Distraction

Advance Warning
(aka Confession)

I have tried, in the past, to avoid newsletters that are simply narcissistic navel-gazing for and about my art. In this edition, I’ve given up the effort. I can think of nothing better suited to distracting myself from election anxieties (in the US), grief for those mired in war and suffering (in so, so many places), and fears for the future of the earth we share, than a short session of self-indulgent fantasizing about fame.

You can thank me later.

Fame and Fortune

“If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her . . . the longest day would pass me on the chase, and the approbation of my dog would forsake me then. My barefoot rank is better.”

Emily Dickinson, in a 6/7/1862 letter to literary critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Most people who love literature in general, and poetry in particular, have at least passing familiarity with the life story of Emily Dickinson, the reclusive writer who only posthumously achieved notoriety. Her approach to publication, and her rejection of fame on principle, are consistent with the rest of her life.

Contrast Flannery O’Connor’s comments: “Success means being heard and don't stand there and tell me you are indifferent to being heard.  Everything about you screams to be heard. You may write for the joy of it, but the act of writing is not complete in itself. It has its end in its audience.”

I confess to harboring both sentiments.

Writing rarely brings monetary rewards, and that’s okay. There is very little that I need, and certainly nothing essential that I lack for which more money would be the cure.

I have the wild cliffs of Iceberg Point, and the sound of the wind racing the seagulls across the Salish Sea.

I have a partner who looks like a sea captain (and talks like one, too), who can still make me laugh after all these years.

I have adult children who are intelligent and kind and self-sufficient, and a grandson who brings light wherever he goes.

I have a dog, as faithful as Emily Dickinson’s Carlo, who never fails to make me smile.

My private heartbreaks would not be ameliorated with fabulous wealth. Beloved friends and family who have passed away would not be resurrected with more money. The many (many!) aches and pains that plague me would not disappear if I were richer.

So no, I don’t long for the fortune part of fame and fortune.

In the softest places of my soul, however, I acknowledge that I would like to be famous.

I don’t want fame for its own sake; I think even modest fame would be alarming. I am more like Emily Dickinson in that regard, deeply uncomfortable in the spotlight, happiest when I am in the background, especially if I can support others from my place just off-stage. 

I have already found that promoting myself is exhausting in a bone-deep way, and seeing photos and videos of myself, over and over and over, makes me cringe. Paulo Coelho says, “Writing is a socially acceptable form of getting naked in public,” and that is less metaphor and more reality, in my brief experience with very modest notoriety. As my readership grows, I am deeply gratified, and I feel as though I am spending more and more time “naked in public.”

Which is disconcerting.

To say the least.

Photo by paologallophoto (text added)

On the other hand, I do want people to read my book. Correction: I want them to love my book. I want the characters and the story arcs to speak to the reader, to engender laughter and tears and a recognition of what it might feel like to be someone else.

In other words, I remain ambivalent.

If no one reads my words, I am invisible. (As a woman of a certain age, that feeling is familiar, and definitely unwelcome).

If many people read my words, I am exposed—naked in public.

In the throes of my ambivalence, I have to keep going back to the crux of the matter. I don’t write for fame or fortune, or even as a pleasant hobby. (The near-permanent crick in my neck from hunching over my laptop attests to the fact that writing is an obsession, not a pastime).

I am compelled to write,
because writing is for me a way of communicating,
a way of making sense of what is,
and imagining what could be.

And so, with or without fame, with or without fortune, I will continue to use my words to attempt to uncover shared truths until all the words aching to emerge have been midwifed into the world, for better or for worse, with or without New York Times accolades.

But if someone offers me a spot on the NYT bestseller list, I’ll take it.

Two Over Easy All Day Long News

• Write Now Interview. What a pleasure to interview with Gayle Heney, the award-winning producer and host of the TV series "Write Now," through HC Media in Haverhill, Massachusetts!

  Heney is a former North Andover 2-term Poet Laureate, the editor of the poetry anthology "Songs from the Castle’s Remains," "Leaf Sorrow Tree Strong," and the co-editor of "Soulmates." Her poems have appeared in "Moments Falling Open," "Methuen Life," "The Underground Movement," and elsewhere. Heney has taught poetry at the Peabody Essex Museum, libraries, senior centers, schools, Essex Art Center, Rolling Ridge Conference Center, Salem Arts Festivals, retirement communities, Cape Ann Museum, MA Poetry’s Student Day of Poetry, and MA Poetry Festivals.

  Watch the interview live-streaming on HC Media, or on YouTube here 

  (Side note: The comment above about seeing myself onscreen and cringing? I could only watch this once!)

• BookTree Author Panel in Kirkland, Washington. It was an honor and a gift to join Micah Briarmoon, author of A Haunting Deception, and Paul Hunter, author of Untaming the Valley, at BookTree in Kirkland, Washington, to share our books with an encouraging and supportive audience.

  Thank you to Chris Jarmick and BookTree for the wonderful event!
  
  

• Meet the Author at Bookery Manchester in Manchester, New Hampshire, November 16, 2024 at 2:00 pm.
  More information here https://www.bookerymht.com/our-events
  

• Book Clubs. My favorite way to engage! I’m meeting with a book club this week, with more in the future. If you’d like me to join your book club, don’t hesitate to reach out: sharilaneauthor@gmail.com.
  

• Reviews

My heart is oh so glad when a reader tells me the book made her weep and then chuckle through her tears. Then along comes another review, lukewarm at best, and those gossamer wings upon which my heart fluttered crumple and crash.  

A professional reviewer recently called Two Over Easy All Day Long “a comic novel with a heart” and “a quirky murder mystery with a wonderful sense of place.” Sigh. Humor is the leaven to the tragedy that gives rise to the protagonist’s story, certainly, but the book was never intended to be “comic.” Or a murder mystery, for that matter (though I did try to channel the wonderful Louise Penny when including a smidge of mystery in the book). I understand that stories touch each of us in different ways, and one person’s favorite is another person’s meh. But oh! how I’m tempted to declare (with a melodramatic flourish of an antique fountain pen): That’s it, I shall never write another word!

The next day, a different review restores my self-confidence (which lately seems to hide, trembling, in a dark corner):  “It's a Wonderful Life,” the review is titled. “Very engaging novel with light and dark, humor and pathos. Memorable, endearing characters and unusual yet believable life situations. If this novel were adapted to film it might have been directed by Frank Capra or Preston Sturges. Highly recommended.” 5 Star Amazon review by Honoria Glossop.

It’s a Wonderful Life remains one of my all time favorite movies, in spite of the obvious problems with some of the scenes, because, as the reviewer says, it encompasses light and dark, humor and pathos. Knowing another reader saw that in Two Over Easy All Day Long, I am content—for now.

Book Review

(Setting aside self-absorption as distraction, and returning to my former promise to provide interesting tidbits that are NOT about me or my writing . . .)

Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper Perennial 2019).

If you subscribe to this newsletter, you already know I swoon over almost everything  by Kingsolver. I was unaware of this book until recently, and I’m only about a quarter of the way through, but already I can tell this is destined to be another favorite. The story follows two families facing disaster in the same house, in different centuries. Both families have adhered to all the rules for success, only to be thwarted by an unholy mix of bad luck and ideological clashes. As with all Kingsolver books, the characters are riveting, funny, odd, and heartbreaking, and their stories speak to universal truths of modern life.

An excerpt:

”Everybody has their theory, but it looks like China’s economy has peaked.”

His or her theory, Willa did not say, swallowing the powerful impulse toward correction that made for first-rate editors and insufferable human beings. “Look at you two guys. The most optimistic people I know, shaking down the subject of doom.”

“Not doom, Mom,” Zeke said. “Crisis is opportunity.”

It felt surreal, watching her family bicker about abstract catastrophe under an actual collapsing roof . . . . Zeke embodied the contradiction of his generation: jaded about the fate of the world, idealistic about personal prospects. A house built on youth’s easy courage. And Tig in her way was also brave, dissecting the world as she saw it, believing her strategies mattered. In a world of people who either let things happen or made them happen, these kids were instigators. Willa felt obsolete.

Excerpted from Unsheltered © 2019 by Barbara Kingsolver.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled free-floating election anxiety:

PLEASE VOTE!

A Good Book

On Reading and Writing and Pigs in Heaven

I’d like to talk to you about
Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs in Heaven.

Yes, this is my brand new blog/newsletter on my brand new website launched to support my brand new book, Two Over Easy All Day Long.

But I’ll have plenty of time to talk about that in the coming months, maybe even (if I’m lucky) in the coming years.

I hope so.

For now, I just want to rave about one of my all-time favorite books, by one of my all-time favorite authors.

The quotes below, from Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs in Heaven, encapsulate beautifully what is possible in a good book.

___________________________________________

Background: Annawake Fourkiller, a newly-minted lawyer, is trying to explain to her boss, Franklin, why she believes the Cherokee child Turtle should be returned to her people, even though Turtle’s white adoptive mother is the only family Turtle knows. Annawake describes how important a sense of belonging is.

“People thought my life was so bleak . . . But I dreamed about the water . . . . All those perch down there you could catch, any time, you know? A world of free breakfast to help get you into another day. I’ve never been without that, have you?”

“No,” he admits. Whether or not he knew it, he was always Cherokee. The fish were down there, for him as much as for Annawake.

“Who’s going to tell that little girl who she is?”

. . . Franklin wears a Seiko watch and looks as Cherokee as Will Rogers or Elvis Presley . . . yet he knows he isn’t white because he can’t think of a single generalization about white people that he knows to be true. He can think of half a dozen about Cherokees.

Later, Annawake tackles Turtle’s adoptive mother, Taylor, who is deeply upset and offended that anyone would try to take her child away.

“There’s a law that gives Tribes the final say over custody of our own children. It’s called the Indian Child Welfare Act. Congress passed it in 1978 because so many Indian kids were being separated from their families and put into non-Indian homes.”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with me.” [Taylor says]

“It’s nothing against you personally, but the law is crucial. What we’ve been through is wholesale removal.”

“Well, that’s the past.”

“This is not General Custer. I’m talking about as recently as the seventies, when you and I were in high school. A third of all our kids were still being taken from their families and adopted into white homes. One out of three.”

. . . “My home doesn’t have anything to do with your tragedy.”

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins 1993)

___________________________________________

In a few short paragraphs, Kingsolver tackles identity, loss, and the desire for absolution from our ancestors’ sins. Her characters are morally and ethically imperfect, not fully “good” but—like Giles/Tony—“not bad,” and evolving into something better.

(See? I did get in a reference to Two Over Easy All Day Long after all.)

Kingsolver’s stories are full of grace, even when tackling the darkness we humans sometimes fling at each other. And humor, too, which is nothing short of miraculous; to look into the void and find, in addition to hatred and bias and hurt, an infinite well of laughter.

What does that have to do with me?

I’m a writer because I love to read, because ever since I was a child books have touched me, moved me, and, sometimes, changed my mind. I felt as if the authors were speaking directly to me, as if the characters were friends taking me along on their journey, whispering their revelations to me. I knew from the first time I opened a book and the symbols resolved themselves into words that this, this is what I wanted to do—speak through stories. Then and now, it often feels as though stories are my only meaningful form of communication. I often feel a Homer Simpson-ish ‘Doh! over every word I actually speak aloud, certain I’ve said the wrong thing, or failed to say the right thing.

Image by Elena Mozhvilo @miracleday

But when I write, I can test and weigh and sit with the words first, make sure that my words are honest, and sincere, and as often as possible, kind.

When I write, I can paint a verbal picture of how I see the world, and more importantly . . . how I imagine it could be.

The title of this, my inaugural newsletter, is A Good Book. I am, of course, hoping something I’ve written or something I write some day in the future will merit the label: A Good Book.

In the meantime, in the newsletters that follow, I’ll often share what I’m reading, in that elusive search for “A Good Book.”

Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs in Heaven feels like a great place to start the conversation.

Got a good book to share? Thoughts on Pigs in Heaven?
Drop me a line here, in the Comments,
or send me an email.