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Guest Review: Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

February 1, 2016 by

Entertainment Weekly says – “Mitchell’s landmark novel illustrates the luxury of the Southern antebellum aristocracy and its downfall through some of literature’s (and film’s) most memorable characters.”

Synopsis –

Since its original publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind—winner of the Pulitzer Prize and one of the bestselling novels of all time—has been heralded by readers everywhere as The Great American Novel.

Widely considered The Great American Novel, and often remembered for its epic film version, Gone With the Wind explores the depth of human passions with an intensity as bold as its setting in the red hills of Georgia. A superb piece of storytelling, it vividly depicts the drama of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

This is the tale of Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled, manipulative daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, who arrives at young womanhood just in time to see the Civil War forever change her way of life. A sweeping story of tangled passion and courage, in the pages of Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell brings to life the unforgettable characters that have captured readers for over seventy years.

Today’s review is from Elisha at Rainy Day Reviews.

Gone With the Wind is a classic for a reason. Well written, timeless, and tells a story of bravery, heart, and the difficulty of living life during the Civil War. I can see why people would call this novel a romance however, I would not call this a romantic read but a dramatic read with romance as a key part of the novel. Even though I was not a big fan of Scarlett, she had backbone and had to learn rather quickly that life was not always as easy or pleasant as she once thought due to the civil war and the surrounding issues of life then on the plantation. All around a great book and I can see why the movie is four hours long and look forward to  watching it (I still haven’t seen it).

I most definitely would recommend this read for all.

USofBooksGeorgia

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Guest Post: Emotional Abuse by Maria Grace

July 16, 2015 by

Maria Grace has taken the time to offer a guest post on emotional abuse, which ties into her latest book, Mistaking Her Character.

About the Book:

Lady Catherine de Bourgh is prepared to be very generous when it comes to medical care for her sickly daughter, Anne – generous enough to lure noted physician Dr. Thomas Bennet to give up his London practice and move his family to Rosings Park. But his good income comes with a price: complete dependence on his demanding patroness’s every whim.

Now the Bennet family is trapped, reliant on Lady Catherine for their survival. Their patroness controls every aspect of the Bennet household, from the shelves in the closet to the selection of suitors for the five Bennet daughters. Now she has chosen a husband for headstrong Elizabeth Bennet– Mr. George Wickham.

But Lady Catherine’s nephew, Fitzwilliam Darcy, is not so sure about his aunt’s choice. He is fascinated by the compassionate Elizabeth who seems to effortlessly understand everyone around her, including him. Lady Catherine has other plans for Darcy, though, and she forbids Elizabeth to even speak to him.

As Anne’s health takes a turn for the worse, Darcy and Elizabeth are thrown together as Dr. Bennet struggles to save Anne’s life. Darcy can no longer deny the truth – he is in love with Elizabeth Bennet. But Lady Catherine will do anything to stop Darcy from marrying her – even if it means Elizabeth will lose everything she loves.

Please give Maria Grace a warm welcome:

In my latest book, I ended up tackling the issue of an emotionally abusive family relationship. I say ‘ended up’ because I honestly can’t say I set out to deal with the topic when I started the book. The entire family dynamic I had envisioned when I started ended up turned upside down and a far darker, more complex one emerged as several emotionally abusive characters moved to the forefront. Their behavior was so subtle that my readers were the ones that pointed out to me how abusive the characters were. This goes to show how very difficult emotional abuse can be to identify.

Emotion abuse is a difficult and often misunderstood issue. Very often, neither the abuser nor their victim recognize the abusive nature of the relationship. To both of them, it is just the way things are. Often the abuser never learned healthy coping mechanisms for the normal challenges of healthy, positive relationships. They respond to the normal ups and downs with an offensive pattern of verbal threatening, bullying, and criticism, with more subtle tactics like intimidation, shaming, humiliation, isolation, and manipulation thrown into the mix for good measure. The goal, conscious or not, is to control and subjugate the other person into obedience and even dependence in the relationship.

Although emotional and verbal abuse does not leave physical marks like physical abuse, its victims often assert that physical abuse would have been easier to bear because then, they and others around could more easily have recognized that abuse was happening. As the abuse continues and the emotional wounds deepen, abuse victims feel so emotionally unsafe that they begin to doubt their own feelings and abilities, their senses, opinions, memories, and even their judgement. To prevent negative reactions from their abusers, they will refrain from expressing their opinions and wants, leading to increasing feelings of vulnerability, and insecurity as they are trapped and powerless against the emotional control of their abuser. They become hypervigillant, guarding against anything that might trigger a bad response from the abuser as they accept the maxim that they are at fault for any and everything that disturbs their abuser. In the long run, depression, anxiety disorders and even post-traumatic stress disorder can result.

Abusers often share in a set of common characteristics, often beginning with having been abused themselves or witnessing abuse in their family of origin. Not all abuse victims or witnesses go on to be abusers themselves, though. Abusers often have explosive tempers, fed by possessiveness, jealousy and an intense desire to control the other person. Abusers tend to have low self-esteem and extremely rigid expectations of relationships. The other person and only the other person must compromise to meet expectations. More difficult still, the abuser projects blame for their own bad mood or behavior on the other person. They are never at fault, only the other person. Despite all this, they are able to project a very charming and likeable persona to the world around them.

Many behaviors qualify as emotional abuse. These may look normal, even innocuous in a one-off situation, and in truth, they might be excusable if they were to happen only on very rare occasions. However, one of the things that makes them abuse is the frequency with which they occur. Abusive behaviors include (but ae not limited to) verbally abusive speech like name calling, putting the victim down with constant criticism, yelling and screaming, and intentionally embarrassing the victim in front of others. Abusers often seek to control their victims, isolating them from friends and family, determining what they may or may not do, even what they might wear. Abusers frequently blame their own anger and bad behavior on the victim—‘if you didn’t make me so angry…’. If the victim does not capitulate, the abuser may progress to threatening to damage or destroy the victim’s possessions, to harm the victim or people the victim cares about, or even commit suicide themselves. The list goes on, but taken together, the abuse leaves the victim feeling helpless, powerless, worthless, and wondering if they have any worth apart from their relationship to the abuser.

Consequently, recognizing and breaking free from an abusive relationship is very difficult. Chances are, if one is wondering if their relationship is abusive, there is a good chance it is, especially friends and family hate the way one’s significant other treats them.

Can an abuser change? Very, very rarely, if there is a very deep commitment to change and to an accountability system, like a therapist or group, that will help them along the way. But an abuse victim should not rely upon the abusers promises to change. Ultimately, most victims find that leaving the relationship is their only option to stop the abuse.

If you believe you might be in an abusive relationship, here are some online resources that may be of help: Out of the Fog; Love is Respect

author 7_2014_rbf copyAbout the Author:

Though Maria Grace has been writing fiction since she was ten years old, those early efforts happily reside in a file drawer and are unlikely to see the light of day again, for which many are grateful. After penning five file-drawer novels in high school, she took a break from writing to pursue college and earn her doctorate in Educational Psychology. After 16 years of university teaching, she returned to her first love, fiction writing.

She has one husband, two graduate degrees and two black belts, three sons, four undergraduate majors, five nieces, six more novels in draft form, waiting for editing, seven published novels, sewn eight Regency era costumes, shared her life with nine cats through the years and tries to run at least ten miles a week.

She can be contacted at by email: [email protected]; Facebook; Google+; Amazon author page; Random Bits of Fascination; Austen Variations; English Historical Fiction Authors; Twitter; and Pinterest.

Buy the book:

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Guest Post: Inspiration for Moonchild Dreams by Nadia Gerassimenko

April 20, 2015 by

Today, we have a guest post from Nadia Gerassimenko about what inspired her to write the poems in Moonchild Dreams.

About the collection:

“Let us immerse into five imaginary and yet quite believable and relatable mythologies narrated by very mesmerizing Muses. The first to get you plunging are vocal melodies about strength, wonderment, and hope. The second is a struggle between love and its mirrored-self – an inevitable discovery of what true love is and how imitation fails to grasp its pure essence. The third are tales chanted forlornly by Sirens about love and loss and the unattainable, all lost in the abysmal sea. The fourth, less melancholy but profound nonetheless, are words of wisdom to live by from our Mother Nature. And lastly, you come to meet the Moonchild…a part of her inner world and dreams she dared to share.”

Please give her a warm welcome.

Moonchild Dreams compiles some of my best poems from the period when I was an inexperienced fourteen year old girl either seeing everything as la vie en rose or as monochrome melancholy to the period when I matured into a young woman of twenty-five who hopefully, gained some invaluable insight and wisdom. But I still managed to hold onto my symbolic shades of pink. So naturally, there was not one particular muse that inspired me, but several distinct ones that managed to amalgamate together creating one harmonious fusion of poesy.

At fourteen, when I first started writing poetry, Spring was my initial muse. There is no other season that I love so much than spring when I see trees blooming in sweet-scented flowers; when grass is tall and green adorned with golden dandelions; when critters come out and play from dusk until dawn. The feeling of spring is rejuvenating, and you feel like you are in love with and see love in everything and everyone.  I always feel peak experiences of hope, joy, passion, and love during springtime. And so a few of my poems made it in Moonchild Dreams that speak of being hopeful and spreading hope; idealizing love and putting the adored ones on a pedestal; and being strong and unbreakable no matter what.

When I was in my late teens and started dating seriously, Love was an imperative inspiration for me to let out my fiery feelings of passion, love, sensuality, as well as anger, sorrow, and frustration. Love was only easy during the honeymoon phase and when it got tough and complicated is when I needed to let my feelings out the most. So that I wouldn’t internalize my feelings and let them burn me wholly. No matter how painful my experiences with love were sometimes, they taught me great lessons that I eventually learned and were a catalyst for my self-growth. One of the chapters in my chapbook is dedicated to love and its false reflection. That chapter begins with seeing love as pristine and perfect, continues with the realization that it can really jerk you around, and ends with a real understanding of what true love is; it is a committed and compassionate walk of forever togetherness as cheesy as it may sound. When I was able to finally acknowledge that is when I was finally blessed with my partner in life.

Nowadays, it’s Words that inspire me to write poems. My body is completely relaxed at moments of inspiration. I go into a state of complete openness in my heart, mind, and soul. I start pondering on my life from past to present to future from an objective point of view. Or I could be thinking on a grander scale or on a small yet meaningful subject. I let words come into me. Those words start shaping an idea, then a concept. And then I write. Either on impulse or I think things through a bit more without ever closing myself, so that inspiration keeps flowing in my veins. Spiritual teachers is a good example of such a poem that was born from just words floating in my head. And some life experience as well.

Sometimes, Prayers help me. Not only to bring me some kind of spiritual quietude, but also a revelation that could assist me in accomplishing something. As I was about to finalize Moonchild Dreams, all I needed was one last poem as the perfect climax of the book that would summarize me as a person and as a poetess, because the last chapter is about the author. I was mulling over an idea that failed to be born. And so the night before, I asked for God to grant me a muse to help me write my last poem. He was compassionate in my request. Moonchild Dreams was born. The same title as the poetry collection.

Inspiration comes in different manners and embodiments. Through meditation or thoughtful thinking.  Through life events or dreams. Through movies or music. Through a mythological muse or a real-life person. The key is to always keep an open heart for the flow to pour in.

Thank you so much for sharing this with my readers, Nadia.

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Guest Post: On Writing Sonnets by Rebecca Foust

April 12, 2015 by

Rebecca Foust‘s collection of sonnets, Paradise Drive, is very reminiscent of the journey taken by Dante in The Divine Comedy, but her pilgrim is taking a modern journey in a world that is focused on money and the superficial and she is in search of something more.

Paradise Drive won the 2015 Press 53 Award for Poetry and as of this date, has attained #1bestseller status at Amazon. About it, Molly Peacock says “Foust drives her Keatsian sensibility straight into the 21st century of terrorism and autism, divorce and yoga, soldiers and syringes, booze and valet parking, determined to prove that truth makes beauty,” and Thomas Lux says “There is great music in these poems, and sonnet after sonnet is masterful. Not since Berryman’s Henry have I been so engaged by a persona.”  Today, Foust has agreed to share with us her experience writing sonnets, one of the more traditional poetic forms and one that many find difficult to write.

Please give her a warm welcome.

I’ve loved sonnets since I was young, appreciating the compression and tension in poems of that form by Shakespeare, Herbert, Donne, Hopkins, Yeats, Milton, Rilke, and Frost. If that seems like a whole lot of dead-white-guy-poets, it’s because that’s what I was exposed to during my high school and college years, so thank God for the erosion of barriers to entry now shaping a new canon, and for organizations like VIDA that continue to keep those doors open.

Later, of course, I found a broader base of sonneteers, delighted to discover poets like Kim Addonizio, Robin Becker, Kim Bridgford, Elizabeth Bishop, Eavan Boland, Anne Bradford, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jehanne Dubrow, Rhina Espaillat, Anna Evans, Annie Finch, R.S. Gwynn, Marilyn Hacker, Robert Hayden, Julie Kane, Claude McKay, Mary Meriam, Molly Peacock, Sylvia Plath, Christina Rossetti, Edna St. Vincent Millay, A.E. Stallings, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and too many others to name here.

When I found myself, after a 30-year hiatus in my writing, in grad school pursuing an MFA, it was to those early sonnets I first returned, amazed that what had moved a moody, restless teenager in the 1970’s could still move a restless, moody woman in her fifties, several decades of marriage, children, and law practice later. As my syllabus expanded, I was amazed by something else: the sheer persistence of the form. Just about every poet I read, it seemed, had at least tried his or her hand at writing sonnets, and I was surprised to learn that edgy modernists and postmodernists like Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings and John Ashbery had written at least a few. And, that contemporary poets like Tony Barnstone, Willis Barnstone, Mark Jarmon, Major Jackson, Troy Jollimore, and Julie Kane were still winning national awards with entire books of sonnets. I was also surprised to see sonnets popping up with regularity in contemporary journals and books, this in a time when “form” was coming to be viewed, first with suspicion and then as a thing to be avoided at all costs.

What accounts for the lasting fascination with a form invented as a sort of parlor game in a Sicilian court eight centuries ago, and why is it relevant now? I took the modern sonnet as the topic for the graduate class I had to teach in my last residency at Warren Wilson and then read sonnet after sonnet, in anthologies and anywhere else I could find them.

I quickly realized that one secret to the longevity of the form is the freedom with which its practitioners have felt to depart from it, so much so that the variations have, over time, become recognized as their own forms. Thus we have Petrarchan sonnets, Elizabethan (Shakespearian) sonnets, Miltonic sonnets, sonnets with more than 14 lines (caudal sonnets, arguably the poems in George Meredith’s Modern Love and John Berryman’s Dream Songs), sonnets with fewer than 14 lines (curtal sonnets like Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”), and even wholly unrhymed and unmetered 14-liners some call “American Sonnets.” One can detect the shadow of the form in the work of poets as experimental as Brenda Hillman (see, e.g. her poem “Trance”).

What makes a sonnet a sonnet? What are the traditional indicia of the form, and just how many of them can be jettisoned before the thing loses its identity? That inquiry became the subject of my graduate class. In the end, I concluded that sonnet structure is more internal than external, kind of like those tremendous load forces working in opposition that keep a skyscraper standing or an airplane aloft. I hoped to inspire in my students my awe for the infinite elasticity of this deceptively “fixed” form, how you can infuse it with your own voice and subjects to, in the words of Monica Van Duyn, “make it your own.”

I tried to make it my own in my fifth book, Paradise Drive, which consists wholly of sonnets linked in a narrative and featuring a protagonist named Pilgrim on a journey, actual and metaphoric, from despair in rust-belt Pennsylvania to despair in the glittering, affluent suburbs of Marin County, California. I like to say that Pilgrim is six parts me and four parts wholly-made-up, and that the book is populated with composites of people I’ve met in my own life while living the life described by Pilgrim’s journey.

While writing the poems for Paradise Drive I was thinking about the idea that poetry should be for all people, not just academics or other poets, and that what occupies people universally is story, especially story rooted in structure. In my book, the scaffolding is provided by the sonnet form. Its core poems came in one great insomniac rush in 2008 when, just after having read James Cummins’ darkly funny book of narratively-linked sestinas, The Whole Truth, I wrote about 40 sonnets without stopping. They were terrible, of course, and the few that made it into Paradise Drive had to be revised maybe a hundred or more times.

But Cummins showed me a way to weave comedy and tragedy into the language of contemporary vernacular and pop culture, and in this, he seemed to me a modern Shakespeare. “It can be alive” is what I kept thinking. Poetry can be alive.” Another triggering factor was the recent series of suicides of three women in Marin County, all housewives and mothers like me. What was going on, I wondered, in this place—Marin County—that I and most people thought of as “Paradise?” Over the next few years the poems continued to pour out, always in sonnet form, and eventually aligned themselves along the arc that is Paradise Drive. I hope that readers of all kinds—from people like my mother who never went to college but loved poetry to people who have devoted their lives and educations to its study—will find points of entry and enjoy the book.

About the Poet:

Rebecca Foust’s other books include All That Gorgeous Pitiless Song (Many Mountains Moving Book Prize), God, Seed (2010 Foreword Book of the Year Award and Massachusetts Book Award finalist), and two chapbooks that won the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize in 2007 and 2008. The 2014 Dartmouth Poet in Residence, Foust is the recipient of fellowships from The Frost Place and the MacDowell Arts Colony. Her essay, “Venn Diagram” won the 2014 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Award and was published in The Malahat Review.

You can order Paradise Drive at Press53.

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Guest Post: Poetry Begins with a Look Inside by Emma Eden Ramos

April 9, 2015 by

Emma Eden Ramos — the author of Still, At Your Door: A Fictional Memoir, The Realm of the Lost, and Three Women: A Poetic Triptych and Selected Poems — contacted me long before the start of National Poetry Month and asked me if I was organizing another blog tour.  I have been such a basket case about blog stuff and trying to keep on top of everyone and everything, but her reminder put me into full gear.  I want to thank her for that.

Please give her a warm welcome as she talks with members of her Alma Mater, Marymount Manhattan College.

“Studying poetry,” Cameron Kelsall explains, “expands and, in some cases, explodes your understanding of language.” Kelsall graduated from Marymount Manhattan College in 2010 with a major in English and a minor in creative writing. Kelsall went on to pursue an MFA in poetry, and now has his work published in a number of well-known periodicals such as The Eunoia Review, Octave Magazine, Drunken Boat and Foothill: A Journal of Poetry.

MMCMarymount Manhattan College—or MMC, as it’s affectionately called—has become a haven for aspiring poets who, like Cameron Kelsall, find their voices as undergraduates, then go on to thrive in the literary community. With guidance from Dr. Jerry Williams, Pushcart nominee and editor of It’s Not You, It’s Me: The Poetry of Breakup, students explore the craft of writing and, in many instances, gain insight into their own personal experiences. As Sally Stroud, a junior who minors in creative writing, writes, “I’ve learned a lot about myself as a person. Poetry forces you to look inside yourself. You might not like what you see, but in the end, a beautiful piece can be crafted.” Some undergraduate institutions offer creative writing as a major. While students at MMC cannot major in creative writing, they have the option, along with declaring the discipline as a minor, of writing and/or editing for The Marymount Manhattan Review.

MMCReviewAs NewPages.com points out on its page dedicated to undergraduate writing programs across America, Marymount Manhattan College has a campus literary magazine called The Marymount Manhattan Review. The review includes poems, short stories and short nonfiction pieces written by Marymount students. Below is a poem selected from last year’s issue of The Marymount Manhattan Review. This year’s issue will be released in early May.

Drawl
By Leisa Loan

The Southern Illinois state line made me feel
like I lived three separate lives,
all on separate lawns
as I drove to see Superman and return his library books.

The look on his face could shut the roads down,
empty like an impatient morning before a parade.
I’d put my house right on a flatbed,

Metropolis seems made for settling down,
buying groceries, and chaining up a swing over fried grass.
Let tourists pay money for magnets and museums while I live on water
and the comfort of hula hoops in the garage.

One life saw me poor and aware of it,
wanting to buy something nice for a summer birthday
everything around us colored gold and worth nothing
crop corn you can’t swallow.

But the other lives see envy from the tops of water towers,
watching sunsets like you’d never see anywhere else
thinking—the city is evil, stay here a while, forever.
Busy blood of a confused Yankee finally sitting down
and desperately thinking of space
and where to put a porch swing
in the middle of Manhattan.

*Leisa Loan is from Boston. She is a senior at Marymount Manhattan College. She will be attending graduate school for her MFA in poetry this fall.

Thanks, Emma.  This was a great look at a college that some may never have looked at before, and I think its good to know that there are more creative writing programs available than just the ones at the big schools.

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Guest Post: Researching The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson

March 11, 2015 by

Today, I’d like to welcome Cynthia Swanson to the blog today. She will share with us her thoughts on researching historical fiction and the creation of The Bookseller.

Cynthia Swanson is a writer and a designer of the midcentury modern style. She has published short fiction in 13th Moon, Kalliope, Sojourner, and other periodicals; her story in 13th Moon was a Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Denver, Colorado, with her husband and three children. The Bookseller is her first novel.

Swanson pic credit, Glenda Cebrian PhotographyPlease give her a warm welcome.

I have several rules for writing fiction that I try very hard not to break. One of them is, while working on a first draft, I resist doing research.

It’s not that I think I know it all. Quite the contrary. When writing historical fiction – even recent history, as in the 1960s Denver setting of The Bookseller – it would be unwise to rely on memories, if one had them (and I am getting up there in age, but not quite that up there). Memory is unreliable and haphazard. If the final draft of a novel included simply my own and others’ memories, there would be holes and inaccuracies aplenty.

But in a first draft, those holes and inaccuracies are important. The problem with doing too much research early in a fiction writing project is that research often leads to digression. It’s too easy to go down the rabbit hole, whether online or at the library or with one’s nose in a book. You’re supposed to be writing, and instead, something like this happens: even though you started out wanting to learn about the bus line that ran on Pearl Street in Denver in 1962, somehow you’re drifted over to, “Hey, wait – what if we skip the bus and put her in a car? If so, what kind of car would she drive? Let me see how many thousands of images of 1962 cars I can pull up on Google. Wow … that’s a lot of cars…”

You see what I mean.

So here’s how I do it. I get that first draft written. I make a lot of educated guesses. I take notes. I keep going until I have the basic gist of a novel.

Then the real fun begins. In the second draft, I start to fill in the holes. I resolve quandaries. I tighten the language and flesh out the characters.

And I do some research. I start by reading histories – actual, printed books with real pictures are best, because they slow down the research and give me additional ideas. Or I might go to the library and look at microfilm of newspapers of the day. (And wow, talk about time-consuming – I could set up housekeeping in the Western History Department at the Denver Public Library for six months and I still wouldn’t get through all the newspapers printed during The Bookseller’s time period.)

When working on the second draft of The Bookseller, I learned all sorts of interesting things – like that the Broadway bus line, which for years had diverted onto Pearl Street in South Denver, no longer did so by 1962. That little fact actually changed quite a bit of the storyline.

By the third draft, things were getting tighter. The questions were more specific. Was there a bridge on Downing Street over the Valley Highway? Was the shoe section on the first or second floor of the May D&F department store? What song was at the top of the Hit Parade for the week of February 17, 1963? What book was number one on the New York Times Bestseller List that week? And was that book as popular in Denver as it was nationally? In polishing The Bookseller, I attempted to be as accurate as possible. I know there are errors – I doubt there’s a historical novel out there that doesn’t have at least a few. And for every detail I researched, I’m sure there is someone who lived through it and would insist I’m thoroughly mistaken.

Like all historical novelists, I do the best I can. I don’t profess to have it perfect – nor do I believe my research methods are the only tried and true ones. They work for me. They worked for this novel.

Call me a book geek – I don’t mind. I willingly admit doing this research was some of the best fun I’ve ever had.

Thank you, Cynthia, for your thoughts on research.  And I think you are in a welcoming crowd of book geeks!

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Guest Post: Suitcase Secrets by K.J. Steele

February 26, 2015 by

Please welcome K.J. Steele, author of The Bird Box, in which she discusses finding inspiration for The Bird Box in unexpected places.

When a dead man speaks people listen. There is just something compelling about a voice that reaches out to us from beyond the grave. I’m not referring to spooks here, but rather to mankind’s phenomenal ability to impress ourselves onto the fabric of this world even long after the physical self has departed.

When I set out to write my novel The Bird Box, I spent some time on the grounds and in the buildings of a former insane asylum. Although the physical location was beautiful it was best described as a melancholy beauty. The memory of the former patients lingered.

I began to wonder about them. Not as patients but as people. Who were they? Before and during their committal’s? I went to the Mental Health Archives in search of answers. I found none. Researching patient files was often heartbreaking. Not so much by what was written there, but by the lack thereof.

After the initial admittance notes there was very little new information. Staff were busy and it was not uncommon to have whole lives –40–50–60– years condensed down to a few brief notes. The brevity of it haunted me. Not that I blamed the staff. Their hands were more than full with practical matters. But still, it felt inhumane to me that whole lives had been pared down to a few paltry lines. I wanted to know who these people were. Above and beyond the narrow label of psychiatric patient.

I was soon to find out. Their voices began a torrent of stories into my mind. They demanded a place on my page. They had stories to tell; lives and loves, laughter and tears. They too had experienced great joys and devastating loss. They had suffered deeply as well and yet none of these things fully defined them.

Synchronistically, as I was writing their stories I was sent a link to Jon Crispin’s stunningly evocative photographs of the Willard Asylum Suitcases. Jon’s photographs visually dovetailed so perfectly with my written efforts to portray the person behind the label of psychiatric patient that I knew immediately I had to travel to the exhibit The Changing Face of What is Normal in San Francisco to further explore his work.

What followed was an astounding opportunity to speak with the dead. Or rather – listen. Displayed alongside some of Jon’s photographs were the original suitcases and their contents. Each suitcase, no matter how carefully or haphazardly it had been packed for that initial trip to the asylum, spoke volumes to me. Each one was a virtual time-capsule illuminating the individuality of its owner. Bibles and poetry books, family pictures, lotions, musical instruments, detailed diaries, loving letters. Objects as seemingly disparate from one another as mending kits and (in one case) a small hand-gun. Items that symbolically spoke of the desperate need to either mend or end the suffering.

Those committed to the care of an asylum were in some ways excommunicated from the rest of humanity. They were held in institutions where their sense of autonomy was met with resistance. Their personal mail was opened and relieved of any unsettling or dissenting content. Their objections were routinely overruled. Not only did they become powerless they became voiceless as well.

Obviously it was far easier to silence people back then in an age before today’s instant and ubiquitous technology. Problematic dissenters were easier to erase; sometimes permanently.

And sometimes not so permanently as evidenced with the Willard suitcases. The contents of the suitcases serve to form an intimate choir of ghostly voices. They speak of each person’s individuality. Of their uniqueness. Some of them give evidence of seemingly competent minds while others show an obviously distorted grip on reality. Mental illness can be frightening. Perhaps to no one more so than to the person caught within its shifting shadows.

I have listened to their stories and endeavored to capture the echo of their hearts and minds in my novel The Bird Box. These were people who contributed to the diversity of life. And their lives mattered.

About the Book:

Broken and abandoned by the world, Jakie lives out his days in the silent desperation of an insane asylum. One night he discovers a young woman chained beneath a tree. The doctor commits her to a cellar room in the over-crowded institution. A fierce, protective love blooming in his heart, Jakie realizes that in order to free the girl he must find a way back into the strength of his truest self. In doing so he will alter both of their worlds profoundly.

 

About the Author:

KJ Steele is an author who most decidedly does not color between the lines. She is drawn to unusual characters with twisted, dynamic stories that they insist she tell. She has one previously published novel No Story To Tell, and was a contributor to the anthology You Look Too Young To Be A Mom. She is currently writing the sequel to The Bird Box. A mother of three and grandmother of one, she loves nothing more than the laughter of family and long horse rides up the mountain behind her house where the still-chatter of nature enlivens forward many entertaining worlds looking for a page.  Check this Website out.

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Guest Post: An MFA Program Can Build Confidence by Rebecca Adams Wright

February 24, 2015 by

tlc tour hostPlease welcome Rebecca Adams Wright:

I received my Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan in 2008. At the time, Michigan’s MFA in fiction was an esteemed two-year program, with a potential third-year writing fellowship offered to a handful of students. I received one of those third-year Zell Fellowships and so was lucky enough to remain immersed in the MFA community for an extra year. These days, the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program is even more highly rated—vying for top place on many annual lists with the University of Iowa’s famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop—and so well-funded that all students admitted to the program are offered a third year.

I knew Michigan’s was a prestigious program when I arrived, and I will admit to feeling terribly nervous upon first meeting my fellow graduate students. I was 22 when I came to campus in 2006, the youngest in my cohort, and though I was enthusiastic, I knew I had a lot to learn about the craft of writing and the art of telling a story. I had one small edge on the other students: having attended the University of Michigan as an undergrad, I was familiar with campus and still had some college friends living in the area. But that familiarity didn’t feel like much of an advantage when I learned what talented writers and accomplished people the other students were. Some had finished novels, were raising children, already worked fulfilling careers, or were earning a PhD alongside their MFA. They were an intimidating group who all seemed to have experienced so much more of life than me.

In the end, those daunting fellow students became some of my wisest teachers and closest friends. My stories benefitted from their broad experience, and I did my best to contribute to their understanding what was unique to my perspective. Working with such a talented cohort, and with the excellent teaching faculty at Michigan, was one of the transformative experiences of my writing life. I left the MFA program with three tangible rewards—I could articulate what made a story a story (and what was just words on a page), I could write more meaningful stories (usually), and I had a group of great contacts—writer friends who had read my work and would continue to read it as I matured and improved, who would share their work with me, and with whom I could trade encouragement as we stumbled together down the rocky path to publication.

The connections I formed during my time in the MFA program ended up being one of the best investments I ever made in my artistic self. Michigan faculty have promoted and blurbed my latest collection, The Thing About Great White Sharks. Members of my fiction cohort read the unpublished manuscript and suggested changes that dramatically improved the included stories. One of my closest friends from the MFA program put me in touch with the editor who ultimately purchased the completed book.

Just as importantly, the relationships I formed at Michigan made me feel like a professional. At a crucial period in my development as a writer, I was not only allowed but encouraged to treat my dream like a job—that is, like something important and meaningful that I should be working at daily. The curriculum at Michigan was demanding, but working alongside artists who took art seriously helped me to develop my own writing discipline. Even when I questioned my talent I knew that I was picking up the right skills for continued improvement.

The MFA experience may not be for everyone, but it was an immensely valuable experience for me. I emerged from my program a steadier, more precise, and more confident writer, and one who understood the importance of a sustaining community. When I came to Michigan’s MFA program, I wrote because I felt inspired. When I left, I wrote because I was a writer.

About the Book:

In this collection’s richly imagined title story, our brutal and resourceful protagonist is determined to protect her family from a murderous, shark-ridden world—at any cost. Elsewhere, an old woman uncovers a sinister plot while looking after a friend’s plants (“Orchids”), and a girl in the war-torn countryside befriends an unlikely creature (“Keeper of the Glass”). In “Barnstormers,” a futuristic flying circus tries to forestall bankruptcy with one last memorable show. At the heart of “Sheila” is the terrible choice a retired judge must make when faced with the destruction of his beloved robotic dog, and “Yuri, in a Blue Dress” follows one of the last survivors of an alien invasion as she seeks help.

Extending from World War II to the far future, these fifteen stories offer a gorgeously observed perspective on our desire for connection and what it means to have compassion—for ourselves, for one another, for our past…and for whatever lies beyond.

About the Author:

Rebecca Adams Wright is a 2011 graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop and a former University of Michigan Zell Writing Fellow. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan and has won the Leonard and Eileen Newman Writing Prize. Rebecca lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with her husband and daughter.  Connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Visit the rest of the stops on the TLC Book Tour.

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Guest Post: 9 Tips for Great Skiing Photos

February 15, 2015 by

Are you a professional photographer looking to build your portfolio? Or maybe you’re just a parent hoping that your vacation photos will turn out okay. Whatever your reasons for seeking photography tips, here are just nine ways to ensure that your skiing pictures are of the highest quality.

1. Keep Your Camera Warm

Batteries tend to fail in the cold, so keep your equipment as warm as possible when you’re on the slopes. If you’re using a handheld camera, store it inside your parka where it can absorb your body heat; if you’re lugging around a large DSLR, consider keeping it in an insulated backpack or bag.

2. Buy the Right Gloves

You can’t work the buttons of a camera when your fingers are stiff with cold. Invest in a pair of warm yet touch-sensitive gloves that will allow you to manipulate controls or use a touchscreen without taking them off.

3. Plan It Out

It’s very, very difficult to snap good skiing candids. A better strategy is to set things up in advance for the perfect picture: For example, you might coordinate with your subject so they’ll come flying over the cliff at the exact moment that you have your camera pointed and ready.

4. Have A Signal

In the same vein as the above, it’s a good idea to have a set of wordless signals worked out between you and your subject. You can wave your arms or whistle when your equipment is ready, and then they’ll know it’s okay to start skiing towards you.

5. Turn On Autofocus

When a skier is racing down a mountain in a cloud of white snow, you don’t have time to wait around for your camera to focus. You’ll need a model that comes with instant and high-quality autofocus, and these controls will need to be on when you’re pointing and shooting.

6. Know Your Shutter Speeds

Fast shutter speeds can be used to freeze the action at a critical moment. Slow shutter speeds can be used to give the illusion of movement with blurred backgrounds but sharp skiing figures. There’s no right way to do it, so experiment with shutter speeds of both 1/1000th and 1/30th of a second to see which you like best.

7. Understand Your Limitations

Flash settings generally fail after a certain distance. Other cameras might have limited shutter speeds. Know the limitations of your equipment before you get on the slopes and have an unpleasant surprise.

8. Set Your Exposure

Many skiing photos are underexposed because their photographers just assumed that the bright white snow didn’t need fine-tuned exposure settings. This is a mistake! You should always fiddle with your exposure until it’s suitable for the day, weather, setting and subject.

9. Find a Role Model

Look for a photographer in the industry whose techniques you love and can emulate. For example, something like a Jim Decker profile can give you great inspiration if you’re a fan of his work. By copying his techniques, you’ll eventually gain enough confidence and skill to create your own.

These are just nine tips for better skiing photography. Whether it’s your first or fiftieth time behind the camera, these techniques should help you capture clearer, more striking moments every time.

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Guest Post: Why Men Opt Out of the (Women’s) Fiction World by Leonce Gaiter

January 30, 2015 by

Today, I’d like you to welcome Leonce Gaiter to the blog today.  I love discussing the differences between men and women’s reading habits, and this guest post fits the bill.  Please give him a warm welcome.

Fewer and fewer men read fiction.  They compose only about 20% of the fiction market according to surveys. Some lay this off to genetics, suggesting that the way men’s minds work discourages them from entering into another’s experience the way fiction demands.

“Boys and men are, in general, more convergent and linear in their thinking; this would naturally draw them towards non-fiction,” wrote author Darragh McManus, pondering the question.

Others, like Jason Pinter, suggest that the overwhelmingly female publishing industry simply overlooks books that appeal to men because they fall outside the female experience.  In other words, men now suffer the same fate women suffered at the hands of a male-dominated publishing industry for so many years—and payback’s a bitch.

Others suggest that boys are discouraged from reading at a young age by children’s books that fail to engage them.  Give them the proper material, the story goes, and young boys will engage with reading.  They point to the fact that young males were principal consumers of the Harry Potter books as proof.  “More boys than girls have read the Harry Potter novels,” according to U.S. publisher, Scholastic. “What’s more, Harry Potter made more of an impact on boys’ reading habits. Sixty-one percent agreed with the statement ‘I didn’t read books for fun before reading Harry Potter,’ compared with 41 percent of girls.”

I always balked at these rationales because I read fiction all the time.  However, thinking on it, I had to admit that I avoid modern fiction like the plague.  I have tried the popular plot-thick page-turners and the feel-good tearjerkers and the occasional cause celebre with a literary reputation.  So many have left me so cold, that I simply won’t shell out the cash for a paperback or e-book version, much less a hardcover.

Trying to assess what I found lacking in most of the current novels I attempt, I find their utter reliance on the world around them (and me) supremely dull.  So many work so hard to place characters in a world I will recognize.  Too many work hard to create characters with which I (or their prime demographic audience) will ‘identify,’ and recognize as someone they could be, or someone they know.

It then made sense that men would ask why they should read something “made up” about this world when there was plenty of factual reading material on that subject.  I have never approached fiction to re-visit “this world.”  I’m already here.  Instead, I want an alternative—a vision of this world exhaled through the writers’ and characters’ hearts, minds and eyes.  Exhaled with the distinction of the smell of an individual’s breath.  Fitzgerald’s Long Island in The Great Gatsby is his own creation, no kitchen sink recreation.  Fitzgerald’s people and prose warp this place into something utterly unique.

Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles is his distinctive projection of that city. You don’t pick up Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me with the idea of identifying with the protagonist.  You don’t grab Faulkner to meet the boys next door or titter with recognition of your kith and kin.  You don’t visit Patricia Highsmith to look in a mirror.  You pick them up to enter worlds as fantastical in their way as Harry Potter’s.  I read fiction to meet characters I otherwise would not.  I read fiction for the larger than life—not a retread of this one.  I want to watch and think with characters who are nothing like me, who dare what I never would, who experience in ways that I cannot.

In an article titled, “Why Women Read More Than Men,” NPR quoted Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain suggesting a biological reason why women read more fiction than men:

        The research is still in its early stages, but some studies have found that women have more sensitive mirror neurons than men. That might explain why women are drawn to works of fiction, which by definition require the reader to empathize with characters.

What horseshit. Reading, and reading fiction, require no such thing.  They require that you understand and grow intrigued by characters and situations.  You need not imagine yourself as them or believe that they behave as you would.

Perhaps more men stopped reading fiction when fiction stopped presenting unique worlds, and settled for presenting this one so that readers could better “identify.”  Maybe we’re too megalomaniacal to “identify” with that.  We want words recreated, not rehashed.

“Shall I project a world,” asks Oedipa Maas in Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49.”  Somewhere along the line, in tandem with the female domination of the publishing industry and fiction readership, the ideal of doing so fell from vogue.  Instead, writers rely on identification with this one.  Male readers seem have checked out.

Leonce Gaiter is a prolific African American writer and proud Harvard Alum. His writing has appeared in the NYTimes, NYT Magazine, LA Times, Washington Times, and Washington Post, and he has written two novels.  His newly released novel, In the Company of Educated Men, is a literary thriller with socio-economic, class, and racial themes.  Buy on Amazon, , and Apple.

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Guest Review: Canyon in the Body by Lan Lan, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain

September 5, 2014 by

Erica Goss is a talented poet, whose Wild Place poetry collection I loved (my review) and who was the Poet Laureate for Los Gatos 2013-14, has offered up her talents today as a reviewer.  She also has a new book, Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets, that was published in March this year.

Her video poems, 12 Moons, also have appeared at Atticus Review:

Today, she’ll be reviewing Canyon in the Body by Lan Lan, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain (Zephyr Press, 2014, USA).  “Lan Lan is considered one of today’s most influential Chinese lyrical poets. Her work has been translated into 10 languages. She is much-awarded in China, and appears often at international poetry festivals. Canyon in the Body is her first book to appear in English,” says Goss.

Without further ado, please give her a warm welcome:

In her speech at the 2013 National Book Awards ceremony, Mary Szybist stated “There’s plenty that poetry cannot do, but the miracle, of course, is how much it can do, how much it does do. So often I think I know myself, only to discover in a poem a difference, an otherness that resonates, where I find myself, as Wallace Stevens once put it, ‘more truly and more strange.’” The poems in Canyon in the Body create an environment where we also find ourselves “more truly and more strange,” an experience that only a certain type of poetry delivers.

Lan Lan accomplishes this as much by what she leaves out as by what she includes. Her poems invite the reader into a series of microscopic moments, honed and spare, yet resonant with layers of meaning. Her diction seems direct, even simple, but simmering in that simple language is a spirit of rebellion, even violence.

Consider “Dream, Dream:”

My loosened hand holds you tight
The door is shut for you to pass.

You’ve already found 
silence in my body.

I fear…in our gaze
to contort   and shrink

The speaker’s “loosened hand” holds tight, while a closed door invites passage. She successfully captures the transition between dream and consciousness, intertwining opposing ideas instead of contrasting them. She uses this technique often and with skill throughout the book.

In “Startle,” the direct language of the poem plays against its cryptic sentences:

Startle

You’re asleep
dreaming      running
Stars in the sky as the tides rise

Everything as one thing
You’re dreaming      running
Perhaps it’s real
I watch your eyelashes tremble

Your hand tells me what I’m becoming:
               woman.
Neither a flower
nor an anonymous poem
--is this also real?
When you help a woman deliver herself
I’ve no idea
she was never born
waiting so long for your password in this night—

The poem gives off a kind of heat, a compression of logic that makes leaping the only choice. It exudes a fierce delicacy, like a cactus flower or a rose among thorns. Her poems about the natural world create mysterious landscapes that feel quickly glimpsed, as if from a moving vehicle, as in these lines from “Will There Be a Tree:”

What enters this instant includes
eyes more than eyes
mountain chains more than mountain chains
a scar on a tree trunk
omens from sparks remaining on a page
a man rolling an iron hoop from his childhood
		running through this night

The reader enters the instant in the poem, the flash of power from the mountain juxtaposed with the vulnerability of the scarred tree trunk, ending with a human being engaged in memory or dream. The repetition of “eyes” and “mountain chains” intensifies the affect.

Lan Lan’s poems are not what they seem at first, and resist attempts to explain or paraphrase. They are pared down to a separation of essentials, with the reader needing to make leaps of understanding or meaning within the poem’s structure. There are chasms between these lines, deep spaces of potential. Fiona Sze-Lorrain, the collection’s translator, leaves those chasms intact, moving with deft confidence from line to line and poem to poem. She is our able guide in the strange, intriguing world of these poems.

In these lines from “Wild Sunflower,” a flower is a metaphor for passing time:

Old past veiled in sorrow, for whom
have I died once more?

Untrue wild sunflower. Untrue
singing.
A lethal thorn of autumn wind pricks my chest.

When I finished the book, I felt like I had a splinter lodged in my finger, the tip of which I could feel every time I touched something. Lan Lan’s poems are sharp and tough, and they take up residence in the reader’s mind for a long time. They open a world of “otherness,” to quote from Mary Szybist. As Lan Lan writes in “One Thing,” “I thank the darkness for listening.”

Thanks, Erica, for sharing your thoughts on this collection. I wonder too about these poems and that otherness; it is as if Lan Lan is asking readers to jump — jump into that otherness!

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Guest Post: My Writing Space by Victoria Dougherty

July 17, 2014 by

The Bone Church_BlogTour Banner FINAL

The Bone Church by Victoria Dougherty is the kind of historical fiction I love to read, and while I couldn’t fit it in my schedule, I just had to share it with my readers.  Check out this synopsis from GoodReads:

In the surreal and paranoid underworld of wartime Prague, fugitive lovers Felix Andel and Magdalena Ruza make some dubious alliances – with a mysterious Roman Catholic cardinal, a reckless sculptor intent on making a big political statement, and a gypsy with a risky sex life. As one by one their chances for fleeing the country collapse, the two join a plot to assassinate Hitler’s nefarious Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Josef Goebbels. But the assassination attempt goes wildly wrong, propelling the lovers in separate directions.

Felix’s destiny is sealed at the Bone Church, a mystical pilgrimage site on the outskirts of Prague, while Magdalena is thrust even deeper into the bowels of a city that betrayed her and a homeland soon to be swallowed by the Soviets. As they emerge from the shadowy fog of World War II, and stagger into the foul haze of the Cold War, Felix and Magdalena must confront the past, and a dangerous, uncertain future.

When you read as many books as I do about WWII and other eras that involve war, you often wonder what the writing spaces of the authors look like.  So without further ado, Victoria Dougherty has been kind enough to share with us her own writing space. Please give her a warm welcome.

Image 1

My home office is, I suppose, a bundle of contradictions.

First of all, it is small. It’s only half the size of my husband’s home office.

I’m kind of like the wife who drives a Chevy while her husband gets the Cadillac, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s cozy in there and I feel safe.

Its walls are red – hardly a safe color, but it keeps me alert. My desk is a granite slab that used to serve as a bar in our old place, and there’s a fireplace with an antique wooden mantel showcasing two Byzantine icons (one of Christ, the other of Mary), a matching rosary, four family photos, a clay ballerina my middle daughter sculpted for me, an Indian flag (we’re not Indian, don’t ask), one dragon-themed baby shoe from Hong Kong, and a signed, framed World War II cartoon featuring Mussolini being led around on a leash by the Axis powers.

Image 2

On this framed cartoon hangs an authentic Mother’s Cross – a ribbon necklace with a metal Reich symbol that was given to women who’d born children for Nazi Germany. Nobody in my family did – we’re both Catholic and Jewish, so we wouldn’t have volunteered for such an honor (nor would we have been asked).

The thing is I like to surround myself with objects that inspire my work, and for good or ill, Nazi’s and Communists are part of my fiction universe.

Most of the mementos in my office are gifts, except for the Mother’s Cross. I bought that from a collector of Nazi memorabilia. He was selling his collection because he felt people wrongly assumed that he liked Nazis, when in fact, he was just a history buff. It had caused some uncomfortable moments at a few of his wife’s dinner parties.

Image 3

That, in and of itself, could inspire a couple of novels.

My desk, the former bar, sits on an old, Oriental rug fouled by various pet stains. My dog’s ashes (the dog responsible for most of the pet stains) sit in a wooden box on a little table in the corner next to my bookshelves. This box is lorded over by a framed faux New York Times obituary for the late canine (written by my husband) and titled,Milo Steven Dougherty, Asexual Glutton Canine, Is Dead. It goes on to describe our late beagle mix as “a single-minded ‘perfect eating machine’ who loved Snickers cheesecake, tacos, hollandaise sauce, White Castle microwaveable cheeseburgers, shrimp risotto, anything on the McDonalds breakfast menu and fecal-caked baby diapers.” Rest in Peace, my friend.

Image 4

Being writers, we have a predictable quantity of books in our house – about 7 floor-to-ceiling shelves’ worth, but the bookshelves in my office are mostly filled with my children’s various pictures and art projects: my daughter’s soccer team photo, my son’s first short story (about the Civil War), and my youngest child’s Kindergarten scrapbook.

There’s also a taxidermied baby alligator among my kids’ artifacts, but I can’t for the life of me tell you how it got there.

Image 5

On the wall at my left hangs a framed photo of my wedding, a large black and white print of an old woman walking through the streets of Prague, another old black and white – this one of the Tower of Silence in old Bombay, a newspaper clipping of my grandfather’s performance in the 1936 Winter Olympics – he played on the Czech National Hockey Team, a portrait taken of my husband on his first birthday and one taken of me and my first child, my son, when he was one. The rest of the walls are bare.

Image 6

But there are two hand-made Czech marionettes that flank my one picture window. This is my favorite of the two. I call him Vladimir the Great. He holds a violin in one hand and a beer in the other, and reminds me so much of my grandfather, Dede, who could play any instrument by ear. He could also drink you under the table, although Dede would have never, ever tolerated a five o’clock shadow like this fellow.

Image 7

Essentially, my home office holds my life. I care little for jewelry and other fancy things (don’t get me wrong, I don’t knock them and like a fine bauble as much as the next girl) so, if I had to flee my house in the middle of the night, the way my grandparents did, the only things I would take with me as I rushed my family out the door are in my office. Deeply personal relics that tell the story of my life and the stories that fill my imagination.

Thank you, Victoria, for sharing your space with us. Please check out the rest of the tour and pick up a copy of her book.

03_Victoria DoughertyAbout the Author:

Victoria Dougherty writes fiction, drama, and essays that often revolve around spies, killers, curses and destinies. Her work has been published or profiled in The New York Times, USA Today, International Herald Tribune and elsewhere. Earlier in her career, while living in Prague, she co-founded Black Box Theater, translating, producing and acting in several Czech plays. She lives with her husband and children in Charlottesville, Virginia.

For more information, please visit Victoria Dougherty’s website and blog. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Pinterest.

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