia, those afflicted suffer a slow, cognizant decline in memory, control of language and thought, and full functioning in every day activities most of us take for granted.

The author inflicts this dread illness on Doctor Alice Howland, a Harvard Professor of Psychology who, at age 50, has reached the pinnacle of career, family and love. Alice represents the state-of-the-art in her chosen field cognitive psychology, so when she blanks out on the words of a rehearsed lecture and forgets to attend meetings, she chalks her deficits to stress, exhaustion, and menopause. It isn’t until she loses herself in Harvard Square, a place she crosses daily, that she realizes something is amiss. She discovers she has early onset Alzheimer’s Disease - and there's little she can do to stop the condition’s advancement.

We follow Alice's slow spiral into dementia and her grappling with the consequences of the disease on others: her eldest daughter Anna, desperately trying to become pregnant, son Tom in medical school, and rebellious Lydia, the youngest daughter making her way as an actress in Los Angeles. But it is her husband John who struggles the most, torn between his own career and the needs of his increasingly debilitated wife.

There is a lyricism to much of the writing, especially near the end when Alice experiences rare, lucid moments:

I miss doing everything easily. I miss being a part of what’s happening. I miss feeling wanted. I miss my life and my family… I miss myself.

The author writes the story in third person from (largely) Alice’s point of view. This perspective allows some distance between the character and the reader, creating an interesting dynamic. At first, I wanted to sink in Alice's head, really feel her progression into madness; indeed, this inability to really be with Alice frustrated me at first. But about half-way into the story, I was relieved for the distance; Alice's mental instability made me squirm, the horror too close for comfort.

The medical facts and science are spot on - the author is, after all, Doctor Lisa Genova, a Harvard-trained neuroscientist. As a scientist myself, I’m always grateful when the facts in fiction are indeed facts.

This is an important and beautifully written book tackling a difficult, stigmatized subject. Read it – the story will move you.

About the Author... Lisa Genova is a neuroscientist, actor, and writer who lives in Massachusetts. Visit her at STILL ALICE.com

About the Press... I know, I know - Simon and Shuster is a tad bigger than the small, independent presses I prefer to feature. I made an exception this month because I feel this book is so important for understanding this brain disease, and because Lisa Genova initially took the smallest possible press approach – she originally self-published STILL ALICE in 2007. Hers is a story of what talent coupled with persistence can achieve.

More Reviews…
--AARP Magazine
--Powell's Book
--Boston Magazine

Peace, Linda

PS. I'm double-blogging today - check out my guest post at EDITOR UNLEASHED on Blogging for Books