Sunday, January 31, 2010

Before Publication--Making "cold" calls.

With my publication date looming, I'm trying to do something everyday to work toward "promotion." I have a publicist I've hired part time and a publicist at my press who are both great. But I still do something every day myself.

My book is about my parents, severely burned in a gas explosion, and how the whole family coped. So Friday I took the plunge and called a Burn organization. The woman who answered from the development office, believes I have a unique perspective as the child of burn survivors. I have learned lately that the whole family is now called "burn survivors," actually a great comfort to me in understanding the pyschology of my young and now much older life.



She'd love to have me speak in September. Just like that. Of course she wants more information as I was just a disembodied voice on the phone. But she is already thinking, wheels spinning--who to invite, and this was a "cold call"--a group I found on the web. It is my first foray into the world of Burn survivors--My book will move from the "literary" work that I have honed for numerous years--changing words, point of view, making the "characters" who are my own family more complex, working on transitions. These words might move into bigger worlds, touch more people, perhaps even help someone. After all, my mother, completely facially disfigured, went back to work as an editor for the American Journal of Nursing and lived until 91. The point of this blog: when trying to get your book out into the world, make the calls--and you never know who will pick up on the other line.

Monday I'll make some more calls .

Monday, January 25, 2010

A Poem--Dream of the Uninterrupted Moss

I've been looking at some of my old poems--so wanted to post this one today--the resilience of people despite unbearable hardship.


I remember holding on to words
spoken in cafes now closed to us.

The words live inside my blue delft breakfast plate
along the river Ijissle
in the white chrysanthemums

in the peculiar innocence
of chaos.

In a little tin are my last cookies.

Next door a boy is born
and lives in a drawer.

My paper supplies dwindle,
but I could give up words.

The sky is always ours
even though we are crowded together.

Someday, I will walk across the world.

For Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum
Published by Blue Light Press(The Houses are Covered in Sound)

Monday, January 18, 2010

Waiting for my book to appear

I can only say that the waiting is like a birth(in some ways) because each time I’ve put a book out into the world I have dreams of birth—-- tiny babies lost, disappeared, or crying out of toothless mouths. A few weeks ago, I dreamt of a baby that was complete, soft fuzz for hair, bright eyes and sitting up in a crib. My manuscript that I’ve carried in my mind for my whole life and worked on for many more years that I want to admit—is finally going to appear. It sits up in a crib and looks out through the wooden bars. But it is no longer a prisoner. Who will hold it?

But of course giving birth to my children was purely physical-- nothing like the mental energy that can be expended waiting and at times worrying about how those letters of the alphabet turned words, turned sentences turned paragraphs will be read.. And perhaps that is the key: to remember the creation—each book a different DNA—each voice a different writer—-never, ever to be done in the same way again.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

The New Year 2010

Visiting friends in Watsonville, CA. The sky is darkening, shades of orange and gray streaming across the sky. 2010(found out it’s pronounced twenty-ten from the grammar police). Their dog, Sparky, and my husband are going out to the deck to sit among the redwoods and just gaze at the open space. Sparky keeps wanting everyone to throw his saliva-infested ball back and forth, again and again, a happy myth of Sisyphus.

My daughter, Laura, was ice-skating last night in Yosemite Valley. I imagined her gliding across the ice, El Capitan framing her circular dance. She’ll live there for four months(an Americorps job)—live with the winter chill. My sister, Anne, and niece, Lily, swim in the Caribbean sea, buoyed by salt water. The earth still holds us up—whether water or ice.

As a child, I loved to ice skate. I remembered my parents lifting me between them on the ice. I was probably only three and I flew in the air. Summers we swam on Long Island, and I tasted salt on my lips.

Even after the accident that burned my parents, the world continued and continues to spew out happy memories. Even though the book I wrote is about childhood trauma, a searing, devastating trauma, I remember ice skating, swimming, Sparky approaching me with his wet ball, eyes pleading for me to throw his ball and I do. Small glimpses of happiness as the sky darkens.