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!

Fall

Autumn on Bywater Farm in Beavercreek, Oregon

Others may talk of spring, “When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim/Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,”[1] or the wealth of being “rich . . . in sunny hours and summer days,”[2] but autumn is by far my favorite season.

According to the Monell Center, “that brisk, crisp, slightly sharp smell we associate with autumn is actually the smell of leaves, trees, and plants dying and rotting.”[3] The article goes on to explain, “The memories we associate with the change of seasons are what make it pleasurable, even when many of us are allergic to moldy leaves and burning wood.”

I won’t let that sadly unpoetic description (yes, I meant “unpoetic” — “prosaic” doesn’t satisfactorily describe my disgust at bringing allergies and mold and death into it) dampen my ardor for fall.

O Autumn, How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

. . . The wild burst of color in the leaves, even in the Pacific Northwest, that declares to the world I LIVE even as death creeps inevitably near . . .

 . . . The return to school, with its promise of new ideas and knowledge—so far, I’ve attended school for twenty-one of my years on this earth, and taught in various positions for still more years, and the thrill of a new school year has never dimmed . . .

And, to bring my own banal and pedestrian element into it:

 . . . Sweaters to hide the wrinkles and other indignities that come with age.

Yes, we in the US have a highly contentious election coming up, and yes, a new variant of Covid appears to be surging, with flu season tittering in the wings, and yes, climate change and wars and famine remain existential threats to us all.

Still I will celebrate the heady aromas and new adventures heralded by September.

Care to join me?

Two Over Easy All Day Long News

• Meet the Author event at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, Oregon
  10/7/2024 7:00 pm

• Meet the Author event at Bookery Manchester in Manchester, New Hampshire
  11/16/2024, 2:00 pm. Invitation and RSVP

• A new YouTube video taking a shot at describing the genre of Two Over Easy All Day Long. (On the new video: Getting Better All the Time, as the song goes, but it’s still A Long and Winding Road - I hope the Beatles who are still alive forgive me for using their lyrics to excuse my lack of skill in videography)

Book Reviews

Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird (Mulholland Books 2018)

This book has everything I ask for from a book: a page-turner mystery with danger and red-herrings galore, complex and beautifully written characters, tangled family histories and traumas, and musings on being human (among other themes the book explores race relations in Texas, and the difficulty of sustaining an intimate relationship when two people feel love but want very different lives).

Locke just came out with the third book in this series, Guide Me Home. I stumbled upon an interview with Jami Attenberg about the latest book, and decided to start at the beginning of the series.

Highly recommended!

M. Stone Mayer’s Ashes to Ashes (Three Towers Press 2024)

Mayer is a fellow alum from the Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College, and it is a pleasure to promote his debut novel!

A fast-paced thriller, Ashes to Ashes follows Will Mercer, a former Army ranger, who wakes on a sandbar in the Oregon wilderness, unable to remember who he is. More importantly, he can’t remember who his enemies are and why they chased him into the river. It’s a race against time as his pursuers close in. One reviewer said, “Loads of suspense from the beginning...great characters and storyline. Vivid descriptions put you right there in the action...A+!”

The ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel, and I’m sure Mayer’s readers will be looking forward to the next installment.

I’m always looking for the next great read,
so send me an email (or comment below),
and let me know what you’re reading!

Art Corner

When it comes to the visual arts, I have absolutely no talent. During my years as a preschool teacher I attempted, once (and only once) to make my own felt stories. I had to give it up when, after sharing my homemade version of the Rudolph story, one of the children said, “Teacher, what is that?” “A reindeer,” I said, trying to hide my consternation. “Oh,” the precious tot said, “It doesn’t look very much like a reindeer. Are you sure that’s what it is?”

But my lack of talent does not foreclose appreciation for the work of those who do have talent.

In newsletters, on the website, and on the Laughing Dogs website, I’ve waxed ecstatic about the multiple geniuses of my friend Gini Chin: artist, writer, and video-creator. I’ve said it before and will say it again - do yourself a favor and check out her website: https://spot312.com/.

Now I want to highlight another brilliant artist that I have the good fortune to know: Martha Spieker. In Martha’s hands the ordinary becomes magical. I am especially enamored of her Faces series. And the Owls and Other Birds. And Octopuses. And Abstracts. Oh, who am I kidding? I love it all! Please check out her website: https://spiekerart.com/. And if you need more encouragement, take a look at these…

Reaching

Feeding Time

Isaiah

Follow Martha Spieker on Facebook and on Instagram @spiekerart.

Both Gini and Martha have an amazing reputation in the art world
- they don’t need my bumbling praise -
but anything that gets art into more hands and hearts is a good thing.

Ending this Newsletter with George Eliot’s words:

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love
- that makes life and nature harmonise.
The birds are consulting about their migrations,
the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay,
and begin to strew the ground,
that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air,
while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the Earth
seeking the successive autumns."

~ George Eliot

                                         September sunset over the Salish Sea

Postscript: Yeah, yeah, I know – footnotes? It comes from being a lawyer (and a perennial student, see previous statements). And anyway, attribution matters. I certainly hope if anyone ever decides to quote me they’ll provide full attribution.

[1] Sonnet 98 by William Shakespeare. It should be noted for the purists in the audience that Sonnet 98 is not, in fact, a paean to spring, but rather a description of how the narrator is unable to enjoy the season because his beloved is absent.

[2] Thoreau, Henry David. Walden (1854)

[3] Fallik, Dawn. “Why Do We Love the Way Autumn Smells?” Monell (11/21/2021), available at https://monell.org/whyy-why-do-we-love-the-way-autumn-smells/  (accessed 9/21/2024).

Happily Ever After

A few years ago, Netflix put out a miniseries called Hollywood, based on the appalling real-life experiences of women, the LGTBQ community, and people of color in post-WWII Hollywood.

Writers, actors, producers, dreamers . . . the takeaway from the early episodes was that if you weren’t a white man (or a buxom white woman applying for a role as Siren), even genius was likely to be overlooked.

What I enjoyed about the show was that Netflix gave it a somewhat happy ending. Not a Disney-fied, tidy and wrapped-in-a-bow ending, but an ending where, eventually, brilliance and perseverance were rewarded, and prejudices were set aside.***

(***Lots of asterisks here, as will be obvious to anyone who watched the show.)

Interestingly, critics were not impressed.

Here’s a sample of their complaints:

• From The Guardian's Lucy Mangan: “This should be the perfect set-up for a scabrous look at prejudice, corruption, the trading of sexual currency, coercion, the well-oiled machinations that underlie an industry and how it all shapes history—all through a #MeToo lens. But it becomes a mere wish-fulfilment fantasy that, whether it intends to or not, suggests that if a few people had just been that bit braver, then movies—and therefore the world!—would be a glorious, egalitarian Eden.” (Emphasis mine). (Quoted from the Wikipedia article)

• Similarly, FAULT Magazine criticized “the show's dangerous embellishment of systemic prejudice of post-war USA,” saying, “The only ones who benefit from the erasure of Hollywood's brutal history of racism and homophobia, are those that perpetrated it.” (Also quoted from the same article)

I’m not here to argue that Hollywood was great art, but I disagree with the cited criticism, and here’s why: I believe good fiction—on the page or on the screen—can take tragedy, whether real or simply true-to-life, and turn it on its head.

I believe a good story can show us not only life as it is,
but life as it should be.

In my opinion, this is not “erasure of brutal history,” this is John Lennon singing “Imagine all the people living life in peace.”

Hollywood first takes us into a world where anyone who dreams of success in film must exchange sex for recognition, and then allows us to climb out of that sordid world, and glimpse an alternate, happier ending.

And I think we need those happily ever after endings
almost as much as we need air.

We need to see that it is, in fact, possible to have a different outcome if we can bring ourselves to be “that bit braver.”

That is, of course, what I have tried to do in Two Over Easy All Day Long, and what I try to do in all my writing. As I’ve said in Meet the Author events, newsletters, and elsewhere, Tell Your Story is my mantra and fervent hope. And as long as you’re telling your story, why not give it a happy ending?

Postscript

About that photo at the beginning of this newsletter: My personal Happily Ever After involves kids (the hairy kind and the not-so-hairy kind). So here, in addition to the photo of me with lambs and kids, is a photo of me with my grandson. Just because . . .

Two Over Easy All Day Long News

• Check out the new YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@sharilane38

• Subscribe to the Facebook Page

• Meet the Author event scheduled for Monday, October 7, 2024 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm, at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, Oregon

Book Reviews

Fire Music by Connie Hampton Connally (2024 Coffeetown Press) follows three teens trapped in a basement-turned-bomb shelter in Hungary during WWII. Music becomes escape and salvation, and a way to heal the trauma of that time for the next generation. A lovely read and a page-turner!

And speaking of music . . .

I will be collaborating with the incomparable Adam Brock on some music for the new YouTube channel. In the meantime, check out two of my favorite songs: In This Kitchen, with Claflin and Grace, and Alice Di Micele’s Wise Old Woman.