No I’ve been asked to share more from my novel The Renaissance Club. It’s great fun to do it! Especially if there’s an interested reader. Here’s the next installment of Chapter One. Norman looked down the side street at a larger-than-life-size nude statue on a plinth. The figure suddenly turned its head, combed its curly beard with his fingers, and gave back a challenging stare. It must be one of those street performers, Norman thought,…
On this rainy April day in Northern California, I’m enjoying my own novel’s first page, set on a sunny April day in Rome. For now, I’m going to Italy in my mind. Chapter One. Rome, Day One. Norman Wesley had walked the city for only two days, but already the sumptuous face of Rome had changed him from community college dean with a blank wall life to a man riding a time machine into the…
And it seems the question that won’t ever be definitively answered. But this interesting article sparked by some controversail remarks by Jodi Picoult gives some new (to me) reasons for self-publishing. Still, for my novel, I’m thinking print and conventional publisher, for a little help widening my audience, however modest the publicity and distribution such a publisher might provide. Oh, to BECOME an aggrieved midlist author so I can take back my rights after six…
I’ve been talking for months now about the novel I’m working on, the one set in Italy. I thought I better produce some evidence, if only to show that I’m not making it up. Well, I am making up the novel, just not the story about writing it. So here goes. A short synopsis and a little taste. THE RENAISSANCE CLUB A month-long art history tour of Italy promises its organizer, middle-aged professor Norman Wesley,…
I meant that in both senses of “it’s” – it is and belonging to April. For I can think of no better way for the world immediately around us to get our focused attention than to do this unfurling, blooming, pollinating, mating, rutting, wind-waving, sun-bathing, wing-spreading fertility dance that is spring. The world is writing poetry and we rush to document its glories. Photos of blooming fruit trees and bulb sprout on Facebook and poetry…
I’ve done the April daily poem for five or six years, with a break one year, and rarely did it generate a useable poem, but boy did it stir up the creative juices. The fun of it is doing it in a group, seeing what others post (when they dare, if they dare) and sparking each other through sheer audacity of trying. For me the effect was post-NaPoWriMo, the poems I wrote after that terrific…
I am so often thrilled by poetry I read in entrepreneurial litzines like the three I’m linking here, Amanda Oaks’ beautiful Words Dance, and Russell Streur’s exciting Camel Saloon. Words Dance pairs poetry and images, one of my favorite things an online journal can do that a print mag cannot. Some great poems up in these journals right now. Like Kate Berndadette Benedict’s Umbrella, these are magazines energized by the literary vision of one poet-editor…
As you might know, for the last couple of years I’ve been working on a novel, a contemporary story about a group of college teachers and spouses touring northern Italy and finding themselves dramatically changed by that beautiful and exciting place. The book’s called The Renaissance Club. I haven’t secured an agent yet, but in this emerging digital world, I find I’m considering alternatives. I’d love to hear from others who’ve gone ahead of me…
Someone mentioned the pleasure of re-reading favorite books and that made me think of how often I return to certain touchstone volumes for emotional and literary sustenance. How certain reading experiences were seminal for me, impressed on me as strongly as peak life experiences. And so I reread a strange little collection of dog-eared volumes that seem not to even be on speaking terms with each other. My Family and Other Animals, Emma, The Writing…
It’s seldom you get to send a thank you note to a poet who’s been an inspiration and model for you to strive for a higher level of art, but today I had that chance, thanks to the wonderful blog Dear Mary. The brainchild of Julie L. Moore and Julie Brooks Barbour, the blog gives us the chance to write thank you notes to Mary Oliver. Mary is coping with illness at the moment —…