#my family is always telling our friends how 'sarah's so literary! sarah reads all the classics! sarah's so highbrow!'

[rosepompadour]

anne boleyn and thomas wyatt, tarnish by katherine longshore He kisses me with the deep desperation of a drowning man. This kiss is a song of longing. "I love you," I whisper when he kisses my throat. I cannot say it loud enough for him to hear.

+

[kayliemusing]

42: top 3s

1: Top 3 ice cream flavors - classic vanilla, birthday cake/birthday batter, bubblegum

2: Top 3 Disney Movies - Mulan, Onward, Soul (but this changes frequently lol)

3: Top 3 vacation destinations - I've never been outside of my home country so I'll say my top 3 DREAM destinations: NYC, Hawaii, a random countryside in either France or the UK

4: Top 3 places to shop - Dynamite, Sephora, Winners/Homesense

5: Top 3 subjects of study/classes to take - English/anything creative writing related, Interior Decorating/Design, Communications?

6: Top 3 make up products - YSL Touche Eclat Foundation, literally any Mac Lipstick but it has to be matte, & Fenty Beauty contour stick

7: Top 3 music artists - Taylor Swift - Of Monsters and Men - The Lumineers

8: Top 3 spices/herbs - Cinnamon - Nutmeg (literally tastes like autumn) - Paprika

9: Top 3 drinks - Diet Coke - Hot Chocolate - Vanilla Bean Frappe

10: Top 3 apps to use - Instagram - Pinterest -iBooks

11: Top 3 months of the year - May, October, December

12: Top 3 clothing items - My black/white turtle neck, high waisted jeans, plaid blazer

13: Top 3 binge perfect tv shows - Bones, Supernatural, Brooklyn Nine Nine

14: Top 3 romantic dates - (I've never been on a date but if I had, it would be this) Evening walk, late night drive, late night coffee date (tbh anything at night feels romantic)

15: Top 3 kinds of flower - Water lilies, cherry blossoms, roses

16: Top 3 christmas movies - A Christmas Carol (2009), Home Alone, The Polar Express

17: Top 3 OTPs - Nesta and Cassian from ACOTAR series by SJM, Manon and Dorian from Throne of Glass series by SJM, Casteel and Poppy from From Blood and Ash series by JLM.

18: Top 3 quotes to describe your life - "I write not to find, but to leave" by Scherezade Siobhan - "I want to be myself again. I want to be six. I want to stop knowing everything I know" by Catherynne M. Valente - "The truth is, I pretend to be a cynic, but I am really a dreamer who is terrified of wanting something she may never get" by Joanna Hoffman.

19: Top 3 characteristics you love about yourself - my kindness bc it's not surface level kindness, but actually something deeply rooted within me - my resilience even tho sometimes it doesn't feel like resilience - my loyalty bc it is a hard as steel kind of loyalty

20: Top 3 kinds of candy - Maltesers, Kit kats, smarties

21: Top 3 ways to exercise/ be active - Walking, dancing, mowing the lawn/shoveling the sidewalk

22: Top 3 spirit animals - wolf, hummingbird, tiger (i googled it bc i didn't know and i was scared it was a joke but)

23: Top 3 petnames - I like 'lovebug', 'love', 'sweetheart'

24: Top 3 books read outside of school - The Hating Game by Sally Thorne, A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J Maas but viewers discretion is advised, Crush by Richard Siken

25: Top 3 most used websites - Youtube, Tumblr, Pinterest

26: Top 3 people you last texted - my mom, my bestie megan, and my sister bc they're the only people i text...

27: Top 3 hashtags you use - the only time i use hashtags is if i'm trying to promote some of my writing so I'll usually use writingcommunity, writersonig, poetryonig lol

28: Top 3 instagram accounts you follow - Trista Mateer, Griefmother, obviously taylor swift

29: Top 3 guilty pleasures - buzzfeed quizzes, early 2000s music, romance novels

30: Top 3 summer activities - Going to the zoo, long evening walks, campfires and s'mores

31: Top 3 things to draw/doodle - hearts, flowers, random swirls bc it's the only thing i can doodle...

32: Top 3 aesthetics - cityscape aesthetic, autumn aesthetic, rustic aesthetic

33: Top 3 things you'd buy if you gained three million dollars - a new car, a condo, another cat

34: Top 3 ways to treat yourself - facial, a large bag of maltesers, buying the makeup i really want but have been putting off

35: Top 3 celebrity crushes - Evan Peters, Matthew Daddario, henry cavill

36: Top 3 books from your childhood - Love You Forever by Robert Munsch, The Big Friendly Giant by Roald Dahl, and Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmens

37: Top 3 accents to hear - Australian, super poshy british accent, new zealand accent

38: Top 3 scents - Fresh rain, vanilla, sweet cinnamon pumpkin from bath and body works

39: Top 3 "Friends" quotes - "WE WERE ON A BREAK" -Ross, "Guess things were just going too well for me" -also ross, and "it's so exhausting waiting for death" - phoebe

40: Top 3 cupcake flavors - tbh I haven't tried that many cupcakes so your typical vanilla, chocolate, and Pink Lady Cupcake from Babycakes Cupcakery

41: Top 3 fruits - Pomegranates, Strawberries, Raspberries

42: Top 3 places you've had amazing pizza from - Pizzahut, Dominos, Pizza73

43: Top 3 sports teams to watch - i don't

44: Top 3 crayola colors - uh, i guess red, purple, and pink??

45: Top 3 things you hope to accomplish in college - Certificates/Degrees in Copyediting and Creative Writing, and I think simply just deeper critical thinking skills when it comes to writing and books

46: Top 3 fanfictions you've read - I read more books than fanfics, I've read a couple on tumblr but don't remember the names sorry :/

47: Top 3 people you miss right now - my dad, my best friend bc she's in vancouver, taylor swift bc she's not on tumblr anymore rip

48: Top 3 fears - Failure, Loss, not achieving anything in life/not reaching my full potential

49: Top 3 favorite literary devices - Foreshadowing is always god tier, cliffhangers although evil i love those too, symbolism

50: Top 3 pet peeves - People dragging their shoes on the floor when they walk, when you tell someone your fav hobby/music artist/interest and they immediately go 'oh I hate X!', and people who go 'you're so quiet!!!' but in a way that draws in more attention and/or makes me feel more uncomfortable like i would literally rather die

51: Top 3 physical things you find attractive - Hands, nice hair, defined jawlines

52: Top 3 bad habits - Nailbiting, picking at my blemishes oops, lip biting

53: Top 3 pets you've had/wish to have - Cats bc they complete me, I've always wanted a Samoyed, and I've always wanted a turtle

54: Top 3 types of foreign food - Chicken Chow Mein, deep fried shrimp, japanese chicken wings

55: Top 3 things you want to say to someone in your lifetime - 'I quit', 'I love you', 'you changed my life'

56: Top 3 dog breeds - Samoyed, german shepherds, collies

57: Top 3 cheesy romance movies - You've Got Mail, How To Lose a Guy In 10 Days, 10 Things I Hate About You

58: Top 3 languages you speak/wish to speak - French, Sign, and maybe Japanese?

59: Top 3 series (book, movie, television) - The Cruel Prince series by Holly Black, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas (but literally only for Cassian and Nesta), From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L Armentrout

60: Top 3 pizza toppings - Mushrooms, alfredo sauce, pineapple

61: Top 3 youtubers you're subscribed to - Game Grumps, Charlotte Dobre, Megan Batoon

62: Top 3 tattoo / piercing ideas - I want to get a tattoo on my wrist of the last thing my dad ever wrote me, a hummingbird tattoo right next to it, and then a cross on my index finger

63: Top 3 awards you want to win - National Book Awards, Nobel Prize, and maybe even Goodreads Choice Awards lol

64: Top 3 emojis - Laugh/Crying emoji, the please sir emoji that kinda gives off those puss n boots eyes, and the stars emoji

65: Top 3 cars you dream of owning - 1970s Chev Impala, tbh a cute little Hyundai Venue, and maaaaybe the 1964 ferarri 250 gt luso (idk if that name was totally right but i had to do tons of googling to find it. i don't know a lot about cars and i don't really have a top 3 lol)

66: Top 3 authors - Right now I'm really into Sarah J Maas, Sally Thorne, and Holly Black maybe?

67: Top 3 historical figures - Jesus, Anne Frank, Vincent Van Gogh

68: Top 3 baby names - Ryder, Leila, Gracie

69: Top 3 DIYs - Candles, refurnishing old furniture (i.e. my mom and i painted our wooden garbage can), and really just any type of autumn diy

70: Top 3 smoothie combos/flavors - Strawberry/Banana, Mango, Strawberry-Mango

71: Top 3 songs of this month - Happier Than Ever by Billie Eilish, Biblical by Calum Scott, and Visiting Hours by Ed Sheeran

72: Top 3 questions of this post you want to be asked - I did them all bc I made it a survey instead of an ask meme ;)

73: Top 3 villains - Regina/The Evil Queen from Once Upon a Time, Cruella De Vil, and Moriarty from Sherlock

74: Top 3 Cities you want to see - Montreal, NYC, Vancouver (honorable mention: LA)

75: Top 3 recipes you want to try - different kind of salad and/or burger bowls, Stuffed bell peppers, and homemade lemon loaf

76: Top 3 dream jobs - Bestselling author, the person who runs a companies social media accounts, youtuber/blogger

77: Top 3 lucky items - tbh don't have one

78: Top 3 traditions you have - Christmas Eve Service and if I don't go to that at least incorporating reading the christmas story on christmas day or eve, idk if this counts as tradition but going to the corn maze every fall, and whenever it's easter/christmas/thanksgiving we always have a big meal w/ family

79: Top 3 things you miss about being a kid - reckless abandon, dreaming about growing up with hopefulness and no dashed hopes, experiencing holidays like halloween and christmas as a kid

80: Top 3 harry potter characters - I've never read or watched Harry Potter rip (ok well i saw the first and second (and maybe third?) movie in the sixth grade I think) but I think I really liked Hermoine, Harry obviously and Dobby

81: Top 3 lies you were told - i don't have 3, but this one has a story but basically when my sister and i were in elementary school my sister got hit by a car and so the insurance thing was that she would recieve 10k when she was 18 and as a child i thought that was unfair so my dad told me that my sister had to split it with me when we were 18 lmao obviously that didn't happen (i think i realized that wasn't true in middle school)

82: Top 3 pictures in your camera roll right now - Pictures of my cat, one of my sister in a hilarious filter, and a picture of my rocking my TS merch

83: Top 3 turn ons - Kindness, defined jawline, easy going

84: Top 3 turn offs - arrogance, unkempt, super loud and obnoxious

85: Top 3 magazines/news papers/ journals to read - I don't read much of those so I'll tell you some sites I love for writing purpose's: there's Wellstoried, justwriterlythings, springhole.net (which is filled with generators if you're stuck and also tons of infomation and advice)

86: Top 3 things you wish you had known earlier - that toad in Mario Party was wearing a mushroom hat and that it is actually not his head, that immaculate means 'clean' before i misused that word like several times over the years, and that the one turn i always take on my way to work where i thought everyone didn't know how to drive was actually bc i didn't have the right of way rip me

87: Top 3 spongebob episodes - the one episode where spongebob and patrick find a ghost ship, that one episode where they form a bikini bottom band and perform it at a football game in a little fish tank, and the one episode where squidward has his first snowball fight

88: Top 3 places to be in the world - I'd love to be in NYC, Montreal, or Hawaii

89: Top 3 things you'd do differently - I would not have applied for RDC, similarly I should have just paid the 500 dollars to the one certificate program I wanted to do instead of overthinking it, and I wish I wouldn't have ended a friendship the way I did

90: Top 3 TV shows from your childhood - Spongebob Squarepants, That's So Raven, and Hannah Montana

91: Top 3 meals you love - Turkey Burgers, Chilli, and Instant Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup

92: Top 3 kinds of tea - i don't drink tea

93: Top 3 embarrassing moments - one time in sixth grade I tripped and fell right on my face in front of my crush, this other time like a couple years ago i opened the door to my car and only realized much too late while i was staring at this random family that it was not my car, and when i went to the gas station to get gas and couldn't get my gas lid on my car opened and this guy had to help me which was already embarrassing enough but then the gas pump wouldn't work so i had to go inside to pay just to realize i forgot my wallet and had to shamefully walk back to my car and then run back inside the convenience store and then pay and then walk back to my car and finally fill my tank.

94: Top 3 holidays to celebrate - Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving

95: Top 3 things to do in the rain - have an existential crisis, pretend you're in a music video, walk through puddles like you're six again

96: Top 3 things to do in the snow - Sledding, Build a snowman, shovel it even tho you don't want to

97: Top 3 items you can't leave the house w/o - phone, keys, wallet

98: Top 3 movies you'd like to see - Jurassic World 3, Hotel Transylvania: Transformania bc i'm a child, and the animation of the addams family

99: Top 3 art mediums - Writing fiction/poetry, painting, music

100: Top 3 museums you've been to - Royal Tyrell Museum, Canadian History one in edmonton lol, and heritage park in calgary

101: Top 3 school memories - Middle school dances when the popular kids would grind to the song "Low" which was always an interesting experience, in the twelfth grade at winter formal when we all shouted "SHUT UP AND DANCE!" at the same time when they played Shut Up and Dance, and the day i left

102: Top 3 things you don't/Won't miss - School, my sisters ex, 2016 bc she was a rough year yikes

103: Top 3 pick up lines - "My name is Will. God's Will.", "I'd like to take you to the movies but they don't like you bring your own snacks", "are you from tennessee bc you're the only 10 i see"

104: Top 3 sports to watch - none of them

105: Top 3 taylor swift songs - all too well - exile - coney island

[therealprincesszeanah]

My Decade in Books

I was tagged by @the-forest-library to outline my decade in books! It will be rough because I have been very hit or miss in tracking my reading throughout the years, but I will do my best. I can't remember how to make this a read more, so I apologize in advace for mobile users. If anyone reads through this bless you.

2010: A year of great highs and some serious lows. I was still in high school so I was plagued by the books from required reading lists, such as The Alchemist, Of Mice and Men, and Lord of the Flies. I also read The Lovely Bones at the behest of a friend, which I still regret because it was so awful and weird. But 2010 was also the year I read A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Pride and Prejudice for the first time! If I recall though, I did not actually finish Pride and Prejudice at this time because I was reading it for a book report and there wasn't time to read the last 40 pages or so and get the assignment done. I still loved it though. A Thousand Splendid Suns was an instant favorite and if I recall was my go-to response to "What's your favorite book" for the next couple of years. I also spent a summer reading Sarah Dessen books which is an eternal mood.

2011: Still in high school and still being required to read books that just Aren't Good, like The Scarlett Letter and The Dante Club. BUT this year the required reading had some great treasures! I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time, as well as Night by Elie Wiesel. In the summer I picked up one of the more "popular" books that came out that year from the library called Heart of the Matter by Emily Griffith and it was so dumb that I was pretty much turned off of contemporary adult lit for a good bit. I read a couple more duds that summer at the recommendation of a friend (The Penny by Joyce Meyer and Love Walked In by Maria Des Los Santos). This was also the year I read The Epic of Gilgamesh out loud to my brother (his choice 🤷🏼‍♀️) on our annual roadtrip to North Carolina.

2012: The year I devoured the entirety of The Hunger Games. I remeber borrowing them all from various friends at school and reading them late into the night each time, taking like 2 or 3 days total on each. The required high school reading list this year was still terrible, with The Awakening and As I Lay Dying making an appearance. This was the year I read Macbeth though and to this day that is still my favorite Shakespeare play. We also read The Posionwood Bible which I remember having a love-hate relationship with. It's one of the few books I want to go back to and see if I'll like it more now that I'm not being forced to read it. This summer was the summer me and two of my best friends at the time read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society aloud to each other. To this day we still call one of my friends Clovis, after one the characters in that book. Another instant favorite. That summer my brother also attempted to start a book club, so we all read Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (his choice again) which I shockingly remember enjoying. Another book I surprisingly liked that year was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which I had to read for a group project.

2013: This was a GREAT year of reading. The required reading list had some duds as always (The Master Buidler by Henrik Isben and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett), but this year we read The Crucible which I LOVED. We also read Heda Gabler (Isben) which I actually did NOT like, but for the associated project my friends and I wrote a song about the play, then filmed and edited an entire music video in the span of like three days. So that was definitely a highlight. That summer I read a couple more duds, The Graceling by Kristin Cashore and Go Ask Alice, which I had picked up at a garage sale for a quarter. I also read Hosseini's newest book that came out the previous year, and while it wasn't on par with A Thousand Splendid Suns, it was still good. After that I really started LIVING. I read The Help (and cried), I read Anne of Green Gables for the first time (and cried), I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, and then ended the year with the most beautiful book, The Book Thief. I got it for Christmas and read it every second I had on our annual trip to North Carolina. I finished it in the car ride home and sobbed, much to the concern of my dad and brother.

2014: This is where my reading takes a serious nose dive as this spans the semesters in college where I was transitioning from majoring in pre-vet science into majoring in English. I read Twelfth Night in my first English Lit class in college, as well as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, some Chaucer, and 2/3 of Evelina by Frances Burney, which I absolutely loved but time didn't permit me to finish this one until years later. That spring break I borrowed and read The Fault In Our Stars. That summer I borrowed and read The Kite Runner (still think A Thousand Splendid Suns is Hosseini's best work). I vaguely remember being in a World Literature class the fall semester of this year and reading The Tempest, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (which I LOVED), but I don't remember much else from that class. I thiiink this is also the year I reread Harry Potter during the summer, but I don't remember. I know I reread the series in college, it's just all such a blur now 🤷🏼‍♀️

2015: The Fault In Our Stars the previous year put me on a serious John Green kick in the start of 2015. I read Papertowns on my flight home from my spring break trip to NY. Later that year I borrowed An Abundance of Katherines from a friend and which pretty much turned me off of John Green forever. I took my first American Lit class in college this year and realized I just don't like much American Lit. We read Fight Club, A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer by Edith Warton, Tender is the Night and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and I liked approximately zero of them. This year was the BEST year though because it was also the year I took a class just about the Brontë sisters. We read Jane Eyre (my third time at this point, I think. Always a favorite), Wuthering Heights (hated it) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (an absolute DELIGHT. Became one of my all-time favorites and my go-to recommendation for a couple of years). I ended the year reading a couple of quick, fun, cozy books during the holidays: Where'd You Go Bernadette and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (my first time and I absolutely loved it).

2016: This year had a BUNCH of lows, but there were a few standout stars. After a much needed schedule change at the beginning of the year, I ended up in another American Lit class which further my disdain for the subject. We read Typee by Hermamn Melville (snoozefest), My Ántonia by Willa Cather, half of some book by Keruac I think (so boring and uninspiring I don't even remember anything besides that I hated it and it had a red cover) and Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin. We did also read a collection of short stories by Flannery O'Connor and that was actually enjoyable, so there's hope for me and American authors yet. This was the year I also had my absolute FAVORITE professor for a Victorian Lit class. The theme was Scandal and Outrage or something like that so we read Alice and Wonderland, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and (most unfortunately) Tess of the D'ubervilles by Thomas Hardy. To be fair, at this time I actually probably only read like half of it due to all my other course work this semester, but it just was Not Good. The only high point from my lit classes this year was The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. An absolute treasure. That summer was a summer of duds. I read Harry Potter and The Cursed Child (truly cursed), Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (just didn't really connect with the characters), and the absolure WORST BOOK Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. I'm not sure a book had ever made me as upset, or rage induced as this book did, but to this day I am still so mad I wasted time with it. I spent a lot of the year sloughing through a book I borrowed from the family I babysit for called The Myserious Benedict Society. I didn't finish it until the next year, but it took me forever to get through. The only other highlight of this year was reading Ender's Game aloud to my husband. That book took me by surprise in a great way. I did not expect to love it as much as I did. We also read the sequel this year, Speaker For the Dead, which although very different from Ender's Game was still good in its own rite.

2017: This year is when things really start picking up for me again. Toward the end of college, I was feeling very burnt out and uninspried by reading (probably because all of the lows the previous year). I rounded out my degree in one last lit class (another American Lit class of ALL classes), but since it was early American Lit, I actually did enjoy it a bit more. We read Native creation myths, Lousia May Alcott short stories, some Whitman and other authors from that movement and then rounded out the semester with Uncle Tom's Cabin. That summer after graduation was when I decided to work my through every book on my bookshelf, which was a pivotal turning point for me because I began to be excited about reading again. That summer I reread Little Women for the first time in years and absolutely LOVED it. I spent the rest of the year with Jane Austen, reading Persausion, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. This was also the year I started reading Harry Potter to my husband (his first time reading the series!).

2018: My bookshelf goal still continues. This year I revisited the Brontë sisters, finally read Evelina in it's entirety (LOVED IT), revisted Sarah Dessen in the summer (for the first time since high school), and revisted some childhood classics (The Tale of Despereaux and The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo, as well as the BFG by Rold Dahl). I reread the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society in preparation for the Netflix movie and finished two Harry Potter books with my husband. I ended the year with Little Men (so sweet 😭) and A Christmas Carol.

2019: I finally finished the first shelf (of three) of my bookcase. I spent almost half of my year in The Count of Monte Cristo and what a wondeful half year that was. Such a great story! I gave two haunts from required read past another chance: Scarlett Letter and Tess of the D'ubervilles. I was not a fan. I read three books by a local author from my childhood and The Outsiders. I finished the year returning to A Thousand Splendid Suns and was again taken away by how moving and beautiful it was. Also finished The Goblet of Fire with my husband during our annual trip to North Carolina.

Something I really enjoyed about this was not only seeing the ebbs and flows of my reading throughout the years, but seeing the common threads throughout the last decade. Road trips, certain books that kept coming up, friends and family I shared books with. This was a really fun thing to do for me so thank you Mable for tagging me! I don't have any one else to tag, but I highly encourage you to do it! It's so fun to see how books shaped the past 10 years. Tag me if you do. 💓

[sarahreesbrennan]

Hey I'm just curious since you've now coauthored both Nothing But Shadows and Cast Long Shadows. Matthew Fairchild is one of my fav book characters ever and I was wondering what your favorite thing about him or writing him is? ❤ Is it difficult to write a character that you didn't create? Sorry to bother you, coauthoring fascinates me (and Matthew makes me smile)

Aw, what a nice question, and you’re not bothering me at all! It’s really fun to have the Ghosts of the Shadow Market stories coming out, and to do this adventure with my friends and Cassie’s great readers! I was super nervous about Son of the Dawn, and the reception has been really lovely.

I was actually with Cassie on tour when she came up with some of the big moves for The Last Hours, so I’ve always been super into it. Me, Cassie and Maureen Johnson were touring together to promote the upcoming The Bane Chronicles which we all co-wrote, as well as Cassie’s Clockwork Princess. That night Cassie and I were sharing a room, and since it was just after the release of Clockwork Princess, we got to talking about the future for the Infernal Devices characters and Cassie’s favorite Dickens book being Great Expectations (mine is Tale of Two Cities, which we’ve squabbled over, so I was all, you have to do books referencing Great Expectations because you love it so much you want to marry it), and we got out the family tree and started telling it to each other as a bedtime story. (WRITERS. We are like this.) And we co-wrote The Midnight Heir, the first time we see some TLH characters, on that same tour. It’s much nicer to co-write when physically together and able to chat it out, but sometimes that isn’t possible as Cassie and I live in different countries–America and Ireland–and we both travel loads. For instance, lots of my bits of Cast Long Shadows I wrote while in the Seychelles, weeping gently on the beach as I discussed Matthew’s life over the phone.

So the TLH characters and I have been friends a long time, and they’re maybe my favourite set of Cassie’s. It definitely is tricky to write a character you didn’t create–but uh, I’ve written fanfic in the past, so I’ve done it before! And this is different and better: Cassie is there every step of the way, so you know you can’t go too far wrong, and you know where everything is going, and it is really an honour to get to contribute a little to her world, and to know if I feel at sea I can push the computer toward her with an ingratiating smile and promise to do more on my next turn, and she will stop me or fix it if I have committed a great faux pas. Plus, through writing characters sometimes you come to love them more–I truly have with several of them. Co-writing with someone I didn’t know really well, and really trust, would be much more difficult. Mostly what I worry about is letting Cassie or the readers down. But because I came in on the ground floor with the TLH characters, they come easier to me than, say, the TDA characters. Not to tell you guys my Awful Weaknesses, but my most difficult Shadowhunters work was Bitter of Tongue, even though I do truly love the TDA characters, and Mark, and Helen and Aline’s wedding. But just… faeries. Why are they the way they are? How do Cassie and Holly Black, faerie queen extraordinaire, do it? I don’t know. I don’t get it. I sat across from Cassie while we wrote it, and sadly threw flowers at myself and at her, to feel more faerie. (I don’t know why any of my friends ever speak to me, all I do is pick them up and carry them, or belabour them with blossoms, or make them try k-beauty products.)

Anyway, I think you can now see that I do go on, as I have now been rattling on without answering your question for some time. (Both Cassie and I tend to write super long, which is a failing our friends must deal with. ‘For God’s sake ladies would you quit it’ said Maureen and our co-author Robin Wasserman for Tales from Shadowhunter Academy, when we handed in Born to Endless Night, which was twice as long as planned.) But I hope it’s clear that co-writing these characters is fun as well as challenging, and Matthew is especially great and easy to co-write, and has always been a special favourite of mine. He makes me smile, too, and that was lovely to do in Nothing But Shadows: James discovering Matthew, at the same time the readers were discovering him. ‘The facts are… I love him,’ I have said urgently, many times. (I am a horrible favourites picker, and will sit campaigning for story time for my chosen darlings and death for my least favourites through every critique session with every one of my writer friends. Soon I may just start waving cards with ‘RAPHAEL!’ or ‘NINA!’ or ‘CARDAN!’ or ‘THE CARSTAIRS SIBLINGS!’ or ‘THE MOON!’ written in sparkly letters. They all have to deal.) When Cassie, Robin, Maureen and our new fabulous addition Kelly Link discussed writing Ghosts of the Shadow Market in a pool in Italy, we knew that chronologically we’d start with the Last Hours characters–Jem seeing the new generation, his friends’ children, as his friends move forward in time and he… doesn’t. 

I have long complained about getting the first stories in these anthologies–introductions are difficult! It is a lot of pressure. ‘Hello, welcome to Magnus’s warlock gang.’ ‘Here is George Lovelace, we have big plans for him, gosh I hope Cassie saves me from screwing this up.’ Cassie told us of Matthew’s great sin. ‘I GET THE MATTHEW STORY!’ I shrieked. I have a piercing scream. ‘I’m doing it with you, right? Right?! ME!’ My friends swam uneasily around in the pool. ‘Yes Sarah. You can have the Matthew story. Stop that noise. Stop it.’ So I bagged the first story, this time around. (And then it was decided that Son of the Dawn would come out first, so I got a double first. Like I said, very nervous! But I did it for Matthew.)

I think writers are always interested in a dichotomy, so it’s fascinating to think of warriors growing up against the background of the aesthetic movement: CLS is set in 1901, a really exciting time tipping wildly from history into modernity, careening all unawares into the Great Wars. (In fact, a significant historical event occurs in CLS: you’ll know it when you see it.) Matthew is an artistically minded warrior raised by a scientist and a politician, and he passionately loves modern art and modern ideas of beauty and an ideal of living beautifully, in a way that doesn’t fit in with his society’s values or way of life. Matthew has everything going for him–he’s a talented warrior, he’s extremely adept socially–but the thing setting him apart from the rest is what he loves: his father, disabled and not valued for his scientific brilliance, his parabatai, under a demonic shadow, and his other particular friends, a boy who represents the next generation of science with new ideas about disease and technology, and a sickly small kid who people murmur won’t make it as a fighter. Matthew could’ve loved anybody, but he chose them, and in CLS it was great to write from his POV, and see those he loves through his loving eyes. He especially loves Oscar Wilde, who is a great Irish literary figure and who I grew up loving–and who got by himself on being witty and charming and brilliant, until tragedy struck. (I have read the play The Importance of Being Earnest… more than a hundred times, and Cassie and I saw a performance together in London, with David Suchet playing Lady Bracknell, which I feel Matthew would have enjoyed.) Show me what someone loves, and I’ll show you who they are: Matthew’s sensitivity, and appreciation for what others don’t appreciate, is what I like best about him. (Plus: funny and blond.) Being suited for violence, and choosing love, being drawn to love, is really endearing–it also means choosing to be easily hurt. How much Matthew loves makes him lovable, and seeing readers like him from the short stories is amazing–and I know they will like him even more in the books.

Our story comes full circle here: Cassie and I were roomies at the North Texas Teen Book Festival when we released the Cast Long Shadows snippet, and we planned to put it up when we were together for extra sleepover fun. ‘Let’s do it now!’ I urged Cassie wickedly on. ‘Plus try these gold and snail eyepatches, you will like them, go on, try a snail.’ And we will be together at a writing retreat–appropriately, in England, when Cast Long Shadows comes out! We will be eating toastie cheese sandwiches and hoping that you like it.

[teacherintransition]

Sometimes, the phone call is to be dreaded...

Last week, I wrote a piece on a “dreaded call” to my wife and myself being a piece of cake on the drama meter. Irony made an appearance this Sunday

“The problem is you think you have time.”

Buddha

I was very pleased with my article written last week which dealt with chasing dreams and sometimes conflicting with family obligations. The piece felt like it was balanced and didn’t advocate one choice over another; putting the reader in a comfortable frame of mind to allow ample time to consider all possibilities. The author felt that sufficient time would be there to consider all options. ... then Sunday morning came and the literary allusion of a phone call I used to encourage readers to weigh choices carefully took on a more tragic literal impact. My brother called me at 9:15 Sunday in a state of emotional despair that I have never associated with him. Through sobs of deep anguish, I learned his son, my nephew, my son’s cousin, the father of his grandkids had been tragically, stolen from them and the device used to tell of the tragedy had been the phone. My title of last weeks blog was, “The Phone Call no Parent wants to Receive....Spoiler Alert: Everything was ok.” This time, in that moment ... irony spread like a shadow ... this time it was not ok.

My nephew, Matthew Paul Rich, was a 24 year old electrician married to a lovely woman with two angelic children. He was his brother’s best friend, his father’s pride and joy and his uncle’s ego builder because he laughed at ever joke I made. His children were so aware of his presence as they could feel the love and devotion he exuded toward them from every ounce of his being... how could children not be drawn like a magnet to such a charismatic man whose heart beat was his children. He was his younger sister’s “big bro” as she, like her uncle, thinks and acts like an artist and Matt got her. Matthew got everyone because he’d rather have friends than a heartache... why not, more to enjoy. He was about joy. Matthew is gone now and the joy has been absent many days. He left us early Sunday morning while all those who loved him slept peacefully...confident that he would be there in the morning, we would have all the time in the world to share with him ... until we didn’t.

An opportunity would be lost if the focus of this piece was just about tragic circumstances and details and the river of tears, though it’s been five days later, still unrelentingly flows. This story is all of those things on a scale beyond imagining. “Life will go on,’ “people will adapt,’ “remember when” will be an all to often a conversation starter; but the loss of Matthew raises us to a much higher plane of thought and realization. The plane is not uncommon, for sadly such tragedies happen daily thousands of times, but it offers an exchange to make us better by losing such a person. It’s a forced introspection... a forced lesson, a dreadful exchange, one that we are reluctant to take at such a high price. I often refer to this concept in my writings, but beware, fate will bring to our doorsteps events that will give the lesson an immediacy that we ignore to our peril. What is this lesson that carries such grave importance? It is this: everything, every love, every object, every person ... will pass. There is nothing that will last, you will lose everyone you love either by their passing or yours. The power, the magic, the love, the bond exists only now. Now...

We all know this intellectually, but it’s too unpleasant to contemplate; so we put consideration of this truth for later.... and we grasp not a life line but a thread of hope, based on cliche : “I got time, life is long, life is short, l have plenty of time” .... all perilous mindsets that will rob our emotional treasure like a thief in the night. During this week, for whatever reason, I was reading bits from “The Tibetan Book on Living and Dying,” to try to enlighten my oft times dense self. I came across a quote from Siddhārtha Gautama, the enlightened one, the Buddha. The Buddha said while trying to grasp the causes of man’s suffering simply said, “the problem is we think we have time.” It’s such a simple but thorough, all encompassing statement on why we suffer so often. We have no time....we have now... only this instant and it too is fleeting. The great teacher also wisely tells us (I paraphrase): focusing on the past brings regret focusing on the future brings worry, focusing on the now brings contentment. Remember, this is a lesson born of tragedy... the tragedy happened, Matthew is gone, there is only learning from it now. Matthew wants us to learn to love his loved ones and each other with an intensity of heart that he possessed . You must be thinking, “hey man, you said that Matthew was gone, how can he want us to do anything?” You can step up to the buffet line and select the theology of your choice that speaks of an eternal energy, or soul or spirit where our loved one exists. Matt exists as certainly as the breeze blows and birds sing, and if he sees we learn from this, he will smile with his toothy grin and say at a slightly elevated decibel level, “hell yeah bro!” I will reluctantly accept the exchange and make sure that the passion and energy that Matthew gave to all of us will be present in my every now....but I wouldn’t mind just one more time letting him give me a thumbs up followed by his, “my man ... my uncle Brent!”

"If you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it, for I love you so

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,

If thinking on me then should make you woe."*

*William Shakespeare: “Sonnet 71;” Collected Works of Shakespeare

For you dearest Rachel:

I know I have but few claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me, perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, nor that, when my last breath escapes me on the battle-field, it will whisper your name.

Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless, how foolish I have oftentimes been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears, every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm. But I cannot, I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.

But, O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth, and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you in the garish day, and the darkest night amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours always, always, and, if the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air cools your throbbing temples, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah, do not mourn me dear; think I am gone, and wait for me, for we shall meet again.

As for my little boys, they will grow as I have done, and never know a father's love and care. Little Willie is too young to remember me long, and my blue-eyed Edgar will keep my frolics with him among the dimmest memories of his childhood. Sarah, I have unlimited confidence in your maternal care, and your development of their characters. Tell my two mothers, I call God's blessing upon them. O Sarah, I wait for you there! Come to me, and lead thither my children.

- Sullivan**

**"My Very Dear Wife;” - The Last Letter of Major Sullivan Ballou;

Manassas Battlefield State Park; U.S. National Park Service

[gadgetgirl71]

Amazon First Reads December 2020

Well its only 23 days till Christmas Day where has the year gone? What frightening is that this months Amazon First Reads are due for release on 1 January 2021. For me and other Amazon Prime Members it’s time to take our pick of this months Amazon First Reads. So if your an Amazon Prime member don’t forget to get your free First Reads Book.

This months choices are:

Domestic Suspense

Lie, Lie Again by Stacy Wise Pages: 366, Publication Date: 1 January 2021

Synopsis: For three women with so much to hide, there’s no such thing as a little white lie…

All three women who live at 1054 Mockingbird Lane have secrets…and with a body at the bottom of their apartment building’s staircase, those secrets need to stay buried.

Sylvia Webb has a plan. And a potential Mr. Right. He’s sweet, simple, and dependably clueless about what she’s up to. The only thing unpredictable about him is his needy ex-girlfriend, who is this close to shattering Sylvia’s dreams. But Sylvia’s not going to let that happen.

Riki McFarlan has a good career and an amazing boyfriend who wants to settle down. If only she didn’t have feelings for her neighbor—who happens to be her close friend’s husband. With everything going so right, why is Riki flirting with something so wrong, so…dangerous?

Embry Taylor is as devoted to her children as she is to her husband, who’s a bartender by night, an aspiring actor by day. She is his biggest fan. But with his career not taking off and tensions high, even sweet Embry has something she’s desperate to keep hidden.

Lies, secrets, and revenge. For three neighbors with stakes so high, someone is headed for a downfall.

Thriller

Bloodline by Jess Lourey, Pages: 347, Publication Date: 1 January 2021

Synopsis: Perfect town. Perfect homes. Perfect families. It’s enough to drive some women mad…

In a tale inspired by real events, pregnant journalist Joan Harken is cautiously excited to follow her fiancé back to his Minnesota hometown. After spending a childhood on the move and chasing the screams and swirls of news-rich city life, she’s eager to settle down. Lilydale’s motto, “Come Home Forever,” couldn’t be more inviting.

And yet, something is off in the picture-perfect village.

The friendliness borders on intrusive. Joan can’t shake the feeling that every move she makes is being tracked. An archaic organization still seems to hold the town in thrall. So does the sinister secret of a little boy who vanished decades ago. And unless Joan is imagining things, a frighteningly familiar figure from her past is on watch in the shadows.

Her fiancé tells her she’s being paranoid. He might be right. Then again, she might have moved to the deadliest small town on earth.

Suspense

Sweet Water by Cara Reinard, Pages: 363, Publication Date: 1 January 2021

Synopsis: What did her son do in the woods last night? Does a mother really want to know?

It’s what Sarah Ellsworth dreamed of. Marriage to her childhood sweetheart, Martin. Living in a historic mansion in Pennsylvania’s most exclusive borough. And Finn, a teenage son with so much promise. Until…A call for help in the middle of the night leads Sarah and Martin to the woods, where they find Finn, injured, dazed, and weeping near his girlfriend’s dead body. Convinced he’s innocent, Sarah and Martin agree to protect their son at any cost and not report the crime.

But there are things Sarah finds hard to reconcile: a cover-up by Martin’s family that’s so unnervingly cold-blooded. Finn’s lies to the authorities are too comfortable, too proficient, not to arouse her suspicions. Even the secrets of the old house she lives in seem to be connected to the incident. As each troubling event unfolds, Sarah must decide how far she’ll go to save her perfect life.

Book Club Fiction

Confessions of a Bookseller by Elizabeth Green, Pages: 483, Publication Date: 1 January 2021

Synopsis: A heartening and uproariously funny novel of high hopes, bad choices, book love, and one woman’s best—and worst—intentions.

Without question, Fawn Birchill knows that her used bookstore is the heart of West Philadelphia, a cornerstone of culture for a community that, for the past twenty years, has found the quirkiness absolutely charming. When an amicable young indie bookseller invades her block, Fawn is convinced that his cushy couches, impressive selection, coffee bar, and knowledgeable staff are a neighborhood blight. Misguided yet blindly resilient, Fawn readies for battle.

But as she wages her war, Fawn is forced to reflect on a few unavoidable truths: the tribulations of online dating, a strained relationship with her family, and a devoted if not always law-abiding intern—not to mention what to do about a pen pal with whom she hasn’t been entirely honest and the litany of repairs her aging store requires.

Through emails, journal entries, combative online reviews, texts, and tweets, Fawn plans her next move. Now it’s time for her to dig deep and use every trick at her disposal if she’s to reclaim her beloved business—and her life.

Romantic Comedy

<The> Marriage Code by Brooke Burroughs, Pages: 379, Publication Date: 1 January 2021

Synopsis: In Brooke Burroughs’s endearing debut novel set in vibrant India, enemies turned allies encounter obstacles in an unexpected multicultural romance only to discover that in the end, love is love.

Emma has always lived her life according to a plan. But after turning down her boyfriend’s proposal, everything starts to crumble. In an effort to save the one thing she cares about—her job—she must recruit her colleague, Rishi, to be on her development team…only she may or may not have received the position he was promised. (She did.)

Rishi cannot believe that he got passed over for promotion. To make matters worse, not only does his job require him to return home to Bangalore with his nemesis, Emma, but his parents now expect him to choose a bride and get married. So, when Emma makes him an offer—join her team, and she’ll write an algorithm to find him the perfect bride—he reluctantly accepts.

Neither of them expect her marriage code to work so well—or to fall for one another—which leads Emma and Rishi to wonder if leaving fate up to formulas is really an equation for lasting love.

Historical Fiction

A Splendid Ruin by Megan Chance, Pages: 347, Publication Date: 1 January 2021

Synopsis: A mesmerizing novel of dark family secrets and a young woman’s rise and revenge set against the backdrop of the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

The eve of destruction. After her mother’s death, penniless May Kimble lives a lonely life until an aunt she didn’t know existed summons her to San Francisco. There she’s welcomed into the wealthy Sullivan family and their social circle.

Initially overwhelmed by the opulence of her new life, May soon senses that dark mysteries lurk in the shadows of the Sullivan mansion. Her glamorous cousin often disappears in the night. Her aunt wanders about in a laudanum fog. And a maid keeps hinting that May is in danger. Trapped by betrayal, madness, and murder, May stands to lose everything, including her freedom, at the hands of those she trusts most.

Then, on an early April morning, San Francisco comes tumbling down. Out of the smoldering ruins, May embarks on a harrowing road to reclaim what is hers. This tragic twist of fate, along with the help of an intrepid and charismatic journalist, puts vengeance within May’s reach. But will she take it?

Biographical Fiction

Your Story, My Story by Connie Palmen, Pages: 201, Publication Date: 1 January 2021

Synopsis: From the award-winning author of The Friendship comes a shattering, brilliantly inventive novel based on the volatile true love story of literary icons Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

In 1963 Sylvia Plath took her own life in her London flat. Her death was the culmination of a brief, brilliant life lived in the shadow of clinical depression—a condition exacerbated by her tempestuous relationship with mercurial poet Ted Hughes. The ensuing years saw Plath rise to martyr status while Hughes was cast as the cause of her suicide, his infidelity at the heart of her demise.

For decades, Hughes never bore witness to the truth of their marriage—one buried beneath a mudslide of apocryphal stories, gossip, sensationalism, and myth. Until now.

In this mesmerizing fictional work, Connie Palmen tells his side of the story, previously untold, delivered in Ted Hughes’s own uncompromising voice. A brutal and lyrical confessional, Your Story, My Story paints an indelible picture of their seven-year relationship—the soaring highs and profound lows of star-crossed soul mates bedeviled by their personal demons. It will forever change the way we think about these two literary icons.

Children’s Picture Book

Scooper and Dumper by Lindsay Ward, Pages: 40, Publication Date: 1 January 2021

Synopsis: Introducing two new vehicles who work together no matter what!

The best of friends, Scooper the front loader and Dumper the snowplow take care of their town in all kinds of weather. One day a snowstorm hits, and the big city needs their help to clear the roads. Each of them must be brave in their own way to get the job done.

This wintry adventure spotlights the ideas of individual strengths, teamwork, and friendship in a vehicle buddy story that boys and girls alike will love.

*** Which book will you choose? I have no idea which book I’ll choose as there a couple of books that interest me this month. ***

#AmazonFirstReads, #Amazonkindle, #AmazonPrimeMembers, #BiographicalFiction, #BookClubFiction, #ChildrensPictureBook, #DomesticSuspense, #HistoricalFiction, #Kindle, #KindleBooks, #RomanticComedy, #Suspense, #Thriller

[lzteach]

Linda:1.  What was your motivation in becoming an author and writer?

What did you do before you were a writer?

  Tullan: I have written as long as I remember – notebooks, diaries, poems, dreams, stories, screenplays, children’s books and thrillers. I love to share my inner life and stories. I have also worked as a private investigator, an actor, a researcher, a tour guide and a dance teacher, among other things. 

  Teresa:  I love reading and stories.  My happy place is inside a bookstore where I can get lost for hours.  I am a producer for TV and film so I am passionate about storytelling.  Writing has always been a way to express myself .

      Linda: 2. What motivated or inspired you to write?

Tullan: The need to share my stories and inner life, either through theater, film or writing. 

  Teresa:  I feel like writing is a gateway to the soul.  We are all writers and have stories to tell to some degree.  My father who passed away three years ago inspired me.  He wrote poetry and encouraged me to pursue this dream.

  Linda: 3.  How did you go about researching for your book?

  Tullan: By reading and talking to people. My mother was also a psychotherapist so I learned a lot about psychology from her.

  Teresa:  we interviewed many experts and read a ton of case studies.

    Linda: 4.  What are your goals for readers to take away after reading?

  Tullan: We would love for people to feel like they are inside Sarah’s mind and in addition to experiencing an exciting story, to be intrigued by the psychological component. 

  Teresa:  the goal is to show that not all is as it seems.  We all see people from the outside but everyone has issues and inner turmoil at some point.  No one escapes life.

      Linda: 5.  What is a typical day of your life?

  Tullan: I work as a private investigator and I write every day and spend time with my two children. 

  Teresa:  I write as much as I can every morning and then go to work producing TV and film projects.  I love cooking and spending time

With my kids and husband.

        Linda: 6.   What are your hobbies or things you do in your downtime?

   Tullan: I love to be outside in nature, to travel, experience culture and to be with my family and friends.

  Teresa:  I enjoy reading.  I always have a book in my bag.  The best day is sitting in a park reading maybe a bit like Sarah.

    Linda: 7.  What can you tell us of any new writing projects that you might have?

  Tullan: Teresa and I are working on several ongoing projects, both film and book projects. I am also writing a middle-grade novel set in between New York of today and Renaissance Florence. 

  Teresa:  Tullan and I are busy on our second novel.  It’s a thriller about a group of friends who rent a villa in Florence.  There is mystery , secrets, and much more.  We don’t want to give too much away but we are excited about it.

    Linda: 8.   What are your favorite genres of books that you like to read?

  Tullan: I love thrillers, historical fiction, biographies, literary fiction and travel literature.

  Teresa:  I love thrillers, some horror, science fiction and historical novels.  If a book is well written and the plot moves me I will read it.

          Linda: 9     What advice can you give to someone that wants to be a writer?

  Tullan: Write and read! Find the joy in it and then just write.

  Teresa:  writing what you love to read is what I find helpful.  And know that it is a job and discipline you must embrace.

        Linda: 10.     If your book were adapted to the screen, what actors, actresses could you envision for the main characters?

    Tullan: I have a few favorites in mind but keeping it secret for now!

  Teresa:  There are quite a few that I think would be amazing.  I always envisioned Naomi Watts when writing Sarah. She is vulnerable and beautiful just like Sarah.

                  Linda: 11.              How would you like the readers to connect with you?

Tullan: Through my website – Tullanh.com or instagram Tullanh. 

    Teresa:  they can find me on my website

Teresasorkin.com. I love hearing from the readers and answer all inquires as soon as I can.

  Thank you! Teresa

Thank you! Tullan

  Thank you so much Tullan and Theresa for such a wonderful interview!!!

          Lindas Book Obsession Interviews Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist​ Authors of “The Woman in the Park” Linda:1.  What was your motivation in becoming an author and writer? What did you do before you were a writer?

[jovebelle]

Look! My friend Jen Silver is with us today! Yes, y’all should be as excited about that as I am, especially since she’s giving away two signed copies of Calling Home. Drop a comment in the space below to enter the drawing and I’ll select the winners on Friday, August 31, 2018.

Good luck!

I’ve had eight books published in just four years with a ninth due out in February 2019. This astounds me.

It’s been a wonderful journey. As well as writing the stories, I’ve attended conferences, taken part in readings, panels, and generally had a wonderful time meeting so many authors and readers both in real life and on social media.

So, why have I written that in the past tense? Well, since the end of May when I submitted the manuscript for my ninth book to my publisher, Affinity Rainbow Publications, I haven’t been writing. (Apart from a few blogs.)

And I feel like part of me is missing.

It’s been a great few months for other activities. With the hot, dry weather we experienced in the UK from the middle of May (it started to rain in August), I’ve enjoyed playing golf, especially seeing the ball run and run on straw-like fairways. In archery, I’ve completed the three rounds I need to receive a Bowman classification badge for this year. My wife and I have visited a number of interesting places around the area so she can obtain photos for the 2019 calendar she is creating to send friends and family.

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Other highlights of the summer have been the week-long Happy Valley Pride Festival in Hebden Bridge featuring the Lesbian Writers Read evening and the inaugural European Lesfic Literary Conference in Bristol. Great opportunities to once again mingle with authors and readers in person.

But while I have enjoyed all this, niggling at the back of my mind is the thought, why am I not writing? Where have the ideas gone? I have the name for a new character but she has no friends, no job, and no identifying features. I tell myself to be patient. Ideas will come. However, I also know nothing will happen unless I actually sit down in front a blank page and start writing.

That’s the way it’s always happened, so far. I’ve never been a plotter. Maybe my writing muse has taken a holiday because she’s fed up with this casual attitude. Maybe if I try writing an outline, she’ll come back from wherever she’s sunning herself. (I suspect she’s in Tenerife, a favourite location!)

Calling Home, my latest book, was actually inspired by someone I met while we were on holiday in Tenerife a few years ago. One of the first things this woman told us when we met up for a drink after our round of golf, was that she always switched off her phone on arrival at the resort, placed it in the safe, and wouldn’t switch it on again until setting off on the journey home. She wanted a complete escape from the demands of her job and an elderly mother who phoned her every day.

On the plane home I wrote a few notes developing this theme on my StorySkel app with the title, ‘The Lonely Vet’.  It was almost two years later before I looked at these notes again and saw the potential for a story. Another StorySkel file held the name of a character with only a name and no background – Berry Fields. When I started thinking about these two characters and how they might meet, the details slowly started to emerge.

That’s all it takes sometimes…a random meeting, a name, and time for ideas to percolate. And sometimes, an injection of real life is a good thing for a writer.

Sarah Frost enjoys her dream job as director of the Frost Foundation making her home at one of their writers’ retreats, The Lodge on the Lake. The general manager of The Lodge is Berry Fields, an old childhood friend.

Galen Thomas arrives at the island to fill the post of handy person, taking an extended break from her vet’s practice to help her decide how to shape her future life and career.

When the next group of writers arrives for their two-week retreat, along with Sarah’s grandmother, tensions start to surface. Magda Frost doesn’t approve of the appointment of the “vet” and still questions Sarah’s decision to hire Berry.

The island idyll is soon undermined by the revelation of events from forty years earlier, threatening the lives and loves of Sarah, Berry, and Galen. Calling home and what they now call home—all are affected by the disturbing legacy from the past.

  If you wish to win a signed copy of Calling Home, please leave a comment here to be entered for the giveaway.

After retiring from full time work, Jen thought she would spend her days playing golf, shooting arrows, reading, taking part in archaeological digs, and enjoying quality time with her wife (not necessarily in that order). Instead, she started writing and had her debut novel, Starting Over, published by Affinity Rainbow Publications in 2014. Jen now has eight published novels to her name, a number of short stories. For the characters in Jen’s stories, life definitely begins at forty, and older, as they continue to discover and enjoy their appetites for adventure and romance.

Check her out at www.jenjsilver.com. Also to be found on Facebook and Twitter.

        An injection of real life by Jen Silver (plus two FREE books) Look! My friend Jen Silver is with us today! Yes, y'all should be as excited about that as I am, especially since she's…

[mastcomm]

Their Story Wrote Itself – The New York Times

Cynthia LaFave had a word of warning when she first met T Kira Madden in 2015.

“She said, ‘If you hurt my daughter, I’ll kill you,’” Ms. Madden recalled.

And that, by Ms. Madden’s reckoning, was a fair enough thing for her to say about her relationship with Hannah Beresford. Years earlier, Ms. Beresford had fought an episode of depression so crippling she required hospitalization.

Ms. Madden was no stranger to pain, either: Her 2019 memoir, “Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls,” outlines her trauma-filled coming-of-age as the queer, biracial daughter of a pair of well-to-do addicts in South Florida. That Ms. Madden’s pain may have affected Ms. Beresford was a reasonable concern for her mother.

It proved unwarranted. “Their relationship has brought so much peace to them both that, as it stands now, if anyone tries to hurt Kira, I’ll kill them, too,” Ms. LaFave said.

Ms. Madden and Ms. Beresford, both 31 and now living in Beacon, N.Y., first saw each other in 2012 at the Jamaica Bay Riding Academy in Brooklyn. Ms. Beresford, a former professional equestrian, worked there as a trainer and coach for the nonprofit Metropolitan Equestrian team. Ms. Madden was shepherding the half-dozen homeless veterans she drove there through therapeutic interaction with the horses. It was part of her job as a teacher and counselor at the Doe Fund shelter in Harlem, which also housed formerly incarcerated men, many of them addicts.

Ms. Madden had just received a master’s degree in fine arts from Sarah Lawrence College, where she is now a professor in the M.F.A. writing program. A career in social services wasn’t in her future, but the shelter job attracted her for its proximity to a population that felt familiar. “My parents were pretty severe addicts,” she said. By the time she moved to New York at 17 for college at Parsons School of Design, both were in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse. Then, “we had this second sort of beautiful life together,” she said. “They were sober and we had these happy adult relationships. My parents always loved me. They weren’t bad people.”

Just complicated ones. Ms. Madden’s Hawaiian-Chinese mother, Sherrie Lokelani Madden, lives in Atlantic Beach, a part of Hempstead, N.Y., and is the general manager of the Dop Dop Salon in SoHo. Her father, John Laurence Madden, was Jewish and, after a career as stockbroker, headed his brother Steve Madden’s international fashion accessories business; Mr. Madden died in 2015 of complications from lung disease. In addition to their addictions, they had secrets. Ms. Madden found out as a child she had two half brothers on her father’s side from a marriage that her parents’ affair broke up. As an adult, she learned about another half sister on her mother’s side and a brother, whom her parents had placed for adoption. Still, her childhood in Boca Raton, Fla., had a shiny exterior. She grew up winning equestrian ribbons and attended an exclusive high school, North Broward Preparatory School, in Coconut Creek, Fla.

Fridays at the stable with the Doe shelter residents were an opportunity for her to be around horses again and, on occasions when volunteers ushered her charges through their riding and grooming lessons, to read books.

“Hannah noticed me first,” Ms. Madden said. “She remembers me reading at the picnic table, a Joy Williams book called ‘Escapes’.” In 2013, before Ms. Beresford and Ms. Madden found a chance to be properly introduced, the shelter’s horse program ended. But Ms. Madden’s love of horses lingered. She returned to the stable to ask the barn manager if there was someone who could give her lessons.

She was reconnected with Ms. Beresford, whose job at the stable overlapped with her graduate studies in poetry at N.Y.U.

Ms. Beresford earned her master’s degree from N.Y.U. in 2014 and now teaches poetry at Drew University in Madison, N.J. She grew up in rural Voorheesville, N.Y. Her parents, Ms. LaFave, a trial lawyer from Albany, and Jon Beresford of Cañon City, Colo., the owner of Beresford Remodeling, divorced when she was 5.

At 4, she had started horseback riding. “It became pretty consuming,” she said. In 2007, Oklahoma State University recruited her for its N.C.A.A. Division 1 equestrian team. But by then, after years on the road touring, distractions from her athletic career were mounting.

“I had struggled most of my teen years with anxiety and depression, and it all piled up,” she said. In 2008, she hit what she called rock bottom. “I was hospitalized for a while, and in the hospital, I came out,” she said. She called friends and family to tell them she was gay. “As they say, it got better.”

Credit belonged partially to a college poetry class. “Though I’d hate to suggest that depression can be treated with anything less than intensive therapy by a medical professional, that became something I could look forward to, where I could see a future.”

At Ms. Madden’s first riding lesson in Brooklyn in 2013, Ms. Beresford set a professional tone. “We connected on a lot of different levels,” Ms. Beresford said, especially riding and writing. “But I didn’t know how Kira identified. It didn’t cross my mind that she might be gay. I think coming out in Oklahoma, spending my formative years there, made me assume no one else in the world was gay.”

Ms. Madden noted “that we both were in relationships at the time. But right after that lesson I texted my friend, ‘This lesbian in breeches is so hot!’ I felt very crushy toward Hannah.” Not so much, though, that she was willing to break up with her girlfriend and ask Ms. Beresford out.

Instead, life got in the way, she said, and after six months she stopped taking lessons. More than a year passed. “But I always thought of Hannah, how I wished I could be her friend.” In late 2014, she scoured Yelp for the names of Jamaica Bay Riding Academy instructors, hoping to find Ms. Beresford’s last name and contact info.

Eventually, she reached Ms. Beresford through Facebook. “I was like, ‘Hey, remember me?’” Ms. Madden said. Both were nearing the ends of their relationships; Ms. Beresford, who considers herself more a country than a city person, was about to move to Austin, Texas.

But after exchanging and reading some work each had written (Ms. Beresford a manuscript in progress and Ms. Madden short stories and part of a novel), they decided to meet for a first date in February 2015 at the Stonewall Inn.

“In the back of our heads we were thinking, this could be really painful, because I was moving in a matter of weeks,” Ms. Beresford said. But their book swap had already connected them. “When you’re reading something autobiographical, you not only learn the facts of the person’s life but the lens through which they see the world,” Ms. Madden said.

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At the Stonewall Inn, they talked and kissed until closing time. “We got kicked out,” Ms. Madden said. “It felt like love.”

As the Chinese New Year began on Feb. 19, Ms. Madden, who embraces her Hawaiian-Chinese heritage, and Ms. Beresford celebrated together.

Weeks later, Ms. Beresford rented a U-Haul for her move to Texas. Ms. Madden told her, “You can’t move to Austin without me taking you.” They drove together. Ms. Madden returned to her Williamsburg, Brooklyn, apartment alone. Then, in the fall, her father fell into a coma.

“My father was my person — I was really close to him,” Ms. Madden said. Ms. Beresford booked a flight and planned to stay in New York until Mr. Madden recovered. When he died, she comforted Ms. Madden through her grief. They wouldn’t return to Texas to pack Ms. Beresford’s things for a full year.

By then, they had become experienced road trippers. “Hannah and I always joke that we spent most of our relationship in a car,” Ms. Madden said. In addition to the U-Haul trip, by the end of 2016 they had driven to Buffalo for a horse show and to Kansas to visit friends of Ms. Beresford’s; they also drove to upstate New York regularly to ride horses and spend time with Ms. LaFave.

Ms. Madden’s mother had also become a fixture in their lives, through regular visits to the home in SoHo she shared with Mr. Madden before he died, and later to Long Island. Ms. Lokelani Madden felt close to Ms. Beresford immediately. “Hannah really grounds Kira,” she said. “She has this soothing effect. I admire so much how they bring out the best in each other.”

In 2017, Ms. Madden and Ms. Beresford moved to Provincetown, Mass., where Ms. Beresford had accepted a yearlong residency at the Fine Arts Work Center. The next year they moved to Inwood in Manhattan, spending the bulk of their time teaching, writing and editing the literary journal Ms. Madden founded, “No Tokens.” They had already traveled to 30 states when, in July 2018, Ms. Beresford planned a surprise 30th birthday trip for Ms. Madden.

“We went up the California coast through the Pacific Northwest and stopped in Powell, Wyo., to ride horses at this campsite ranch near Heart Mountain,” Ms. Madden said. On the evening of July 12, they climbed back in their rented Toyota to watch a meteor shower.

“There were so many mosquitoes we turned the lights out in the car. Hannah started talking to me about how she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me. It was corny in a great way.”

She spoke Ms. Madden’s whole name — T Kira Mahealani Ching Madden — before saying, “Will you marry me?” After Ms. Madden said a tearful yes, Ms. Beresford opened her car door and found her way to Ms. Madden’s side in pitch blackness to present a ring. They counted down from three before turning on the car lights so Ms. Madden could see it: A teardrop-shaped opal surrounded watermelon tourmalines and gray diamonds, designed collaboratively by Ms. Beresford and Misa Jewelry, a Hawaiian designer.

“It was typical Hannah, being the most thoughtful person in the world,” Ms. Madden said. “Years ago, when I was feeling very lonely, I had bought a watermelon tourmaline engagement ring to remind myself to always commit to my well-being first.”

On Jan. 7 at Kualoa Nature Reserve in Kaneohe, Hawaii, Ms. Madden and Ms. Beresford committed to each other’s well-being for life. At a wedding attended by 72 guests, Ms. Madden, wearing a marigold dress designed by Zac Posen before he closed his business in November, walked with her mother down an outdoor aisle strewn with multicolor rose petals. Ms. Beresford wore an aubergine suit by Bindle & Keep, a Brooklyn company that specializes in suits for queer and gender nonconforming people.

N. Michelle AuBuchon, a friend and fellow writer who was ordained by the American Marriage Ministries, officiated during a 30-minute ceremony celebrating their devotion to each other.

“To know T Kira and Hannah is to know how fiercely they love, with no boundaries, barriers or divisions,” she said. A dozen attendants, including Justine Champine, who the couple called “dyke of honor,” stood by the couple as they exchanged handwritten vows. “You and I have dedicated our lives to words and the arrangements of those words, but it’s these moments, our moments of silence and understanding without explanation that matter most to me,” Ms. Madden said. Ms. Beresford was characteristically poetic: “The universe may be limitless, but I can count my life in moments of seeing you, of hearing your voice, of disbelieving in scale,” she said.

Yards away from the water’s edge, with coconut trees swaying and the majestic Ko’olau mountains in the background, Ms. AuBuchon pronounced them married.

On This Day

When Jan. 7, 2020

Where Kualoa Nature Reserve in Kaneohe, Hawaii

Tradition During the ceremony, Ms. AuBuchon led a traditional exchange of flower leis between the families.

Time for a Tour At a cocktail hour, guests were taken in two separate boats on a short tour of the Molii Fishpond. The 125-acre fishpond is a form of sustainable fishery management, which dates back 800 years.

Grass Skirts A band, accompanied by a trio of hula dancers, played traditional Hawaiian music during a dinner that featured short ribs and sea bass.

Kalani Takase contributed reporting from Kaneohe, Hawaii.

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[islamcketta]

2019 has been a busy year. Between raising a 4 year-old, investing in my adult relationships, making Head of Content at my day job, and trying (always) to keep writing, I have not blogged here as much as I’ve wanted to. I have been reading, though, and I thought I’d take one quick pass at sharing all the things I loved most with you in one fell swoop. I’ve linked to longer reviews that I did manage to write, and at the end of the post I’ve included links to where my own (recent-ish) work can be found.

On Being an Artist

Witches’ Dance by Erin Eileen Almond

Classical music, madness and a tale of genius that doesn’t go quite the way you think it will? Mix that all up with some great writing and you have Witches’ Dance. This book helped me get past some of the fears I have about committing to the artist’s life (and I’m so grateful).

What Light Can Do: Essays on Art, Imagination, and the Natural World by Robert Hass

This book sits in the precarious pile of “books I can’t live without” to my right as I type right now. Bob Hass is always thoughtful and intelligent and this collection of essays covers so many topics I love—from poetry to fiction to art—and reading it was like spending an evening in deep conversation with the dearest of friends. In one essay where he’s writing of Judith Lee Stronach, Hass says, “the practice of poetry was for her, a centering, a way of being clear-eyed, of discovering feeling in verbal rhythm” which helped me see why I’ve returned to this essential practice in recent years.

Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticat

There are many things to admire about this collection of essays by Danticat, but what I connected to most was the connection she made between being an immigrant and being an artist. “Self-doubt is probably one of the stages of acclimation in a new culture. It’s a staple for most artists” perfectly captured for me the combination of humility and striving for better that drives my own artistic practice. Danticat’s insightful reflects on her own experiences and those of other artists living between cultures is a worthwhile read, whether you’re interested in art or simply the human condition.

Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet by Christian Wiman

Somewhere in the middle of musings on the loneliness of poetry, the need for technique in writing, and the importance of the negative space that silence imparts in poetry, Wiman accomplished the very rare achievement of making me laugh aloud while reading. He also reminded me that part of the beauty of America (which can be hard to see these past years) is how much change is part of our very essence. This is a good book to read to osmotically improve your work while growing your own artistic survival suit.

On Womanhood Today

Red Clocks by Leni Zumas

Red Clocks is the dystopia we all fear is right around the corner. It’s brilliantly constructed to portray a myriad of women’s individual experiences while also reflecting the many sides of what could happen if we don’t protect the rights of women. It scared me right into action and I’d highly recommend it if you need a kick in the pants.

Landscape with Sex and Violence by Lynn Melnick

I read this book in a hospital in Spokane while someone I love was being ravaged by a surgeon’s knife. It was strangely appropriate and adequately devastating given that the book is about the life of a sex worker. It’s a painful book to read and also an important one as it humanizes the women we so often fail to see. It’s helped me look more deeply at the lives of those forgotten women in my own community, like learning about the number of serial rapists victimizing them within a few miles of my home.

What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence

Mothers and daughters… it’s a fraught landscape that’s ripe for literary mining. The essays in this book do just that. From abuse to deep love, it’s a worthy read that’s helping me heal.

blud by Rachel McKibbens

I saw McKibbens perform one of the poems from this collection at AWP this year… about the rape of her grandmother and how the man helped her make sandwiches for her boys after. The mundanity of the violence against women in this book is devastating, because it’s everywhere and it’s accepted and because McKibbens is brave enough to look it right in the face and name it.

The Guineveres by Sarah Domet

Being a teenaged girl is hard. Being a woman trying to love the teenaged girl you once were is not easy either, but this book put me sweetly in the mindset of that time in my own life in ways that helped me heal a bit (all while telling a compelling story). I loved the myriad portraits of the different Guineveres—they were a good reminder to look deep into any group to see beyond the stereotypes you think define them.

Educated by Tara Westover

If you haven’t yet read this memoir of growing up in a fundamentalist LDS household in Idaho, you might be alone. I read it while flying over Idaho and Montana and it brought back so many memories of what it was like to live in a place where individual rights are paramount to everything. Westover’s writing is really, really good and her portraits of a very flawed family are as loving as they are terrifying.

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This little book speaks big, even just from its title. I was gifted this book during a semi-annual Ladies and Literature event that I live for because it’s an evening filled with intelligent, worldly women talking about the books they’ve loved. The premise seems so obvious and yet I know how necessary it is. The woman who gifted it to me said she was glad I was getting it because someday my son should read it, too. It’s based on Adichie’s TED talk, but goes deeper, so start with this video and then commit to the full 52 pages some afternoon when you have a moment to become a better human:

For the Craft

The Story of My Face by Kathy Page

If you struggle at all writing compelling suspense, this book is deeply educational (and it’s a great read to boot). We learn very early that this strange story begins with the protagonist’s face being horribly disfigured as a teenaged girl. As the book weaves between the now of her adulthood investigating the odd religious sect she once encountered and the then which led to her injury we are constantly reminded that there is a story to her face. But Page knows that all the details leading up to that story (both in the then and in the now) are compelling enough that she can dangle the mere mention as we follow her like salivating dogs through the full narrative. It’s a fascinating read for a non-writer. For a writer, it’s essential.

Shapes of Native Nonfiction

I could have put this book, deservedly, under any number of categories, but I chose this one because the essay by Stephen Graham Jones shook me to my artistic core. It’s a gorgeous collection of writing by Native authors and I learned many names I should have known long ago. This anthology is filled with artful essays about everything from literary craft to the deep pains inflicted on Native peoples as the US was colonized. I am grateful to the editors (one of whom I call a friend) for expanding my reading horizons and allowing me to read much more deeply about the country I call home.

The Paris Review, Issue 228

I’ve been reading The Paris Review for ages, because it made me feel smart, cultured, and literary long before I had the guts to just write already. But I haven’t always connected with the work in the magazine, especially the poems. This is the best issue of the magazine I’ve read to date. The interviews introduced me to new and exciting ideas, the stories were fascinating, and I think I loved every single poem.

House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk

Is there any fame in saying I loved Tokarczuk before the Nobel? This book is layered and complex and exceedingly well written. I wanted to read it because it reminded me of the Poland I once knew, but what I got was a much better understanding of how telling a story from a wide variety of perspectives yields nuance and beauty.

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

I already wrote in depth about how very much I enjoyed the braided narrative of this book. It’s accessible and yet complex and I was recommending it to a friend just this week. I love Ozeki’s work. This might be her best book yet.

Field Notes on Science & Nature

I learned about this book in a session on poets who cheat on poetry with prose during AWP. Or maybe it was about prose writers cheating on prose (with poetry) but the upshot is that there are so many ways to see the world that we ignore if we’re just looking at literature. This book included a wide variety of scientific perspectives that were fascinating and also very enriching. I loved it so much I bought if for my sister-in-law. I also shoved my copy into my husband’s to-read pile. When asked recently what was the thing I loved most about my son I said, “He’s curious about the world.” This book is for the curious. Enjoy!

To Love Widely the World

McSweeney’s #52

This particular issue of McSweeney’s focused on stories of movement and displacement and I adored it. I met authors I’d never read before (particularly a couple from Africa that blew my mind) and felt that glorious thrill of seeing how very similar and how very different we are at the same time. I learned new techniques of storytelling and dug into histories I’d never really understood before. It’s a fantastic read that only lacked for not including anything by Elena Georgiou.

Night of the Golden Butterfly by Tariq Ali

When I started this post I’d only read this last book of Ali’s Islam Quintet and I wanted to recommend it here because I loved the ways the diverse array of characters helped me look at modern-day Pakistan anew (and also because it reminded me of travel tales my dad would tell me about the Khyber Pass when I was a kid). But the holidays wore on and I continued to be obsessed with this series and I’m now almost done with three more books in it. I’ve learned about Muslim Spain, Saladin, and turn of the (last) century Turkey and I can’t get enough. The best books are the ones where Ali really flexes the dialogues between the characters, but I’m loving them all and how they’re adding layers and layers to my understanding of the world.

Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers by Frank X. Walker

A poet friend recommended this book to me at AWP this year and I was very glad I read it. Not only did it help me expand my own understanding of the Civil Rights era in the US (something we could all use a refresh on, it seems), but I learned specifically about Medgar Evers. The switching of voices between Evers’ wife and that of his killer and his killer’s wife was devastating and rich. Read this to break through “our great tradition / of not knowing and not wanting to know.”

Video Night in Kathmandu and Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East by Pico Iyer

I love Pico Iyer’s way of looking at the world as a sort of permanent exile. The experience of being in-between cultures is something I always relate to and it’s in his work that I feel most at home. I don’t know if this book is better than The Global Soul, but it’s the book of his that I’ve most recently read and I very much enjoyed the throwback feeling of reading about a completely inaccessible China (among many other things) and thinking about how far we have (and have not) come.

BOMB Magazine, Number 146

BOMB has to be my A-1 magazine for inspiration. Although it’s only published quarterly, I carry it with me for weeks on the bus as I read interviews between artists of all types to learn about the synchronicities in artistic practice and what parts of the zeitgeist different disciplines are feasting off of now. This particular issue is one of the best so far. I don’t know if it’s because the throughline of water helped me look deep into the very many ways that one subject can be approached or if it’s because it raised my environmental and social awareness or maybe because it exposed me to more Native artists than I’ve ever encountered. But it was fantastic and I hope to carry it on the bus for many weeks to come.

If you’re interested in reading any of these books for yourself, please visit Powell’s and I’ll earn a small commission.

My Own Publications

Touting your own work is always a little weird, but I am proud of my writing and this has been a good year for getting poems published with 34 submittals (most of which contain multiple poems) and four acceptances. Two aren’t yet published, but here’s where you can find the two that have been, plus some other work I may have forgotten to ever mention.

“Bhanu Kapil in the Night.” Minerva Rising: Issue 17. In print only. “Kenneth Patchen on a Bookshelf.” {isacoustic*}. Online. “Re: Emergence.” Riddled with Arrows. Online. “The Needle.” antiBODY. Online “Swans.” Towers & Dungeons: Lilac City Fairy Tales Volume 4. In print only. “Marco Polo.” Poetry on Buses, 4Culture, King County. Online.

I also published “Yet All Memory Bends to Fit” at Cascadia Rising Review. Their site is currently under construction, so I’m including the text here:

“Yet All Memory Bends to Fit”

Reading Harjo I see the end of my memory— her ancestors, my severed line not at the ocean, but even after. Though we paint pysanki, our frozen pierogi are served with a side of poppy seed cake, courtesy of Moosewood. And the branches more established? Daughter of the American Revolution, I once ran a welcome wagon (kind of) until my wealth ran out, or I was given up, my siblings too many. I Rosied rivets and spoke Welsh with the old nostalgic for an accent I’d never heard. What can I claim? How can I know where I start if I can only love the memory of coal dust that darkens upper leaves. And maybe that’s what’s with this city wrong, where so many of us came to start anew— severed, floating while all around us Natives hunkered down, frozen shadows, street corners and basements— a tripline of roots we’d rather not see.

Cheers to a new year of reading adventures in 2020. Please always feel free to share your favorite books with me. It’s a wonderful way to connect to what makes us human.

The post The Best Things I Read in 2019 appeared first on A Geography of Reading.

[whatsonforperth]

Not the apple of his eye: Steve Jobs' daughter recalls a complicated man

Lisa Brennan-Jobs today. Some of her fathers more disturbing behaviours were, she insists, just awkward. Photo: Frances F. Denny/The New York Times Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size When Apple co-founder Steve Jobs told his daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs that the Apple Lisa computer was not named after her, it was not a cruel lie to a little girl, she insists he was teaching her "not to ride on his coat-tails". When Jobs refused to install heat in her bedroom, he was not being callous, she says he was instilling in her a "value system". When a dying Jobs told Brennan-Jobs that she smelled "like a toilet", it was not a hateful snipe, she maintains he was merely showing her "honesty". It's a strange thing to write a devastating memoir with damning details but demand that these things are not, in fact, damning at all. Yet that's exactly what Brennan-Jobs has done in a new memoir, Small Fry. Thanks to a dozen other biographies and films, Apple obsessives already know the broad outlines of Brennan-Jobs' early life: Jobs fathered her at 23, then denied paternity despite a DNA match, and gave little in financial or emotional support even as he became a god of the early computing era. Small Fry is Brennan-Jobs' effort to reclaim her story for herself. The backdrop to her raw depictions of life with and without Jobs is 1980s Silicon Valley, where artists and hippies mixed with technologists, ideas of how to build the future flourished, and a cascade of trillions of dollars was just beginning to crash onto the landscape. Brennan-Jobs navigated a childhood on welfare with her mother, artist Chrisann Brennan, and an adolescence ensconced in her father's wealth. In passage after passage of Small Fry, Jobs is vicious to his daughter and those around her. Now, in the days before the book is released, Brennan-Jobs is fearful that it will be received as a tell-all expos, and not the more nuanced portrait of a family that she intended. She worries that the reaction will be about a famous man's legacy rather than a young woman's story that she will be erased again, this time in her own memoir. On the eve of publication, what Brennan-Jobs wants readers to know is this: Steve Jobs rejected his daughter for years, but that daughter has absolved him. Triumphantly, she loves him, and she wants the book's scenes of their roller skating and laughing together to be as viral as the scenes of him telling her she will inherit nothing. Brennan-Jobs' forgiveness is one thing. What's tricky is that she wants the reader to forgive Jobs, too. And she knows that could be a problem. "Have I failed?" she asks. "Have I failed in fully representing the dearness and the pleasure? The dearness of my father, and the outrageous pleasure of being with him when he was in good form?" Advertisement

Lisa with Steve in 1987 at her mum Chrisann Brennans house. Photo: Courtesy of Lisa Brennan-Jobs After university, Brennan-Jobs left the United States to work in finance in London and Italy; she later shifted into design, and then freelance writing for magazines and literary journals. Now 40, she has long avoided publicity. She has never been profiled, and she has carefully eluded most of her father's chroniclers. (One exception: screenwriter/director Aaron Sorkin, who called her "the heroine" of his 2015 Steve Jobs biopic.) Brennan-Jobs says she did not trust Walter Isaacson, who wrote the definitive, mega-selling biography of her father in 2011. "I never spoke with Walter, and I never read the book, but I know I came off as cold to my father and not caring whether he felt bad," Brennan-Jobs says, sitting in Cantine, a vegan-friendly cafe in Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens neighbourhood. "I was devastated by it. "I felt ashamed to be the bad part of a great story," she continues. "And I felt unresolved." And so in Small Fry, she seeks to resolve some of that shame by describing how her childhood unfolded, who key characters were, why it all happened. Brennan-Jobs went back to Silicon Valley and interviewed her family, her friends, her mother's ex-boyfriends, and her father's ex-girlfriend. In her childhood, the region had been green with eucalyptus and full of garage hackers. Now it is the greatest wealth-creation machine in the history of the world, and Jobs remains its towering hero. Brennan-Jobs began work on what would become Small Fry not long after her father's 2011 death. Years into writing, she felt rushed by her publisher, Penguin Press, and feared being "tarted up" and made to take advantage of her father's legacy. She wanted to be with a smaller publisher who would work with her and give her more time, and switched to Grove, taking what she says was a 90 per cent cut in her advance. (A spokesperson for Penguin declined to comment.) One result of the delay is that Small Fry is entering the public conversation at a time when, across industries, formerly disempowered or ignored women are having their say about powerful men. A memoir by Steve Jobs' first-born was always going to be a publishing sensation, but Brennan-Jobs has inadvertently timed hers to land when the public is even more attuned to marginalised voices and when many are having darker thoughts about the world Jobs created with his attention-devouring devices.

Lisa, 3, with her mum Chrisann,who she calls a mercurial, hot-tempered free spirit. Photo: Courtesy of Lisa Brennan-Jobs Advertisement None of that, of course, was imaginable when Brennan-Jobs was born on May 17, 1978, on a commune farm in Oregon. Her parents, who had met in high school in Cupertino, California, were both 23. Jobs arrived days after the birth and helped name her, but refused to acknowledge that he was the father. To support her family, Chrisann Brennan cleaned houses and used government assistance. Only after the government sued Jobs did he agree to pay child support. Small Fry describes how Jobs slowly took a greater interest in his daughter, taking her skating and coming over to her house for visits. Brennan-Jobs moved in with him for a time during high school, when her mother was struggling with money and her temper, but Jobs was cold and had extreme demands for what being a member of the family entailed. The neighbours next door worried about the teenage Lisa, and one night, when Jobs was out, they moved her from his house and into theirs. Against Jobs' wishes, the neighbours paid for her to finish college. (He later paid them back.) Brennan-Jobs speaks today of "not wanting to alienate people" she loves, but acknowledges that her memoir might do just that. Aside from Jobs, all the central characters are very much alive. "I hope Thanksgiving's okay," she says. Her mother is portrayed as a free spirit who nurtured her daughter's creativity, but could be mercurial, hot-tempered and sometimes neglectful. "It was horrendous for me to read," Brennan says. "It was very, very hard. But she got it right." Jobs' infamous venom is on frequent display in Small Fry. Out one night at dinner, Jobs turns to his daughter's cousin, Sarah, who has just unknowingly offended him by ordering meat. "'Have you ever thought about how awful your voice is?" Jobs asks Sarah. "Please stop talking in that awful voice." He adds, "You should really consider what's wrong with yourself and try to fix it." Brennan-Jobs describes her father's frequent use of money to confuse or frighten her. "Sometimes he decided not to pay for things at the very last minute," she writes, "walking out of restaurants without paying the bill." When her mother found a beautiful house and asked Jobs to buy it for her and Lisa, he agreed it was nice but bought it for himself and moved in with his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs. Advertisement

With Chrisann in the early 1990s. Photo: Courtesy of Lisa Brennan-Jobs Brennan says her daughter has, if anything, underplayed the chaos of her childhood. "She didn't go into how bad it really was, if you can believe that," she says. But Small Fry also contains moments of joy that capture Jobs' spontaneity and unparalleled mind. When Brennan-Jobs goes on a school trip to Japan, he arrives unannounced and pulls her out of the program for a day. Father and daughter sit, talking about God and how he sees consciousness. "I was afraid of him and, at the same time, I felt a quaking, electric love," she writes. "When I started writing," Brennan-Jobs tells me, "I didn't think he'd be so interesting on the page, and I was almost frustrated that he pulled so much gravity." After Brennan-Jobs moved in with Jobs as a teenager, he forbade her from seeing her mother for six months, as a way to cement her connection to his new family. At the same time, Jobs shifted from neglectful to controlling. When Brennan-Jobs was getting increasingly involved at her high school, starting an opera club and running for freshman-class president, he got upset. "This isn't working out. You're not succeeding as a member of this family," Jobs says in the memoir. "You're never around. If you want to be a part of this family, you need to put in the time." To appease her father, Brennan-Jobs transferred to another school that was closer to her father's house. She persisted in becoming editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. Her mentor there, a journalism teacher named Esther Wojcicki, says Small Fry is a faithful account. "The dialogue that she had in there between her and Steve was just exactly right," Wojcicki says. "The book is a gift to all of us." Early copies of the memoir have circulated among family and friends. Powell Jobs, her children and Jobs' sister, Mona Simpson, give this statement: "Lisa is part of our family, so it was with sadness that we read her book, which differs dramatically from our memories of those times. The portrayal of Steve is not the husband and father we knew. Steve loved Lisa, and he regretted that he was not the father he should have been during her early childhood. It was a great comfort to Steve to have Lisa home with all of us during the last days of his life, and we are all grateful for the years we spent together as a family." Advertisement

Lisa today: Turn the awful package on its head, and it reveals something kind of glorious, she says. Photo: Frances F. Denny/The New York Times On a hot August day in Brooklyn, Brennan-Jobs and I walk to her studio, a small apartment with brick walls she painted white and a bamboo floor she painted black. While writing Small Fry, she tells me, she covered the mirrors around her work space with paper. "I don't like catching myself in the mirror," she says, "because it's like 'Oh, self.'" Brennan-Jobs says she's nervous about how she'll be described physically in a profile, so I ask her to use her own words. "My face is uneven," she says. "I have small eyes. I wish I had dimples, but I don't. I think right now I look jowly." I interject to say she has delicate features, and freckles, and is about five foot two, with slightly reddish brown hair. "My nose," Brennan-Jobs replies, "is not particularly delicate." She is deeply self-deprecating, saying she's horrified to be doing "a celebrity memoir". She says she's sure The New Yorker will not review the book, and that years ago, her first meeting at her publisher Grove only occurred because Elisabeth Schmitz, the editorial director, was doing a favour for a mutual friend. "My first thought on being pitched the book was, 'I don't do this kind of thing. I don't know how to publish a celebrity memoir,' " says Schmitz, who has acquired literary memoirs like naturalist Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk. But something about Brennan-Jobs' writing made her reconsider. "From the first page," she says, "her language is fresh, surprising, unpredictable." I've read it, and her writing really is compelling. Brennan-Jobs takes the same linguistic knife to herself as she does to others. She writes with disgust about using anecdotes from her childhood to elicit sympathy from others, and she is ashamed to have dropped her father's name during an interview to get into Harvard. On August 1, Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Small Fry under the digital headline "I Have a Secret. My Father Is Steve Jobs". A few nights later, Brennan-Jobs called me, worried. She hated the title, and on social media, readers were feasting on the more savage details of her account, especially the "toilet" comment. "He was telling me the truth," Brennan-Jobs tells me, adding that the rosewater perfume she wore had turned. "I wasn't aware of it. Sometimes it's nice of someone to tell you what you smell like." Advertisement It was another uncomfortable reminder that even though Small Fry is Brennan-Jobs' story, one written in a precise, literary style, her father's myth looms so large that she cannot control how her words are received. When choosing a narrator for the audio version, she nixed the ones who spoke his lines too harshly or without humour. So much of Brennan-Jobs' effort with the memoir seems to be to show how brutal Steve Jobs could be and, in doing so, to reclaim that brutality for herself. And how she wants to reclaim it is to love it. "You get your inheritance, delivered in a lump of coal or whatever in a sort of awful package," she tells me at one point. "And you have to take a lot of time to turn the awful package on its head, and it reveals something kind of glorious, and then you're set free."

Steve, who could be fun as well as cruel, with Lisa in the early 1980s. Photo: Courtesy of Lisa Brennan-Jobs If Brennan-Jobs is alarmed by the reaction to the toilet-water excerpt, she may be unprepared for what happens when readers encounter more disturbing material. Several times in Small Fry, Jobs engages in what seems like inappropriate affection in front of his daughter. Brennan-Jobs describes him embracing Powell Jobs one day, "pulling her in to a kiss, moving his hand closer to her breasts," and up her thigh, "moaning theatrically". Brennan-Jobs tried to leave, her father stopped her: "'Hey Lis,' he said. 'Stay here. We're having a family moment. It's important that you try to be part of this family.' I sat still, looking away as he moaned and undulated." Brennan-Jobs emphasises in this interview that she never felt threatened by her father, and that to her, these scenes show he was "just awkward". This kind of display was not an isolated incident, says Brennan-Jobs' mother, who described an upsetting, sexualised conversation between Jobs and their daughter in her 2013 memoir, A Bite in the Apple. One evening, Brennan writes, she let Jobs babysit nine-year-old Lisa. When Brennan came home early, she found Jobs with the girl, "teasing her nonstop about her sexual aspirations", "ridiculing her with sexual innuendos" and "joking about bedroom antics between Lisa and this or that guy". Brennan, in her memoir, describes feeling scared for her daughter that night, and wanting to place her body between them and get out of there. "I will be clear," Brennan writes. "Steve was not a sexual predator of children. There was something else going on." Still, after that night, Brennan tells me she tried to make sure there was "a chaperone" when Jobs was with his young daughter for long hours. "He was so inappropriate because he didn't know how to do better," Brennan says. In her book, she characterises Jobs as "on a slide whistle between human and inhuman". One afternoon in August, as Brennan-Jobs and I talk in her kitchen, she makes a juice of dandelion greens, pineapple, turmeric and ginger roots. She eats an extremely healthy diet and knows it mirrors her father's, which veered into esoteric California wellness trends, even as pancreatic cancer took over more of his body. Brennan-Jobs has a husband, Bill, a longtime Microsoft employee now launching a software start-up. He has two daughters, aged 10 and 12, and he and Brennan-Jobs have a four-month-old son. As she drinks her juice, Bill is nearby with the children, and there's an easygoing energy in the house. "I see my husband and the way he is with his daughters, responsive and alive and sensitive in ways my father would have liked to be," Brennan-Jobs says. "My father would have loved to be a man like that, and he surrounded himself with men like that, but he couldn't be." Decades after his child-support lawsuit, Jobs erased his paternity again. Small Fry notes that on his corporate bio on the Apple website, the detail-obsessed chief executive was listed as having three children. But, of course, he had four.

Steve Jobs in 1984. Photo: Alamy The most public torchbearer for Jobs' character and legacy is Powell Jobs. With an inherited fortune of some $US21 billion ($28.6 billion), she has engaged in philanthropy and launched the Emerson Collective, an organisation that pursues liberal political activism and for-profit investments, and owns a majority stake in The Atlantic magazine. Powell Jobs plays a somewhat "tonic note" in Small Fry, Brennan-Jobs says. Her stepmother brings her into family photos, for example, but many of the descriptions of Powell Jobs are biting. Brennan-Jobs tells me she gave Powell Jobs "the best line" in the book. It appears in a scene where Powell Jobs and Jobs go to a therapy session with a teenage Lisa. Brennan-Jobs cries and says she feels lonely and has wanted them to say good night to her. Powell Jobs responds to the therapist: "We're just cold people." Toward the end of Jobs' life, he finally apologised to his daughter. Brennan-Jobs calls it her "movie ending". In the book, she writes that Jobs says he is sorry he did not spend more time with her, and for disappearing during her adulthood, forgetting birthdays and not returning notes or calls. In reply, Brennan-Jobs says she knows he was busy. Jobs answers that he acted the way he did because she had offended him. "It wasn't because I was busy. It was because I was mad you didn't invite me to the Harvard weekend," he says in the book, referring to a matriculation event. He also cries and tells her over and over again, "I owe you one" a famously articulate communicator unable to summon the basic language of contrition. Brennan-Jobs may be experiencing a kind of author's remorse as her book makes its way toward store shelves. But details as lethal as these they sink into Jobs' legend like daggers to the hilt are more proof than any DNA test that she is her father's daughter. Ultimately, Jobs left his daughter an inheritance in the millions, the same amount as his other children, and she is not involved in the allocation of his financial legacy. If she was in charge of his billions, she says, she would give it away to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation a curious twist given her father's epic rivalry with Apple's arch-nemesis. "Would it be too perverse?" she asks. "I feel like the Gates Foundation is really doing good stuff, and I think I would just hot-potato it away." Brennan-Jobs says she wrote Small Fry in part to figure out why he withheld money from her even as his wealth ballooned, and as he spent it more freely on the children he had with Powell Jobs. She says she now sees it was about teaching her that money can corrupt. The ethos "felt true and kind of beautiful and kind of enlightened for somebody like that". The question was "why he would have taken that value system and applied it so severely to me". "You can have a value system and be unable to totally live it," she adds. "And you can imagine being that rich and famous and how amazing it is if you can hold on to some of your value system. He didn't do it right. He didn't apply it evenly. But I feel grateful for it." Brennan-Jobs tells me she likes toying with the strange power of being a memoirist writing about trauma because the reader knows she made it out okay. She is here in the privileged position of writing this book, after all. And as a memoirist, even a reluctant one, she gets the final word. One night toward the end of Jobs' life and the end of the book he is watching Law and Order in bed. "'Are you going to write about me?'" he asks Lisa. She tells him no. "'Good,' he says, and turns back to the television." Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs (Grove Press, $30) is out on September 12. Edited version of a story first published in The New York Times. 2018 The New York Times. To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age. https://www.watoday.com.au/technology/not-the-apple-of-his-eye-steve-jobs-daughter-recalls-a-complicated-man-20180903-p501gj.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

[andimarquette]

Look! My friend Jen Silver is with us today! Yes, y’all should be as excited about that as I am, especially since she’s giving away two signed copies of Calling Home. Drop a comment in the space below to enter the drawing and I’ll select the winners on Friday, August 31, 2018.

Good luck!

I’ve had eight books published in just four years with a ninth due out in February 2019. This astounds me.

It’s been a wonderful journey. As well as writing the stories, I’ve attended conferences, taken part in readings, panels, and generally had a wonderful time meeting so many authors and readers both in real life and on social media.

So, why have I written that in the past tense? Well, since the end of May when I submitted the manuscript for my ninth book to my publisher, Affinity Rainbow Publications, I haven’t been writing. (Apart from a few blogs.)

And I feel like part of me is missing.

It’s been a great few months for other activities. With the hot, dry weather we experienced in the UK from the middle of May (it started to rain in August), I’ve enjoyed playing golf, especially seeing the ball run and run on straw-like fairways. In archery, I’ve completed the three rounds I need to receive a Bowman classification badge for this year. My wife and I have visited a number of interesting places around the area so she can obtain photos for the 2019 calendar she is creating to send friends and family.

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Other highlights of the summer have been the week-long Happy Valley Pride Festival in Hebden Bridge featuring the Lesbian Writers Read evening and the inaugural European Lesfic Literary Conference in Bristol. Great opportunities to once again mingle with authors and readers in person.

But while I have enjoyed all this, niggling at the back of my mind is the thought, why am I not writing? Where have the ideas gone? I have the name for a new character but she has no friends, no job, and no identifying features. I tell myself to be patient. Ideas will come. However, I also know nothing will happen unless I actually sit down in front a blank page and start writing.

That’s the way it’s always happened, so far. I’ve never been a plotter. Maybe my writing muse has taken a holiday because she’s fed up with this casual attitude. Maybe if I try writing an outline, she’ll come back from wherever she’s sunning herself. (I suspect she’s in Tenerife, a favourite location!)

Calling Home, my latest book, was actually inspired by someone I met while we were on holiday in Tenerife a few years ago. One of the first things this woman told us when we met up for a drink after our round of golf, was that she always switched off her phone on arrival at the resort, placed it in the safe, and wouldn’t switch it on again until setting off on the journey home. She wanted a complete escape from the demands of her job and an elderly mother who phoned her every day.

On the plane home I wrote a few notes developing this theme on my StorySkel app with the title, ‘The Lonely Vet’.  It was almost two years later before I looked at these notes again and saw the potential for a story. Another StorySkel file held the name of a character with only a name and no background – Berry Fields. When I started thinking about these two characters and how they might meet, the details slowly started to emerge.

That’s all it takes sometimes…a random meeting, a name, and time for ideas to percolate. And sometimes, an injection of real life is a good thing for a writer.

Sarah Frost enjoys her dream job as director of the Frost Foundation making her home at one of their writers’ retreats, The Lodge on the Lake. The general manager of The Lodge is Berry Fields, an old childhood friend.

Galen Thomas arrives at the island to fill the post of handy person, taking an extended break from her vet’s practice to help her decide how to shape her future life and career.

When the next group of writers arrives for their two-week retreat, along with Sarah’s grandmother, tensions start to surface. Magda Frost doesn’t approve of the appointment of the “vet” and still questions Sarah’s decision to hire Berry.

The island idyll is soon undermined by the revelation of events from forty years earlier, threatening the lives and loves of Sarah, Berry, and Galen. Calling home and what they now call home—all are affected by the disturbing legacy from the past.

  If you wish to win a signed copy of Calling Home, please leave a comment here to be entered for the giveaway.

After retiring from full time work, Jen thought she would spend her days playing golf, shooting arrows, reading, taking part in archaeological digs, and enjoying quality time with her wife (not necessarily in that order). Instead, she started writing and had her debut novel, Starting Over, published by Affinity Rainbow Publications in 2014. Jen now has eight published novels to her name, a number of short stories. For the characters in Jen’s stories, life definitely begins at forty, and older, as they continue to discover and enjoy their appetites for adventure and romance.

Check her out at www.jenjsilver.com. Also to be found on Facebook and Twitter.

        An injection of real life by Jen Silver (plus two FREE books)

Look! My friend Jen Silver is with us today! Yes, y’all should be as excited about that as I am, especially since she’s…

An injection of real life by Jen Silver (plus two FREE books) Look! My friend Jen Silver is with us today! Yes, y'all should be as excited about that as I am, especially since she's…

[kidsviral-blog]

Here's What People In Media Are Excited About In 2015

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/heres-what-people-in-media-are-excited-about-in-2015/

Here's What People In Media Are Excited About In 2015

New books, new blogs, new Vines, and new competition. It’s going to be a good year.

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Wilfredo Lee / AP Photo

Fusion’s Alicia Menendez and her production team taking selfies

2. Alexis Madrigal, Silicon Valley bureau chief, Fusion:

I’m excited to see digital networks metastasizing into other mediums, from TV to live events. People who have been forged by the speed, inclusiveness, and oddity of working on the internet are moving off the web in fascinating ways, and I can’t wait to see what happens when they do. Maybe it will be a train wreck? Or maybe the new distillations that result from the pressures and possibilities will produce wildly creative reporting, live events, magazines, companies, and TV shows.

3. Summer Anne Burton, editorial director, BFF:

The thing I am most excited about in media next year is diversity. We have a long way to go, but I’m so optimistic about 2015 after the changes I saw start to happen this year. There’s a snowball effect when media organizations broaden their recruitment networks and see that true diversity in many areas helps them do better work and reach more people. Plus, platforms like Twitter, Vine, Instagram, and YouTube have actually made it possible for reporters, writers, and entertainers to prove themselves and make their voices heard without the necessary connections, degrees, or the approval of the gatekeepers. I’m excited about this because it’s right, but even more so because I’m bored of sameness. I think the greatest chance we have for truly fresh, experimental, creative, and challenging media is for the people creating that work to come from a variety of backgrounds and be able to tell many different kinds of stories. I can’t wait to read, watch, and listen to them!

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pitchfork.com

5. Hazel Cills, Rookie writer:

I’m excited, going into 2015, by all the women in top music and culture writing positions. Jessica Hopper’s EIC at the Pitchfork Review, music writer Julianne Shepherd is heading it at Jezebel, Naomi Zeichner is EIC at The Fader, Lindsay Zoladz is pop critic at NY Mag, Dodai Stewart is leading culture at Fusion, Caryn Ganz has been killing it all this year at RollingStone.com, etc. I love reading what these women have to say about music and culture, but when they’re calling all the shots at the publications they write for, even better.

6. Emily Gould, author of Friendship and co-owner of Emily Books:

Great new books were a bright spot of terrible 2014, for real, and 2015 is poised to be even better. Elisa Albert, Maggie Nelson, Gabby Bess, Nell Zink, Kate Atkinson, and, oh right, Jonathan Franzen all have new books coming out this year, and HarperCollins is finally republishing my favorite book O.A.T., Eileen Myles’ Chelsea Girls. !!!!

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Getty Images Rabbani and Solimene Photography

Tavi Gevinson

8. Jessica Hopper, editor-in-chief, The Pitchfork Review (and former Rookie music editor):

I am really excited about all the books and projects and developments that Rookie writers, contributors, and readers have coming out this year. So many people think of Tavi as, like, this one exemplary extraordinary teenager — this fluke of a go-getter (and maybe Lorde as the other). But there is a huge wave of young women coming up behind them that have been inspired and given a sense of permission, a sense of path, and alllll have shows, books, zines, bands, power, and are coming for our jobs. I am psyched for all of them to blaze past us.

instagram.com

Amber Gordon

10. Jazmine Hughes, contributing editor, The Hairpin:

Nothing excites me more than seeing incredibly-smart-capable-and-driven-women-getting-shit-done, which is why the thing I am excited about most in 2015 is the continual rise of Femsplain, Amber Gordon‘s love letter to the female voice and experience, launched this past October. But Jazmine, you run a different lady blog! Why would you be excited about another one? Well, random internet dissenter, all the ladyblogs are friends — yes, men, we all gather at the water cooler of the internet and laugh at you, and sometimes Beyoncé FaceTimes in — and I’m happy to welcome Gordon’s self-made site into the group. Femsplain runs purely off of sweat, sass, and volunteers, and in a few short months has already carved out a space for women to be unabashedly honest and true; Gordon’s project is, I hope, just a harbinger of what is to come: a sea of spaces where women are welcome to be themselves. From us to you: Welcome to the club, Femsplain.

11. Lockhart Steele, Vox Media editorial director:

I’m excited for — and no, not at all terrified about — the all-out war for the digital space set to explode in 2015. It’s shaping up as a year of peak competition as the planets align for nearly every player at every major digital shop: BuzzFeed and Vice continuing massive hiring sprees at bureaus blanketing the globe; Gawker Media, with Tommy Craggs at the editorial helm and John Cook back on staff set to marshal a powerful scoop troop; Joe Weisenthal, Josh Topolsky & Co. cooking up something major in the kitchen at Bloomberg; Gabe Snyder plotting a new New Republic; the team at Fusion planning to unleash whatever the hell Felix Salmon, Anna Holmes, et al are planning to unleash; and A.J. Daulerio launching Ratter just to keep us all on our toes. It’s going to be a year of truly insane competition — and that’s exciting. (Not at all terrifying.)

12. Stacy-Marie Ishmael, editor, BuzzFeed news app:

MOBILE! Not just because it’s where audiences are, but because what publishers can deliver on mobile is getting better and more interesting and more immersive as the infrastructure — from bandwidth to ubiquitous Wi-Fi to operating system and device upgrades — improves.

Facebook Post.

facebook.com

14. Fiorella Valdesolo, writer, editor of Gather Journal:

I’m excited for the Bjork show retrospective opening at the MOMA in March because, well, BJORK.

15. Naomi Zeichner, editor-in-chief of The Fader:

The end of music criticism and a renaissance of music news. The wave of podcasts that will crop up in Serial‘s wake. Or the staff writers who will become better reporters in Serial‘s wake, because Serial made the mundane parts of reporting seem more sexy and writing up scoops usually makes more sense than podcasting them. The increasing obviousness that newsroom diversity “isn’t an ethical imperative, it’s a business one.” The New York Times Magazine‘s redesigned longform templates for web. And BuzzFeed’s news app, which will teach us all (or BuzzFeed, at least!) a lot about how readers behave on mobile.

16. Kate Ward, managing editor of Bustle:

I’m excited for the media to continue to be considered a flourishing business just years after we were knocked down by the recession in 2008. Since then, we’ve learned that creativity and innovation can help us overcome any obstacle and — even better — that readers expect creativity and innovation out of an industry that was once considered as dated as a Chumbawamba reference. I’m excited to see the landscape of media one year from today. Oh, and cats. I’m excited for more cats.

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amazon.com

Adrian Tomine’s 2007 graphic novel Shortcomings

18. Jeet Heer, Canadian cultural critic:

Peering into the crystal ball of promised delights for 2015, there is much that is tantalizing (new Toni Morrison! Jonathan Franzen! George R.R. Martin! Zadie Smith! Star Wars!), but I want to single out a title I know nothing about: Adrian Tomine’s Intruders. I’m assuming that Intruders will be a graphic novel, Tomine’s first novel-length work since Shortcomings in 2007. Tomine is an increasingly powerful cartoonist, notable for his razor-sharp character studies and ability to capture moments of excruciating awkwardness and unease. I have high hopes for this book.

19. Alissa Walker, urbanism editor, Gizmodo:

I can’t wait to see how this whole Uber thing plays out.

20. Adam Serwer, national editor, BuzzFeed News:

I came up as a blogger, at a time when it was a medium with a lot of direct interaction between writers and a lot of competition that, while sometimes nasty, pushed people to be better. I think almost every media outlet has realized that the presumption that the internet always rewards the cheapest or least thoughtful material isn’t true. And I think that we are all now competing on the assumption that there’s a huge audience for journalism that deeply engages a story or an idea, and that can only push all of us to be better.

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amazon.com

22. Amanda Fortini, freelance writer and contributing editor, Elle magazine:

Next year is a good one for autobiographical literary nonfiction by women. I’m particularly excited about Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness, a fragmented, book-length essay about memory and time, and Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, a personal-theoretical work about queer family making that explores the limitations of language when it comes to writing, talking, and thinking about gender. Both books are wildly original, and both are from Graywolf, which is publishing so much I want to read these days. I’m also looking forward to Heidi Julavits’ The Folded Clock, a diary she kept for a year as an adult. Julavits is such a smart writer; I’d read her to-do lists. Finally, there’s Sarah Hepola’s Blackout, a dark, funny, honest-to-the-bone account of getting sober. Hepola is a friend and former editor of mine, but even if she weren’t, I’d be eagerly awaiting this book.

23. Jenna Wortham, staff writer, New York Times Magazine:

I’m excited to watch this develop.

24. Alex Balk, co-founder of The Awl:

2014 was the year in which we were stepping all over each other to declare the rebirth of personal blogging, newsletters, and podcasts. If all of these things really did experience some kind of renaissance, the inevitable follow-up has to be the revival of people letting their blogs die, giving up on their newsletters, and finding something better to do than bathe the world in the audible comfort of their own voices. Hopefully, 2015 will be the year in which everyone shuts up. I could not be more excited.

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/doree/heres-what-people-in-media-are-excited-about-in-2015

[usnewsaggregator-blog]

Leon Wieseltier: A Reckoning

New Post has been published on http://usnewsaggregator.com/leon-wieseltier-a-reckoning/

Leon Wieseltier: A Reckoning

It was never an “open secret” among me and my then-colleagues that Leon Wieseltier, the longtime literary czar of The New Republic, behaved inappropriately with women in the workplace. It was simply out in the open. This week, Wieseltier’s previously forthcoming culture magazine was suspended, and Wieseltier publicly apologized for past misconduct. Multiple women have complained of sexual harassment they say occurred during much of his three-decade reign at The New Republic. (Emerson Collective, which owns a majority stake in The Atlantic, was the financial backer of the now-scrapped publication. Wieseltier was also a contributing editor at The Atlantic until today, when Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief, announced in a note to staffers that the magazine is severing its ties with him.)

I spent 12 years at The New Republic, starting in 1999 at age 28—a relatively long tour at a publication where young staffers often left after only a few years in its poorly paid trenches. During that time, Leon and I were more or less friends, as were our spouses. (My husband also worked as an editor at the magazine for years.) Leon and I attended one another’s weddings, I went to his wife’s baby shower, he would come to my office to chat, and I would occasionally grab drinks with him after work. All of which may sound slightly odd now—but will sound much odder as I go along.

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As a result, I have perhaps more “Leon stories” than some of my former colleagues, well over a dozen of whom I have been talking with as the accusations have boiled over into the public sphere. Everyone’s experience was unique, of course. But many—and what has been eye-opening is just how many there are—share striking similarities. And on one point, almost everyone seems to agree: With Leon, things were complicated.

When a young woman started work at The New Republic, she would be swept into Leon’s glittering welcome wagon. Maybe it would be lunch at one of his favorite haunts (The Palm, back in his heyday) or a cozy chat (and maybe a sip of bourbon) in his office. The venue shifted, but the purpose was constant: to gauge the newest member of the family’s potential as a playmate.

For Leon, women fell on a spectrum ranging from Humorless Prig to Game Girl, based on how much of his sexual banter, innuendo, and advances she would put up with. Once he figured out where to place you, all else flowed from there. “He was good at figuring out which things he could say to which people—knowing where you could push somebody’s limits,” recalls Rachel Morris, an executive editor at HuffPost who was TNR’s managing editor, then an executive editor, from 2010 to 2014.

My own Leon test took place after a party that The New Republic was hosting in New York City shortly after I came aboard. Afterward, Leon was eager to show me the hotel where he was staying (it had some connection to old New York literary types), so he invited me to its bar for a drink. When we arrived, however, he decreed the bar too crowded and insisted we go up to his room and order room service. (If I recall correctly, champagne—a Leon favorite.) There, I spent an awkward hour or so with his name-dropping (at one point, he answered the phone, then shared with me that Tina Brown wanted him to come have drinks with her and David Bowie); grilling me about my personal life (even then I was living with my husband-to-be); and relishing my obvious discomfort at the situation.

A common refrain I’ve heard as women have been dragged back into their memories: Whatever else he was aiming for, Leon delighted in making young women sexually uncomfortable.

That night in Leon’s room, I made clear I was in a serious relationship. And after our drink, I headed back to my hotel unscathed, if weirded out. But I also had shown that I was willing to hang out with Leon in intimate settings, drink with him, and laugh at his naughty stories. And so the parameters of our relationship were set.

As for the bulk of my Leon experience, it was pretty standard: He made constant comments about my looks and clothes—including the time he left a CD on my desk as a gift, along with a thank-you note for the mini-skirt I was wearing that day. I don’t think I ever wore a skirt to the office again.

I was not the only one receiving such fashion critiques. “I remember one time I was wearing a black shift-like dress and black tights,” recalls Amanda Silverman, an editor at Mother Jones who did two stints at The New Republic between 2008 and 2014. “A male colleague, who was a friend of mine, teased me that I looked like I was going to a funeral. Leon overheard the conversation and said, ‘The only problem with that dress is that it’s not tight enough.’” Hillary Kelly, a contributor to Glamour magazine who worked at The New Republic from 2009 to 2014, adds, “More than once, before a function outside the office, he’d tell me to ‘wear something tight’ and then wink or smile.”

One of Leon’s favorite topics of discussion was his sexual history. I was far from the only staffer with whom he shared graphic tales of his lovers and sexploits from his wilder days. (By the time I came along, Leon was with his now-wife.) “Unsolicited, he told me a long, detailed story about how magnificent his long-ago girlfriend’s breasts were,” says Kelly.

Leon also ribbed me about my sex life, which was more than a little awkward once my husband-to-be joined the staff. And while my partner’s presence kept Leon in check in some ways, it also gave him another avenue of teasing. He repeatedly suggested that, before I officially got hitched, he and I needed to go out on a proper date so I could slip into something super sexy and we could paint the town red. (Never happened.)

Of course, any sort of sexy talk would do. Seyward Darby, the executive editor of The Atavist Magazine, who held a couple of different editorial positions at The New Republic between 2008 and 2011, recalls a 2009 column Leon wrote on circumcision, its place in Jewish culture, and its effects (or lack thereof) on male pleasure. Leon sent her the document, titled “foreskin,” and then went into her office to watch her read it: “When I told him that the word ‘foreskin’ as a document title had raised my eyebrows, he said sarcastically, ‘Oh, report me to HR!’ Then he left. In the same timeframe, he gave a fellow female colleague ‘a book of portraits of Jesus with hard-ons.’ He told her to ‘take it home and really have fun with it tonight.’”

Eliza Gray, a freelance writer, had a similar experience in 2010, early in her tenure as a reporter-researcher at The New Republic: “Leon suggested I come see him so we could fact-check his column together, which is strange, since the process doesn’t require in-person communication. The piece must have mentioned something about art or beauty, because he picked up an art book and showed me a picture of a naked male marble sculpture and asked me, ‘Isn’t that the most erotic picture you have ever seen?’ It was a long time ago, but I do remember feeling the kind of heightened vigilance one feels when speaking in front of a crowd, or walking on a dark street at night. I think he enjoyed using the sexual subject matter to make me feel uncomfortable.”

Then there was the touching. Leon is a famously “touchy” guy. He doles out kisses—on cheeks, lips, foreheads—and dispenses hugs and grabs shoulders and pats legs. His friends (myself included) came to think little of it. But it made many women on staff exceedingly uncomfortable.

“Leon kissed me on the lips under the guise of congratulating me on a life event,” recalls Katherine Marsh, a writer of children’s books who was managing editor and deputy editor at The New Republic from 2005 to 2009. “I have been hugged and even cheek-kissed by plenty of male colleagues but this raised my alarm bells. I told several family members at the time because it creeped me out. I felt uncomfortable around him for pretty much the rest of my time at TNR. I remember warning a new female colleague, Britt Peterson, not to be in a room alone with him.”

Marin Cogan, a freelance writer who was a reporter-researcher and assistant editor at the magazine from 2007 to 2009, notes, “Last week, I put ‘Leon kissed me’ into the search bar of my email, and to my surprise, four incidents popped up. I’d completely buried it. In all of these incidents”—none were on the mouth, Cogan clarifies—“I told coworkers, and we all just treated it as an awkward but not uncommon fact of working at TNR.”

“Leon would take every opportunity he could to touch me, including kissing me on the face when I did tasks for him,” recalls Kelly. “He was notorious for the forehead kiss, which involved putting his hands on either side of your face so you were stuck inside. It was, ‘Very good job, little girl. This is your reward.’”

And, of course, there were those occasions when Leon would push even those boundaries. On a couple of occasions, after a few drinks, he hit me with an abrupt, decidedly non-platonic kiss. (Yes, a hint of tongue was involved in those cases.) This did not happen often and was a move just comic enough he could brush it off as a half-joke.

Decidedly not a joke was what happened to Sarah Wildman, a writer at Vox who worked at The New Republic from 1999 to 2003: “One night most of the staff went out. Leon cornered me by the bathroom and kissed me. I clapped my hand over my mouth and he said, ‘I’ve always known you’d do that.’ I felt terrible afterwards.”

Another classic Leon move: More than once, when he and I were out for drinks, he would pass along a mundane bit of office gossip, suggest it was a great secret, and tell me that if I ever revealed it to anyone, he’d “tell people we’re fucking.” He framed it as a joke, but it was a joke-as-threat.

Which brings us to the awkwardness of Leon Stories. As woman after woman has stressed, Leon’s was not a Harvey Weinstein or Roger Ailes type of predation. No one I spoke with was ever physically afraid of him. Yes, some feared his ability to make their lives miserable and ruin their futures. (No one ever doubted his ability to do this.) Leon had a reputation for turning hard on those who displeased him. Upon joining The New Republic, most people knew (or quickly learned) not to get on Leon’s bad side. Bad Leon could be scary, no matter where you fell on the org chart.

As a close intimate of the magazine’s owner, not to mention a quasi-celebrity himself who hobnobbed with the likes of Barbra Streisand and Kirk Douglas, Leon was the most powerful person at the magazine—regardless of who was the top editor at any given moment.

“It felt like Leon could make or break my career,” says Kelly. “Seeing how he treated people he had once worked with and had a falling out with—the way he could just turn off the kind and generous person he could be—it could be terrifying. I lived in horror of alienating or upsetting him in some way.”

“When he was suggestive with me,​ I laughed it off, made it a joke,” says Sacha Zimmerman, a senior editor at The Atlantic who held a range of jobs at The New Republic from 2001 to 2014. “Any other reaction sure seemed like a quick way to get ostracized at TNR.”

“I didn’t feel like there was ever any recourse for his behavior because he was treated as a powerful, even untouchable, person, certainly more important and indispensable than me,” says Marsh. “I was managing editor—one of the senior-most women on staff—and I felt as if I couldn’t protect myself, let alone younger women.”

At the same time, many women longed to be in what one called “the sunlight” of Good Leon. Complicating matters, the owner of the magazine during my tenure, Martin Peretz, had a reputation as a scorching sexist (a tale for another day), and the magazine was seen as something of a boys’ club. Leon always presented himself as a champion of women, which in many cases he was: He helped some women fine-tune pieces, he introduced them to famous and powerful people, he helped them find jobs a step up the career ladder.

“Leon was the one who ​gave me a column,” says Zimmerman. “He advised me; he ​helped me get a new job. He was important to me—and he was also unquestionably inappropriate with women.”

“Like many women, I fell in a trap of being demeaned by him and yet finding myself looking to him for assistance,” says Marsh. “Several years after the incident, I emailed to ask him for career help. I feel quite ashamed of this now.”

“I owe a great deal to his support and his mentorship,” says the book critic and author Ruth Franklin, who held multiple editorial positions, including as Leon’s associate literary editor, from 1999 to 2014. “It was no secret that Leon regularly acted inappropriately with many women on staff, including me, but his actions were largely overlooked because he wielded enormous power and because he was often charming, funny, and brilliant. Regardless of what he intended, numerous women found his actions and remarks patronizing, insulting, or damaging.”

As a senior political writer, I didn’t look to Leon for mentoring. Even so, I wanted to stay in his good graces—not merely because I feared Bad Leon, but because Good Leon could be, yes, incomparably charming, funny, and brilliant. I rationalized that I could “handle” the rest and that his low-level lechery was simply the cost.

Should I have slugged him at some point? Probably. More responsibly, I should have lodged a formal complaint. At the very least, I should have had the sense not to accept Leon’s invitations for post-work drinks. But I was ever so much more tolerant and conflict-averse then than I am now, and life is full of regrets.

Indeed, what I am regretting most is having thought only about how I could or could not “handle” Leon. I did not think in terms of how uncomfortable he may have been making the more junior women on staff. Listening to their stories now breaks my heart, especially as so many of them are feeling guilt-ridden and “complicit.” (How many times have I heard that word this week?) They blame themselves for rolling their eyes instead of loudly saying, “Stop”; for not having been stronger or braver; for not standing up for themselves and demanding more respect because, well, with Leon it was … complicated.

Stop beating yourself up, ladies. These things are always complicated. But they are not your fault. They never were.

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[lzteach]

      Teresa Sorkin

Tullan Holmqvist

              Linda:1.  What was your motivation in becoming an author and writer?

What did you do before you were a writer?

  Tullan: I have written as long as I remember – notebooks, diaries, poems, dreams, stories, screenplays, children’s books, and thrillers. I love to share my inner life and stories. I have also worked as a private investigator, an actor, a researcher, a tour guide and a dance teacher, among other things. 

  Teresa:  I love reading and stories.  My happy place is inside a bookstore where I can get lost for hours.  I am a producer for TV and film so I am passionate about storytelling.  Writing has always been a way to express myself .

      Linda: 2. What motivated or inspired you to write?

Tullan: The need to share my stories and inner life, either through theater, film or writing. 

  Teresa:  I feel like writing is a gateway to the soul.  We are all writers and have stories to tell to some degree.  My father who passed away three years ago inspired me.  He wrote poetry and encouraged me to pursue this dream.

  Linda: 3.  How did you go about researching for your book?

  Tullan: By reading and talking to people. My mother was also a psychotherapist so I learned a lot about psychology from her.

  Teresa:  we interviewed many experts and read a ton of case studies.

    Linda:  4.  What are your goals for readers to take away after reading?

  Tullan: We would love for people to feel like they are inside Sarah’s mind and in addition to experiencing an exciting story, to be intrigued by the psychological component. 

  Teresa:  the goal is to show that not all is as it seems.  We all see people from the outside but everyone has issues and inner turmoil at some point.  No one escapes life.

      Linda: 5.  What is a typical day of your life?

  Tullan: I work as a private investigator and I write every day and spend time with my two children. 

  Teresa:  I write as much as I can every morning and then go to work producing TV and film projects.  I love cooking and spending time

With my kids and husband.

      Linda:  6.   What are your hobbies or things you do in your downtime?

   Tullan: I love to be outside in nature, to travel, experience culture and to be with my family and friends.

  Teresa:  I enjoy reading.  I always have a book in my bag.  The best day is sitting in a park reading maybe a bit like Sarah.

    Linda:  7.  What can you tell us of any new writing projects that you might have?

  Tullan: Teresa and I are working on several ongoing projects, both film and book projects. I am also writing a middle-grade novel set in between New York of today and Renaissance Florence. 

  Teresa:  Tullan and I are busy on our second novel.  It’s a thriller about a group of friends who rent a villa in Florence.  There is mystery, secrets, and much more.  We don’t want to give too much away but we are excited about it.

    Linda: 8.   What are your favorite genres of books that you like to read?

  Tullan: I love thrillers, historical fiction, biographies, literary fiction, and travel literature.

  Teresa:  I love thrillers, some horror, science fiction, and historical novels.  If a book is well written and the plot moves me I will read it.

      Linda: 9     What advice can you give to someone that wants to be a writer?

  Tullan: Write and read! Find the joy in it and then just write.

  Teresa:  writing what you love to read is what I find helpful.  And know that it is a job and discipline you must embrace.

      Linda:  10.     If your book were adapted to the screen, what actors, actresses could you envision for the main characters?

    Tullan: I have a few favorites in mind but keeping it secret for now!

  Teresa:  There are quite a few that I think would be amazing.  I always envisioned Naomi Watts when writing Sarah. She is vulnerable and beautiful just like Sarah.

    Linda:  11.              How would you like the readers to connect with you?

Tullan: Through my website – Tullanh.com or instagram Tullanh. 

    Teresa:  they can find me on my website

Teresasorkin.com. I love hearing from the readers and answer all inquiries as soon as I can.

  Thank you! Teresa

Thank you! Tullan

  Thank you so much, Teresa and Tullan for such a wonderful interview!!!

                      An Interview With Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist, Authors of “The Woman in the Park” for Suzy Approved Book Tours, by Linda’s Book Obsession Teresa Sorkin Tullan Holmqvist Linda:1.  What was your motivation in becoming an author and writer? What did you do before you were a writer?