THE PLUM BEAN PROJECT

Since June...

2012-01-14T05:35:00.000-10:00

I have not written a new plumbean since June! June! Since then I have: gone home to Hawaii for the summer, written lots, deleted lots, written more, spent the autumn in the London rain, been rained on, read at least 900 WWI letters, taken notebooks full of notes, walked miles, broken my foot, been on crutches, fallen over on crutches, read lots, taught lots, bought new boots, seen dear friends, been terrible about phoning people I love, watched Downton Abbey, cut my hair even shorter, walked more, taken more notes, and come back to the States for Christmas.

Why did I stop plumbeaning? Last May I started receiving uncomfortably rude notes at the plumbean. I changed the settings so no one saw them but me but they were nevertheless distressing. I thought about upping sticks and moving plumbean to a different zip code but that just felt wrong so we waited it out, plumbean and I. And now, tentatively poking our heads out of the hedge where we have been hiding, we are back...

Borders

2011-06-10T01:22:00.000-10:00

People are wonderful. Do you ever have a day when you just suddenly realize that people are wonderful? It can be a small holding door open thing or sweeping, huge life changing thing that can trigger the 'people are wonderful' reaction in me.

Look what lovely Allie from Hist-fic Chick wrote! She was invited to do a guest post on the Borders website and she wrote about Nell. People are wonderful.

Moving

2011-05-30T23:29:00.000-10:00

For once I have a legitimate reason for not writing: I have moved! From Bloomsbury to Vauxhall. Moving is hard. First you buy the plastic boxes, then you bring them home, and then you try to entice your stuff to hop into the plastic boxes--and your stuff is always so much smarter than that. It knows much better than to climb into a perspex box where it will likely never get to stretch out on a hanger or snuggle in a drawer again, and where it will probably get musty and start to smell like a lavender moth ball. My stuff is particularly brainy. It evaded the plastic boxes and refused to fold up nicely and wouldn't go without a fight.

After weeks of sunshine, it naturally rained on the day of the move. My grumpy stuff got wet. Of course my shoes and books took the brunt of the damp weather. My waterproof bath stuff did not get rained on at all. But now my books and shoes and bath stuff and dresses and birthday cards and pajamas are all here in Vauxhall. And so I am writing. Writing a plum bean and writing second book. Second book got ignored during the move but has reasserted herself in my brain and is quashing thoughts of suitcases, unpacking and laundry.

And: it felt like such a treat today: Nell got a lovely review!

A Month!

2011-05-18T00:45:00.000-10:00

It has been a month since I wrote a plum bean. A strange wonderful crazy month. I have written, gotten stuck and then written again. I am about to move house which unravels writing fairly conclusively for a few days. Somehow the act of getting all my belongings into plastic boxes and from one flat to another is utterly outfoxing me.

Nell received a wonderful treat today. Natalie, also known as Coffee and a Book Chick wrote a lovely review. I was thrilled. She said that Nell had prompted her to spend hours on the internet noodling around 17th century theatre. How absolutely marvellous that she had that reaction. I love the Restoration and so often it gets overshadowed by the grisly can't turn away from the beheading train wreck of the Tudors. I understand that. Kings bumping off brilliant wives and changing the course of religion is compelling stuff. So it is especially wonderful when the Restoration gets discovered and explored.

So, tonight is the Manic Mommies Book Club interview. I am absurdly worried about getting the access codes right and actually finding the interview. Having had relatively little experience in a normal job (working on the Vagina Monologues was brilliantly, wonderfully abnormal--not everyone has vagina puppets on their desk) I have some anxiety around fax machines and conference calling. Absurd, I know but there it is. Wish me luck!

Italy!

2011-04-19T23:45:00.000-10:00

The Italian cover! Nell goes to Italy...

Piglet

2011-04-16T10:03:00.000-10:00

"Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh?" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. "I just wanted to be sure of you."
— A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh)

I have been thinking about things not said. I love this quote. I love the simplicity. I love that nothing is spelled out but that feeling of safety, friendship and returned love is utterly captured.

I have been thinking about how good writing works. How to write a feeling without explaining the feeling. How to grab a moment and make it sit still long enough to become perfectly realized. It is not easy to do. I think it is all about recognition. That is the root. To see yourself in a character or room or time or place or awkward situation pulls you into the writing. It becomes familiar, personal, meaningful, important, yours. I know that feeling. I know the small moment of cocooned relief Piglet feels holding Pooh's hand. Such good writing.

Home to the Sun...

2011-04-04T01:09:00.000-10:00

I love it here. I really do. London in the spring is is a city of green postage stamp squares, blurred by pale fluffy blossoms and brushed in pastels. It is a blooming, stunning city. But, it does lead to some eccentricities. The warmth is fleeting and tenuous and does not visit the shade. The rain is quixotic and cold and lands in puddles and then gets thrown around by buses that move disturbingly fast.

I wear sundresses in the warmest part of the day but in order to do that I have to carry a heavy bag with me. Inside the bag are 1) a book--always--a bit like Linus and his blanket, 2) clothes--lots of clothes: socks, tights, jumpers, jackets, hats and a scarf. As the day cools down I put on more and more layers until the summer dress is lost under a whole sheep's worth of wool and underpinned by heavy boots and topped off with mittens. The effect is bizarrely Victorian.

This lovely city also holds so many of the people I love best in the world. The easy, short hand communication of long broken in, lived in, much loved friendships is a marvellous thing. On Saturday, Sadie and I decided to nothing but watch movies. We went to the HMV in Victoria station and bought movies and then spent the evening at her house tucked up in the sitting room, utterly happy. When I am back in Hawaii, in another life, a million miles away, I will remember nothing of what we talked about and everything about that happiness.

Yesterday, I was on a bus on my way somewhere else and suddenly I did not want to go somewhere else. So, I hopped off in Vauxhall and called my friend Dan who lives just there. He cooked a roast and I sat on the sofa. It is a magical precious thing to spend random, ordinary, unhurried time with old friends. It makes me want to stay.

But I have that restless, about to go feeling that comes with a flurry of changed tickets and frantic packing. It is almost time...

Answers on a Pogo Stick

2011-03-29T10:58:00.000-10:00

I woke up this morning at five am. Unusual for me if I am not jet lagged. I have been rolling a writing problem from the second book around in my brain for a while now. Not a huge problem; not a messy problem but a niggling wiggling problem that creeps up on me when I am brushing my teeth. And at five am this morning, the answer appeared. Bang, like a gift on the doorstep. Boxed, ribboned and addressed to me.

I was astonished. I have never been a writer who expects the answer to come bouncing along on a pogo stick. I believe in making a decision and if sixty pages (yes sixty--this actually happened while writing Nell) it is the wrong decision, go back and unravel it. I find an odd sort of comfort in the mechanical workmanship of writing. Sounds dreadfully unromantic but there it is. I like the piecing and puzzling. Puzzling is such a good Dr. Seuss word.

But here it was. The answer was simple, manageable, small but important. There was not enough city. Not enough huff and puff and clip and clop. Not enough hustles and bustles and cobbles and cakes. And so I am putting them in...

Hist Fick Chick

2011-03-19T03:38:00.001-10:00

Lovely, lovely Allie at Hist Fick Chick reviewed Nell and invited me for an interview! Kind, incisive, thought provoking and generous, it was a delight. Her blog is brilliantly meticulous about historical detail and I love that. What a wonderful thing to find on a pretty spring Saturday morning...

pages written this week: 28! Getting there...

The Eclectic Reader

2011-03-14T23:52:00.001-10:00

I did a guest post for wonderful Teddyree at her wonderful blog,The Eclectic Reader. Her question was, "If you could be dropped into a novel as any character, who would you be and why?"

It was actually not an easy question as I quickly realized that many of the novels I love most do not go terribly well at the end...

And marvellous Linda at her marvellous LindyLouMac Book Reviews wrote a lovely, lovely review of Nell! Both she and Teddyree took the time to transfer the trailer and Nell images onto their blogs. I am always so touched by that.

It is Tuesday. It is spring. I am reading a brilliant but darkly unnerving novel called Privilege and I have cut my hair super short again. So far, a good week...

Bits and Pieces

2011-03-11T00:48:00.003-10:00

Ariel, a dear friend of mine from college left me a lovely note at the end of my last post. She is reading Nell and is enjoying the under-written quality of the emotional landscape. It was a wonderful thing for her to write. It is a big risk to just leave breadcrumbs scattered on the forest floor and hope they bring the reader to the gingerbread cottage heart of the book.

I find I am constantly battling a strong desire to leave enormous glaring, flashing, obvious, neon signs along the way to prevent any mishap and collect any stragglers. 'Battling'? That makes it sound like I am riding into mighty combat with a three headed writing beastie, but that is a bit how it feels. I am currently writing about a lesser known person but a more famous period in history. The three headed writing beastie wants me to print out google maps for the readers so no one gets lost in the forest. Tricksy stuff...

And, I wrote at the end of my last post that I had tea with the utterly lovely Philippa Gregory. She astonishes me. I love when historical accuracy profoundly matters to historical fiction authors. They really will fall down the rabbit hole in order to track down the particular historical details that make the writing so rich. I find that is a common thread with all of my favorite historical writers.

And, I got such a nice pixie dust surprise when I checked my email this morning. Teddyree at the marvellous blog The Eclectic Reader wrote such a truly lovely review.

Apropos of nothing, I love my spell check. It makes me giggle every day; like a straight faced butler it tirelessly serves up proper grammar on a silver tray. But, I do not think my affection is mutual. My spell check gets fed up with my using words like beastie...

Jolene

2011-03-06T15:55:00.000-10:00

You know when you hear a song and it plays through you all day? Your mind drifts to it when you let go of your thoughts like a bright red, musical balloon that sails out of your hand on a summer day in a summer park. I love that. Ray LaMontagne's throaty, haunting Jolene won't leave me alone this week.

It has been a wonderful week. Writing and reading and writing and reading. I am in that lovely flat place in the writing. The grassy plain in the heartland of the story when you can guess where you are going. The characters are speaking to each other and to me. One wants baked alaska, another wants to sail on the Titanic. I told him it was a terrible idea... Jolene, Jolene...

And on Friday I had tea with Philippa Gregory and she was just utterly marvellous. More about that tomorrow...

Dancing Nell and the Second Book

2011-03-01T04:36:00.002-10:00

A funny thing has happened. There is a before and an after. Exit the Actress came out a month ago today. Before it came out, my second book felt like a far away thing; like a flower that lived on a star. No one was asking about it as Nell was still waiting in the wings, fixing her hair, brushing her teeth and changing her dancing slippers. Now Nell is in full swing and having a marvellous time at her party. She sends a kiss and gives me a look as if to say "You can go. Don't wait up." Her dance card is full and she is planning to stay out until dawn. I am happy for her but I miss her.

Many reviews and interviews end with a comment or question about my next book. I love that; the assumption that I will write another. I love that this is what I do now. To write is a great verb. I love that people are interested in what I am working on. I have not been doing this long enough to be able to say I am an author without giggling. I know I shouldn't but it gets away from me.

I have been strangely cagey about the second book. It is set in the First World War but I have been reluctant to discuss the subject of the novel. I have realized that second book is not quite ready for grown up company. When I was very young my mother would take me to the ballet. I loved it, only I wanted to sit closer. No. Until I could sit still in my seat, we had to sit up in a box where I could crawl around the floor and not bother anybody. At last, when I could finally be trusted to keep my shoes on, stay in my own seat and face the stage, we moved to the stalls. The first violinist always waved to me and I felt so grown up. Second book is nearly ready to move...

And! Lovely, lovely pin on refrigerator immediately review today from Christina at Confessions of a Book Addict!

Handwriting

2011-02-25T02:23:00.000-10:00

A wonderful week! It was my birthday on Wednesday and it has been a perfect week of dearest friends and pink cupcakes and silver sprinkles and birthday cards and blown kisses and sprawling books and floaty dresses and rainy day movies and spring tulips and silver rings and my family's handwriting--I love the light thump on the doorstep when an envelope bearing my mother's writing arrives in mid-winter.

I love my family's alphabets. My father has extraordinarily beautiful writing; dark and slanted and elegantly scripted. He has the sloped fountain pen writing I think Rebecca would have had. My mother has the swooped and dashed and hurriedly looped, felt tip writing of a mom in a hurry. My sister has the careful, precise writing of a lefty and my brother has the angular writing of someone who's thoughts move faster than the pen. Doesn't seeing the writing of people you love make you miss them more and less at the same time? That happens to me. It is an indelible hug.

Also this week, the season shifted. Just for a moment, it may not last, but just for today, it is spring. And in other lovely news, Misha from the marvellous blog, My Love Affair with Books wrote a wonderful review! A lovely week.

Amazon!

2011-02-23T04:41:00.001-10:00

Amazon included Exit the Actress in its 'Featured in Fiction and Literature' section. Or at least it did in the email it sent to me. I know Amazon can personalize everything in a sort of friendly yet Orwellian Big Brother way. It seems to know what I might like to read like a neighborhood librarian who has been checking up on me. Still, I was very pleased to see Nell at number 18!

And I just checked up on the audio books and I found Nell there on the first pages of the new releases! She had her audio book cover on so it took me a minute to spot her...

On other fronts I have been reading wonderful books. I re read Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks recently. Harrowing and haunting but so beautiful.

Forgotten Words

2011-02-21T14:30:00.001-10:00

So, I write in books. It is a habit with me. I write in them constantly. I write down words, colours, flirts of language, movement, shift and light.

I am reading one of Sally Beauman's huge, gothic, ensorcelling novels right now (my birthday present to myself) and inside the back cover I have written phrases like 'finch green' and 'hummingbird's cup' and 'drift of wrinkles'. I do not remember writing them.

Yesterday, I found one of the research books I used for Nell. It was a book I had left here and had not taken back to Hawaii to use while I was writing. On the back page, amongst movie times and notes to call Virgin Atlantic, and to not forget Charlotte's birthday, I found more fragments of light and language. I had forgotten they were there. I had forgotten I ever wrote them.

But I recognized these phrases. I opened Exit the Actress and there they were. I love that these shreds of text survived my leaving them behind and forgetting them. They bided their time and then turned up on an island in the Pacific ocean while I was writing Nell; like gatecrashers at a birthday party...

Publicity

2011-02-16T17:29:00.000-10:00

It has been a good month. People have just been unendingly wonderful. I am delighted. Nell is delighted. Now Nell is out there, I have a confession. The putting forward aspect does not come naturally. Publicity is just not my strong suit. I wrote and erased and wrote and erased the Facebook post announcing my New York reading at least seventeen times. And then, after erasing for the seventeenth time, I went and had hot chocolate instead and did not post it at all as the reading started twenty minutes later.

Publicity does not come easily to me but I know it is essential. It is the difference between Nell getting lost standing up in the "P" section (which is always on the bottom shelf--I checked) at Barnes and Noble or being on the lovely, spacious, visible front table where she can sparkle and flirt and then lie flat, stretch out and have a snooze.

I have known since I signed my publishing contract that the publicity part would be tough. I could not see how to do it? And then, wonderful friends stepped in to help! They make it easier, happier, better, simpler, shinier, smoother, and much funner. I love the word 'funner'. Nell has a wonderful huge extended family now and she is thrilled! How did everyone help?

Sharon Kay Penman has been unimaginably kind and put up a wonderful interview with Nell and me. One of my best friends from high school gave me Sharon's The Sunne in Splendour on a Wednesday afternoon and I fell in love with historical fiction. Splat, right there in the tenth grade.

And Lisa at Bibliophiliac posted a wonderful review and also invited Nell and me for an interview! Her questions were insightful and rich and it was such fun!

Look what Stella did at her marvellous website Ex Libris! Not only did Stella write a gorgeous post about Nell and the plum bean, but she also went and researched Java Kai (my favorite coffee shop in Hawaii) and included the Java Kai logo in her post. I was so touched. And homesick! Stella is reading the book now and planning an interview for later in the month. She is such an incisive, avid reader and beautiful writer and I am delighted!

Rick at Goodreads has started an Exit the Actress thread in his amazing, enormous, wonderful book group. He has become a Nell champion and it makes me so happy. And, he and nineteen other generous, gracious people went on Goodreads and Amazon and wrote fantastic reviews! The reviews help so much and I read each one out loud to my poor parents.

June, from Writing is a Blessing came to the reading and asked terrific questions! Friends are helping everywhere. It is like a fantastic team effort. My closest friend from high school, a wonderful writer, (who is the one who gave me The Sunne in Splendour) knew I was terrified in my reading and sat right in my eye line and peppered me with wonderful, perfect questions at my reading; taking away all my knee knocking nerves.

Friends have popped by the Exit the Actress page on Facebook and left lovely notes... My family tell everyone they meet about Nell. Noah cheers her on and has given her to his friends. My friend Jack ordered one for him and one for his mom. It has been a good month.

This Week

2011-02-11T05:23:00.001-10:00

I have been writing plum beans in my head all week. It has been a marvellous, magical, swirled with honey week. I did my first reading in Washington DC. My parents were there. My sister's best friend since they were two was there. My sister's best friend since they were two's mom was there. The preschool teacher who taught them when they were two was there. My favorite history teacher from high school was there. And people I did not know were there!

I was nervous. My knees knocked. My heart bumped. The room tilted and off we went. People asked wonderful questions. Smart, thoughtful, insightful questions. My mother cried and tried to pretend it was hay fever in February. My brother and sister's preschool teacher took photos. There were posters! In the window; in the store! We got to keep two of them and Barnes and Noble asked me to sign the rest for them. "Really?" I asked. I have to stop doing that.

That is the reflection of my mom taking the photo...

Noah was first in line!

And then it was off to New York. We walked in the door of Borders at 57th and Park and saw:

Right inside the door!

And my knees knocked and my heart bumped and the room tilted and off we went. The two lovely men who organized the event came and found me and showed me how the microphone worked and were so utterly lovely. They had read it, as had the store manager and they all said wonderful things. I was so touched that in a building full of books they had read mine.

And people came. Lots of people. Old friends, blog friends, new friends, writer friends, sixth grade friends, friends of friends, Vday friends, and people I had never met before. My brother and his fiancee sat in the second row and my mom and my sister sat in the first. I took my glasses off so everyone was fuzzy. I read and everyone asked questions and it was fun. I had expected terror and got fun instead. How wonderful.

Signing books!

And then, one of my favorite authors, Sharon Kay Penman, put up the kind, generous, thoughtful interview she did with me... more about that tomorrow...

TODAY!

2011-02-01T03:19:00.001-10:00

Dear Nell,

You're off to great places.

Today is your day,

Your mountain is waiting,

So get on you're way!

Love,

Dr. Seuss

Today! Today! Today!

Exit the Actress is in bookstores TODAY!

Blog Friends

2011-01-29T05:57:00.001-10:00

I really didn't see it coming. I had no idea when I started down the plum bean path I would find marvellous, sweet, splendid, fun, ingenious and wondrously supportive blog friends. No body told me. You know the friends; the witty, brilliant, honest, incisive, funny friends? The ones who show up, encourage, root, support, communicate, chat, read, write and inspire? You know who you are and you are wonderful. Look at what sweet Kate at Kate's Library just did...

And look at what lovely, lovely Whitney from the marvellous She is too Fond of Books did...

The Audio Book...

2011-01-22T15:42:00.000-10:00

The audio book! I love the art deco feel of the lettering. Such a great Nell. Such a great nose. She is far more imperious and regal and statuesque than the Nell I wrote but she is fabulous just the same. And this is the cassette version. Did not know they still made cassette versions...

Eight more days...

A Website!

2011-01-21T05:43:00.000-10:00

It is up! Priyaparmar.com. Thank yous. Huge thank yous are in order. Thank you to Matt and Joseph and Naomi and Noah. For the design and construction and video and photos and images and buttons that change color and the greens and the reds and the pinks and the greys and the enormous love, care, patience and work. Thank you.

My Name

2011-01-12T08:16:00.000-10:00

It is not a terribly uncommon name. That was a double negative, awful. It is not even an impossible name to pronounce. And another double negative. I apologize--they seem to be getting away from me. It is not even easy to find me on Facebook. Through some mystical mechanism, it is nearly impossible to find me on Facebook. There are pages of Priya Parmars and I am on about the thirty-seventh page.

It is pronounced exactly like it is written. Well maybe not, the 'y' is a bit tricky and can outfox you but when people meet me they do not know about the 'y' yet. Now, it sounds like I am talking in code. I am not. Still, P-R-I-Y-A--not difficult, right? But, I know that people have trouble with it and so rather than risk hideous awkwardness, I repeat it to give them a second shot at it, and reassure them that it is a hard name, and forgive anyone who forgets it instantly, and and and...

Still, I get people being occasionally, horribly rude. I am used to the painful pause when people forget it, but it is an altogether different beast from the puzzled pause when they try to work it out. This happened today when the man concluded the painful pause with "What are you?" Ummm. How do I answer that?

What he meant was, 'what sort of name is that?'. This man was from Michigan, he was standing in a Waterstone's book store in Gower St. I understood the nature of the question and I am admittedly a strange half Indian, been living in Hawaii, went to university in the UK, living in the middle of London with blonde hair mix.

I would be totally prepared to overlook the badly worded question if he tone had not been so meanish. Why mean? We were standing in a bookstore. Who gets personal, rude and mean in a book store? A lovely book store at that, one of my favourites. The Waterstone's in Gower St. is marvellous. It has a delicious early twentieth century collection (I have been romping through Forster, Bowen and West) and has about the best poetry collection in London. Auden, Yeats, Akhmatova, Pasternak, Herbert, Milosz, Cavafy, Walcott? Humph, one shouldn't get mean in front of Walcott.

Onto better news:

Nell is up for a group read on Goodreads!

The Trapeze Swinger

2011-01-07T16:01:00.000-10:00

Have you heard that song? It is nine minutes of brutal, winding, haunting song. I love things that fully inhabit themselves. That is when writing, any writing, feels best. Not easy to do. It requires risk and courage and very good balance for the cliffs are steep out there. But the rewards? The rewards are huge.

I have been thinking about boldness. It is not easy to write. Boldness cannot fling itself onto the page, uncaring of the response. That would not ring true. Boldness must be conscious of the dangers and calculate how far the fall and then charge the field. Without armour, without cavalry, without hope of rescue.

Akhmatova begins her poem "There will be thunder then. Remember me." Bold, dangerous.

Du Maurier begins her great novel with "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again." Again? But this is the first sentence. She does it without a net.

Dr. Seuss fearlessly writes for children:

"I am the Lorax! I speak for the trees,
Which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please;
But I also speak for the brown Barbaloots,
Who frolicked and played in their barbaloot suits,
Happily eating Truffula fruits." Of course. A Lorax. I know a Lorax.

That is when we admire the writing. It cannot be faked. We would smell artifice immediately. Every wonder of the literary canon faced a terrifying field. But even when they fall, an often they do, we admire the attempt.

I love the options my spell check gave me for 'Barbaloots"...

Letters and News

2011-01-06T15:57:00.001-10:00

They are marvellous. Personal and public and a thing meant to be shared. You are a different you in a letter. Quixotic and sharp edged, loving and light; letters froth with vigour. To write is an active verb. It is wonderful to be writing a book largely in letters. I get to take up the personality of the character, live his or her day in my head and then write a letter that has nothing and everything to do with that day.

They are of a moment: singular, finite, fleeting. As soon as you seal the envelope you are in a different moment. You would write a different letter if you had it to do again. It is that strange alchemy of mind, heart, pen and paper. You cannot step into the same river twice.

I have been reading letters recently. The love lit letters of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the gossipy letters of Truman Capote, the stormy letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, the chatty, catty letters of Somerset Maugham, the achingly unfinished letters of John Keats and Fanny Brawne. They all tell small daily stories within larger tangled, messy lives. They are not neat, tidy stories with clean, rounded arcs. Pathos does not lead to resolution. Eros is often a capricious little beastie. Quite often, nothing is learned and mistakes are remade. I love that. I loved the human, flawed aspect to them. They fascinate.

Pages written: 6

Also, I was sent the marketing plan today.... It is really happening.

I do not usually go back and tamper with posts, actually that is wrong, quite often I do and I apologize, but I had to mention what lovely June at Writing is a Blessing wrote about Nell yesterday. Go and see...

London

2011-01-05T02:31:00.000-10:00

Back. Done with flying, airports, passports, travel size, lost socks, long lines, immigration, contraband liquids, seat belt signs, x ray machines, static electricity, peanuts and things that go beep.

It is wonderful to know I am going to write, go to ballet, go to the library, go to dinner with friends, write, go to sleep and then wake up and do it again tomorrow.

Pages written this week: 0

Pages to write: 20

But on the upside, I did finally finish my albatross of an Author Portal Questionnaire for Simon and Schuster. Surely I will get better at this...

New Year

2010-12-31T04:36:00.000-10:00

This was the year when:

I saw lots of much missed beloved friends

I rediscovered Henry James

I learned how to stand up paddle board

My eldest student went off to college

My second eldest student went off to school on the mainland

My two third eldest students fell wildly in love with reading

I researched Second Book

I started writing Second Book

I took the scary ballet class

I moved to a new part of London

I met my new adorable god son

I re-fell in love with walking through London at night

I made it home for Christmas

And

Wonderful people offered to help launch Nell into the world on February 1.

Thank you.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Packing--Now Unpacking

2010-12-22T11:54:00.003-10:00

In fairness, the bag really does look like it holds more stuff than it actually does. It is deceptively less roomy than one would imagine. I live in the tinyest flat imaginable--lovely, homey, cosy, comfy, bright, but tiny--and one would not imagine that there would be so much stuff to pack. Where does this stuff live when it is not marching into the suitcase?

Everything starts with books. Christmas present books, reading books (I am reading Forster, Maugham's letters and West--it is like falling into a vat of emotionally charged, sun warmed, beautifully written, early 20th century honey), and research books.

I am a bit like Linus from Peanuts about my research books. All my best beloved non research books live on the East Coast. Hawaii is too wet and London is too small and they seem to like the East Coast. My research books on the other hand are nomadic. They go to the beach, the movies, the departure lounge, the bus, the ballet studio, the library (where they can commiserate with more well adjusted, grounded, non roving research books), the park, the pub, the subway, the playground and the museums. They go out for dinner and wish I would use an umbrella.

They meet my friends. They get scribbled in: "Dentist, 430, Tuesday". They drive in the Honda. They get dropped into the sea. I love that they live big, varied lives. But they are heavy. I am only going for a few days. Do they all need to come? And then I look at their soft, broken in spines and crumply covers and illegible notes that track my life as I write this second book and I think, yes. They need to come.

But then we might only be going as far as Heathrow. My flight was cancelled yesterday and today and there is a good chance that the plane might not take off tomorrow...

Lovely Review from Rick Friedman at Goodreads

2010-12-20T14:40:00.000-10:00

"Exit the Actress: A Novel by Priya Parmar is quite simply one of the most original, engaging and well written novels I have come across in many a year. Written through diary entries, Letters, Official Announcements, invitations ect- the reader is immersed into 17th Century London, through the eyes of Nell, a poor "Oyster Girl" who grows up to be a stage star and Mistress of Royalty. That Ms. Parmar can create such a real and human character is nothing short of breathtaking. This book is, without doubt,the first book of a MAJOR new talent in historical fiction."

I just read that review out loud to my mother. It is the kind of moment you daydream about when you are in the thicket of a book that is not yet a book and you cannot see your way forward or back. It is the kind of daydream that kickstarts you back into writing when you splutter to a stop. It is the kind of daydream that you never imagine will happen.

And then one day, it does. How magical.

Rick Friedman is a wonderful man who has a wonderful bookclub. It is a vast, energetic book club and he leads it with verve, skill and devotion. He makes it a lovely place to be.

My publicity team adore Rick. He and my publicist Jessica are organizing a Goodreads Giveaway. It takes time, effort, thought and kindness. I am so very, very lucky. Thank you, Rick.

Ps: It looks like I am snowed into London for Christmas and not going to the States...

Book Signing

2010-12-15T03:16:00.002-10:00

So, are you free on February 8, 2011? Want to meet me on the corner of 57th St. and Park Avenue at the Borders Books in Manhattan?

It is one of my favourites. Enormous. Big armchairs, four floors, great poetry section, yummy hot chocolate, center of town... so you'll come?

I'll carry a copy of Wuthering Heights and a white winter rose so you will know it is me.

My first book signing and of course I am wondering... what do authors wear to their first book signing...

PS: my brother receives this blog by email and just told me the format has changed? It now looks as though it comes from a random stranger instead of just a normal plum bean email. Not sure what is happening. Will investigate...

Mechanic vs Alchemic

2010-12-13T03:41:00.001-10:00

I have been thinking about frameworks. I was talking to a writer friend yesterday about deadlines. He is a prolific journalist and absolutely, non negotiably, needs the eleventh hour rush of adrenaline to get it done. His process--what a horridly artsy yet weirdly sausage factoryish sort of word--requires a superimposed structure. His 1200 word article will happen as soon as it has to happen--has to happen because of an external rather than internal mechanism.

Lots of writers work this way. It takes huge amounts of confidence. To know that at any point you can flick a switch, turn the cranks and there will be work you are willing to show someone--amazing.

I am not like that.

"I don't need deadlines," I told him, sounding provincial and self contained.

"Sure you do," he said. "You just get in there first. A deadline is just a way of making yourself write when worry you can't. You have that."

And he was right. I have a strict, self sustaining, near ritualistic process of writing. I have a mechanical system of getting the words onto the page:

I:
-Turn on the computer before I do anything else.
-Write four pages.
-Stop after four pages.
-Write even if I have nothing to write.
-Take one day off a week.

And creatively, I am equally and bizarrely strict but there is only one rule:

A storytelling bumble bee of random, elusive, hazy, unformed thought will go flying over the even squares of my brain. Follow it. Do not worry about the destination, the end of the story, the end of the sentence. Follow it. It is going somewhere fun.

My journalist friend was right.

And... terrific news! Sharon Kay Penman just wrote to me and wants to do an interview before Exit the Actress comes out in February. I am over the moon!

Translation

2010-12-11T07:43:00.000-10:00

Richard Pevear and Larisa Volokhonsky. Their translations of War and Peace and Anna Karenina are sumptuous, fluid and lyric. The heavy prose is wrought light and clear and the emotional currents of the language sail under an unfaltering breeze. Their translations are magnificent.

I bought it. I have been circling it somewhat wolfishly and today, feeling warm and Christmassy after lunch and a long walk with old friends, I bought it. You can only read Dr. Zhivago at Christmas. Not in the sun, nor on a beach, nor on the run, nor with a peach. It must be cold, dark, wintry and snug. Yuri and Lara go with gingerbread and woolly socks.

I have read this book at least seven or eight times and I never learn. I will hope he is telling the truth. I will hope he finds her. I will hope she finds him. I love this story.

Nell news: the second printing numbers are up and the total in print is now above 33,000...

Writing news: closing in on a title...

May

2010-12-04T01:05:00.000-10:00

May. Thanks to wonderful Mari (who has the wonderful blog Bookworm with a View), The Manic Mommies Book Club is going to read Exit the Actress in May. They are a marvellous reading group. The conversations with the authors are generous but incisive leaving a wide, clean arena for discussion. The readers are engaged and vibrant and the other books that have been chosen look fantastic. Nell and I are delighted and are going ice skating to celebrate...

Good News!

2010-11-29T22:50:00.000-10:00

Yipee! My mom, who is the sweetest, actually cheers, claps her hands together and shouts "yipee!" when something good happens. It is exactly how you want someone you love to react. I love that.

The good news is on several fronts! I do not like 1,2,3 sort of ranking. It feels like the higher numbers, the 4's and 5's get a bit diminished in the process and so will give everybody letters instead; sort of like sitting down to a round table instead of a rectangle.

A. Booksellers have started sending back their reviews and they are so lovely and generous and kind!

B. My middle school students are all flying through their books and have discovered S.E. Hinton and Judy Blume and have become reading addicts. I am delighted!

C. My high school student is zipping through Jane Eyre and not only understanding the finely threaded nuances of the text but is enjoying the story. I couldn't be happier!

D. My college student is tackling Tolstoy and loving every minute of his first semester of college. He can feel his brain reaching and stretching and I am so very, very proud of him!

E. I have now worked out all the London omnibus routes for 1906-1910 and have moved on to train timetables...

F. Nell got chosen to be part of the Target "Emerging Author's Program". I am over the moon!

And it has started snowing...

First (and wonderful second) Review!!!

2010-11-24T01:21:00.001-10:00

Nell's first review! So terrifying but in a good way... Publishers Weekly liked her! I am delighted. She is delighted. We are going to go out and eat cake.

More cake! The lovely Book Quoter from the lovely blog A Thousand Books with Quotes wrote an astonishingly lovely review. It is so warm hearted and beautifully crafted. She chose some of my very favorite quotes. Definitely, more cake.

Children's Books

2010-11-22T02:32:00.000-10:00

Sometimes, I can remember the whole book: "In an old house in Paris, all covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines." Madeline, Miss Clavel, Pepito, the bad hat, Genevieve, the dog, they all ring clear, straight bells.

Sometimes, I can remember the pictures: the maroony colors of the Hungry Caterpillar or the sketched line drawings of Noisy Nora, the tinyness of Matilda, and puffed cheek cloud of The Runaway Bunny.

Sometimes, I remember the words: "So, he called his dog Max, and he took some red thread, and he tied a big horn on the top of his head." Mount Crumpit? Seuss was a genius.

And sometimes I forget that I ever knew anything about a book, until I see it again. And then, not only the words, pictures, rhymes, rhythms and stories come back but the sense of soap bubble, giddy, reasonless glee. Recently, I went with a wonderful friend to a wonderful bookshop called Daunt. It is Edwardian and has that lemony paper and wood smell of a long loved bookshop. Lined in lean oak shelves, it is perfect. And there, in slim volumed rows, they all were.

I love how smell and image and sound and rhythm and memory come together with such a clean snapping thump when all at once, a book that made you so happy comes bouncing back. We giggled and looked and shopped and brought some goodies home for her wonderful children and so it starts all over again...

pages written so far this week: 2

Lunch with St. Exupery.

2010-11-11T10:44:00.000-10:00

It is the 11th and I have not written since the 1st. Terrible. Book writing and researching have somewhat taken over at the moment. I spent yesterday in the Transport Museum, looking up early 20th century London omnibus routes. No, I started looking up bus routes and then wound up falling down the fascinating rabbit hole of WWI propaganda literature. Terrifying, brutal stuff. As today is November 11, that seemed to justify the enormous diversion.

Now, I am back to working on my Author Portal. Yes, the same Author Portal I was meant to have finished a month ago. It is again the classic pattern of Priya writes and then Priya deletes ad nauseum. Don't you love that the ancient Romans used the same sort of teenage phrasing as we do?

This week, I also helped my ingenious, dearest, artist friend with her installation on imagination. It was heaven. Lunch with a old friend who asks you "If you did love a flower that lived on a star, would it be sweet to look at the sky at night?" is a lucky thing.

Pages written this week: 16

2010-11-01T12:36:00.000-10:00

This is Chico--identical, if more socially adjusted twin of my parents' perfect pooch, The Major. Chico's mom, a dear family friend, just finished reading Exit the Actress! She, my wonderful friend Tora in Hawaii, my brilliantly supportive brother and my fantastic, soon to be sister in law are the first ones to read it! The first ones, that is, other than my ever patient, ever helpful, can't write without her, editor mother.

Just had to put this up as between the sweater and the ears and the soulful dachshund eyes--he is adorable...

Hedgehogs

2010-10-29T00:06:00.001-10:00

There is something so complete about hedgehogs. So stubby and round and right. I love them. I am reading a wonderful book, The Elegance of the Hedgehog. I say 'reading' but I am only on page eleven. The research for second book has sort of eaten my reading life for breakfast. It has done it in a terrific, active verb, gracious kind of way but done it quite thoroughly all the same.

I am writing about early 20th c. figures this time round and they are just so recent. I walk by the places they lived and the same stone on the same doorsteps, some of the same banks and bookshops and restaurants are sitting on the same corners, and the same trees are growing in the same parks--astonishing as WWI, WWII and the 20th c have all brutally happened in between.

All this reality and scenery from these lives makes the researching truly immediate--but it is at the point where it is so immediate that it has moved into my living room and taken up all the space. And so I am taking action, reclaiming my recreational reading and starting with hedgehogs--French hedgehogs on the Rue de Grenelle at that. The book already has a charming, drown you in melted butter and crooked streets and warm you into fluffy pastry sort of feeling to it--impressive by page eleven.

On other fronts, I am discovering Goodreads. It is a slow toe dipping in giant ocean sort of discovering as Goodreads is vast and dedicated. A lovely man called Rick has set up a thread for Exit the Actress. It was so sweet of him! I am consistently astonished by the random, goodwill Nell has found in her adventures in publishing. It is wonderful.

Exciting News!

2010-10-21T23:34:00.000-10:00

Wonderful, wonderful Mari from the thoroughly lovable blog, Bookworm with a View and the brilliant Manic Mommies Book Club has just emailed to tell me fantastic news! Exit the Actress was chosen to be on the 2011 reading list for the Manic Mommies Book Club!

They choose twelve books a year--one book to read and discuss every month and it looks like Nell will be the book for May! I am thrilled! The Manic Mommies are amazing! They: have a weekly podcast with 50,000 downloads a week, write for Real Simple.com, were just ranked the third most influential mother's group by Forbes Magazine and have adorable calendars at Target, Wal Mart and most big bookstores.

Their entire demeanor is generous, forthright, astute and kind. And, they discuss books I really love. I just listened to Mari's marvelous interview with Elin Hildebrand who wrote The Island. I loved it. I loved the book and I loved the supportive, creative, inquisitive tenor, timbre, tone and pitch of the discussion. I am so thrilled Nell is going to be part of this...

History to Story

2010-10-14T02:13:00.000-10:00

There comes a point when the bits of research start to hop out of their prescribed, neatly labelled boxes in my head and go visiting. Time lines start to figure skate into curlicue loops and dates play hopscotch in my brain. It is a mutiny. It is anarchy. It requires a total lock down and reorganization of all notes/outlines/scribbles. It is also the moment when the dates are changing from history into story and it is fun. Well, once everyone is re-labelled and reorganized, it is fun.

It happens to characters too. They change their hair, their walk, their breakfast, their shoes--history to story. They are their own people now and they will not be dictated to. Everyone suddenly has places to go and people to see. This one is off to an art gallery. That one wants to buy a hat. After trying to Frankenstein these historical people into storied life, they suddenly step out of the Mary Poppins chalk drawing and run amok and my job becomes crowd control--very: 'first the hat, then the gallery and then we will all go fly a kite'. It is an energizing, exciting, terrifying, fun time in the writing process and now that I have been through this once, I realize how valuable it is. Chaotic and messy--but valuable.

By the way, thank you to all the wonderful Plum Bean friends who met me over at Goodreads. It was lovely. It was like being met off the plane with a pink plumeria lei and a ride from the airport to the beach.

Goodreads and the Other Priya

2010-10-12T00:00:00.000-10:00

So, somewhere out there there is an author who must really not like me.

One of the perks of having an unusual name--a name that you have to initially repeat three times and then subtly drop into conversation in order to remind people as you know they cannot remember it--is that you get a gmail account with your name on it. Nope. Did not happen.

And yet people really close to me, family included, send email to priyaparmar@gmail and this is not me. Whoever that Priya is, she has received attached documents up to 600 pages (my book included as well as my doctorate), emails about the dentist, the beach, the Honda, the birthday party, the bonfire at the beach, my friend Tora's haircut, the centipede in my brother's room, a broken toe and every other type of email that you really do not want other people to see. I do not blame my family and friends for doing it as I have done it myself. The funny thing about email? You cannot get it back.

There is also an author called Priya Parmar. She teaches at Brooklyn College and writes books about troubled urban youth. I have a horrible creeping suspicion that the Priya of the gmail and the Priya of the youth in revolt are the same Priya. In which case that Priya must really not like me as Goodreads has now conflated our profiles. I am listed as having written four books--three with ferocious looking teenagers on the covers and one with Nell in a lovely Restoration dress. I have also been rated with three stars on a book that no one has read yet.

I love Goodreads! I love the very fact that Goodreads exists let alone the wonderful Seussian book smorgasbord feast that it actually is. And yet this morning I had to write them a tiny note asking if they could disentangle the dual Priyas. I felt terrible!

Wonderful People

2010-10-08T12:39:00.000-10:00

Some people are just lovely. The wonderful Book Quoter, who has a brilliant blog, A Thousand Books With Quotes, has highlighted Exit the Actress today. It was a generous, kind, extraordinary thing to do. Throughout this process wonderful people have stepped forward to help. On the Facebook page, forty two people have gone out of their way to be sweet to Nell.

Since I have been back in London, my dear, dear friends have been universally thrilled, exuberant, supportive and encouraging about the book. Tim, an old family friend here in London, literally whooped in the street and made my day. In New York, my about to be sister in law (a brilliant writer--check out Kelly Cutrone's book, If You Have to Cry, Go Outside, And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You), just finished reading it and has been unendingly sweet about Nell. Keep in mind that she read it while working full time as an editor, writing two books and planning a wedding.

Wonderful blog friends show up here and make me so happy by leaving kind, helpful comments. It has all made this whole journey wonderful. It makes it communal. It makes me so happy. Really, really, thank you.

Networking

2010-10-07T00:48:00.000-10:00

It is an awful spidery, webby, Machiavellian word. It implies grease uncomfortable shoes and sweaty palms and all sorts of other unlovely prospects. And yet, I am finding I was wrong. I was just sent the information from Simon and Schuster about social networking media (Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads mostly) and promoting the book (now that it is less than four months away!). I decidd to tackle Facebook first. It is the name that threw me. "Fan" page. And we are back to feeling of the painful shoes and spider webs.

But I found it was nothing like that. I dove in and set it up. Put up a photo of the book and the trailer I love and said nothing about it to anyone. Twenty eight lovely people came along and pushed a button to say that they liked it. It was lovely! It made my day! So here it is: Exit the Actress!

Walking

2010-10-03T13:20:00.000-10:00

Fantastic research today! It is amazing, after spending so long in the 17th century to be writing about the 20th. It feels a bit disloyal somehow and I miss the lost in the mists of time fogginess about the Restoration. The First World War is compelling in its own strange, fantastic hat sort of way but I do miss the bizarre health remedies, superstitions and the sheer, raucous libertarianism of the Restoration. It is funny but the morals of the Restoration were far looser than the Edwardian period.

It is a heavenly treat to wander over to the square where the people I am writing about actually lived. Same trees are growing in the same square, same glass in the same windows, same numbers on the same doors. Marvelous. And the sun nearly came out for a minute today. My mother asked me if I have direct morning light in the flat and I honestly couldn't answer her. I miss blue.

I am walking everywhere. Even in New York I do not walk this much. I love it. But then, there is a tube strike on and so everyone is walking. I am really odd in that I love the pulled togetherness of national inconvenience. It is like when the bridge closes for rain in Hawaii and you are stuck in Hanalei. Inconvenient but communal. I like that.

London!

2010-10-02T16:22:00.000-10:00

Wow, Hawaii to London is a long way. I love it but I had forgotten exactly how cold, wet and big it is. The small bright, breezy convenience of Hawaii and the sprawling, beachy cup cake colors of Los Angeles feel far away. But it is lovely to be back in the country where I lived for so long and to see my dear, dear friends.

Today was the first day that clicked into place. You know the day where you suddenly collect yourself into one time zone, one city, one life? Things make sense and you look up and expect to be where you are? It feels much better. Now, I can breathe and get started on the mountain of research I have to do for the Second Book. Yikes... More tomorrow!

Her Fearful Symmetry

2010-09-22T10:14:00.000-10:00

First of all--great title. I suppose credit must go to Blake but still, great title. This book was interesting in an utterly atmospheric but oddly plotted sort of way. You could see events coming down the pike from a long way off. What fascinated were the images/themes of doubled selves, fractured identity and repeated history. Every element of this novel was introduced and then revised and reinvented. That fun house mirror quality, and Niffenegger's matter of fact approach to ghosts is what compelled me rather than the significant plot points of the story.

And then there is the cemetery. Highgate Cemetery is spooky. I lasted four minutes before I had to leave, George Eliot or no George Eliot. It was winter, in my first term at Oxford (a university that has its fair share of spooky), and I was going down to London for the night with a friend. She kept going, I waited outside the Western Gate.

It isn't cemeteries in general. I can wander happily in Père Lachaise in Paris. There is a rightness to Jim Morrison, Collette, Chopin, Edith Piaf, Balzac and Oscar Wilde hanging out together for eternity. I love that it is customary to kiss Wilde's tomb only when wearing lipstick. But Highgate Cemetery is different. The clammy, grey damp and shady green overgrown quality sent me running for the road. Her Fearful Symmetry captures just this decaying, grey green splendor and then slowly paints each of the characters from this murky palette. The one character who grows brighter is the one I least expected to bloom. It was a lovely counterpoint but the feeling of gloomy, ghosty, misty sadness still pervades the story.

A lovely book but never ever before bed.

The Real Thing

2010-09-20T10:12:00.000-10:00

It arrived! The book! The real one! Touchstone did an early print run to get it out to bookstores and reviewers. And it is beautiful! The cover is sumptuous and matte and rich and lovely. It wraps all the way around in a ruby red curtain sort of way. It is my favorite red.

Touchstone made the inside so lovely. The text is so pretty. Every letter looks like a letter. The recipes look like recipes. The snozberries taste like snozberries. And my tiny photo is on the back. How bizarre.

In other news, I have moved from the low country of South Carolina to the grey damp of Highgate Cemetery. I put down Pat Conroy for a minute (as I want to save the next one for the plane) and picked up Her Fearful Symmetry. It is a book that must be read in full sunlight and never before going to bed. It is that spooky.

Blog Birthday

2010-09-13T09:19:00.000-10:00

I totally zipped passed it and forgot! I started the Plum Bean on August 11, 2009. Happy Extremely Belated Birthday!

I began writing having no idea how to write a blog. How personal? How truthful? How much do I say about the book? About my agent? About my publisher? About my life? It was a gently roaming watermark. And then, how to find other bloggers? Do I just pop in and introduce myself with a comment? Is that presumptuous? Do I leave a comment with no introduction? Is that rude? Do I invite them back to the Plum Bean for coffee and sandwiches? No idea. So, I lurked. And lurked.

And then I gave up. I stopped writing for weeks at a time. I couldn't see the point. It felt like marching outside and hurling random information at an uninterested night sky. And so I decided to give it two more weeks and then call it quits. And something happened. That waiting finish line left me feeling like I could just pop by other blogs and say hello. What did it matter if I got it wrong, as I had decided to leave the party anyway.

And I made a huge discovery: The natives were friendly! The bloggers were sweet and welcoming and helpful and truthful and encouraging and fun and I was so very very happy to find them. The watermark bloomed into a circle. A sense of community grew.

I want to say thank you: To the bloggers who are truly involved in my book and do stay for coffee and sandwiches--I hope they they know exactly who they are--and the more explosive sprite variety, the one stop shop sort of bloggers who pop in, charm, chat, and then go on their way. Both are tremendously valued. You have made this so much fun. Thank you.

The Outsiders

2010-09-10T14:03:00.000-10:00

So, my wonderful eleven year old student is reading S.E. Hinton's, The Outsiders. This is my second recent go round with this novel as one of my wonderful students last year also read it. Ponyboy Curtis. What a name. Brother of Sodapop Curtis. The three brothers are orphaned when novel opens but these names tell us so much about the kind of parents they had. It is a genius stroke of doing so much with so little.

I remember reading it the first time as a seventh grader and totally revising the list of names I wanted to name my future pets and children. You know how we keep those lists of names we like? For me it has expanded to pets, children and characters. I read The Outsiders and wanted wonderfully quirky names on the list. I am not sure that sense ever left me as I still have truly quirky names on the list.

Rereading it, it is a far more spare book than I remember from middle school. The language is just enough and the balance never tips. The reader wants to know these people. The story is utterly compelling but secondary to these brilliant characters. It is a deceptively difficult way to write. To conjure complicated, likable people out of empty air using very few words is a tricky business. And she was sixteen when she wrote it! Wonderful.

The Catalogue and South of Broad

2010-09-06T10:30:00.000-10:00

At first I resented South of Broad for not being Beach Music. I missed the town, the time, and the characters in all their peculiar, finely drawn specifics. But then I surrendered. I find I have to do that when I really fall for an author and want to read everything he or she has written. I have to let go of one storied trajectory and put my faith in another.

Sometimes it does not work and the magic of one book is too binding to allow transgression into another written in a near but not congruent voice. Sometimes the reader/author love affair requires a long break so that the soft focus process of erosion can set in. In this case it was a leap from lily pad to lily pad and the resentment was fierce. But then I tasted South of Broad's own brand of homemade magic elixir. It is majestic: marvelous and whole and consuming. It asks question of friendship and how your history is held in public trust by those who were there and who love you. It explores the completeness of lots thrown in together when you are very young.

In other news: bang, it arrived on my doorstep. Touchstone (now just Touchstone with a lovely new angel winged, reaching firefly sort of insignia and no longer Touchstone Fireside) Spring 2011 Catalogue. I opened the first page first page is for the Black Eyed Peas singer. The one with the name I can never remember. The second page is for Exit the Actress. Nell landed up on page two! I am thrilled. It is getting realer and realer.

Bumble Bees

2010-08-31T11:10:00.000-10:00

I have fallen madly for Pat Conroy. I just re read Beach Music in all its variant lushness and am now plowing through South of Broad. His writing is huge.

When I teach writing, I tell my students to follow that bumble of unrestrained thought that zips across your mind before your big booted, finicky inner editor goes out bumble bee squishing. Everyone has a bumble bee of random, irrepressible, engaged thought that goes flying around your mental sky before common sense, that killer of flying things, kicks in.

Conroy has a fleet of bumble bees. He writes in a voice rich in bold, specific, observant precision. His writing is apologetically random and loosely strung. His characters are exact, human and deeply quirked. He draws in particulars. Fearlessly declaiming the large pink elephant in the corner, Conroy writes the thing we all think or have thought but he does not choose a garden variety thing. He goes for broke and looks for the thing that lives on a level so subtle that articulation does not know its address.

He loves ordinary verbs mismatched with extraordinary nouns. He will pair 'ride' with 'bloodstream' and suddenly a white blood cell is piloting a small Cessna through the vascular system. He anthropomorphises the inanimate and endows all he touches with a juicy beating heart. This writer loves the sea, courage, the salt, friendship, turtles, frailty and the low country of South Carolina. This writer lives out on a limb. It does not always work, but when it does, it is glorious.

Hop Hop Fridays

2010-08-27T10:06:00.001-10:00

9:13 on a Friday and I go to add my link on lovely Jennifer's wonderful site. 262. By 9:13 in the morning? Holy hoppers that is a lot of people spending a lot of time thinking about books. I love that. All of the publishing websites (the ones I am eternally grateful to for helping me to get my agent and book deal) are often less than hopeful about the future of the written word.

Not that people will stop writing but that publishing as we know it will loose its shape and become a sort of cyber silly putty version of itself. Distressing. I love books. I love trees too which presents a quandary. I love the heft of a book and the weight of a book and the soft shushing of pages turning. I like the sheer inconvenience of a book. The way it takes up all the room in your bag and makes you get rid of the extra pot of moisturizer that has four dribblets left.

I like to write in books in my own indecipherable scribble. I like it when my book gets that utterly bedraggles, rained on, sandy, broken in look. Can that happen with a cyber book? With 262 hoppers at 9:13 in the morning I am fizzing with hope for books.

What is it all About?

2010-08-26T08:39:00.000-10:00

I had a wonderful mentoring poetry professor in college who would recite oceans of staggering rhythm and rhyme and then sit back and ask "What is it all about?" Same cadence. Same inflection. Same meter. Same question. Every time.

That question has lodged itself in my brain and pops up in just that rolling Russian accent each time I encounter new writing. And each time I re encounter known writing. And now when I first meet my own writing. It is funny. One would think the theme would present itself and the structure would be built to support it. It doesn't happen that way for me.

The reveal is slow. Many times I begin a sentence having no idea where it is headed. The theme of that sentence will not necessarily introduce itself to me before it gets behind the wheel of the words and takes off. It is only after I have chased through stoplights and over hill and under dale that it will tell me what it is all about. It is an unusual progression.

I have just met the central theme of my second book. Oddly enough it is a blood relation of the theme of my first book. This thematic family must fascinate me. I was at the coffee shop the other day when the lovely girl behind the counter happened to ask "What is it all about?" Out it flew. Whole, concise, surprising. Lovely to meet you.

Authors

2010-08-22T11:50:00.000-10:00

I have been reading historical fiction since my dear friend and now brilliant historical thriller novelist, Leslie (known as 'The Bun' in my family) gave me Sharon Kay Penman's wonderful novel of Richard III, The Sunne in Splendour in high school. It was huge, sweeping, thrilling, precise, dramatic, poetic, and addictive. Richard III ceased to be a grumpy, hunchbacked caricature king who murdered his nephews and then lost his crown on a thorn bush. Instead he morphed into a flawed, logical, understandable human being. I was hooked.

I am an omnivorous fiction eater. I love stories across genre and gender. But when I decided to write, I knew it would be historical fiction. Never ever did I think the author that started it off would read and like my novel but she did! Sharon Kay Penman mentions Exit the Actress in her most recent marvelous blog and has written a wonderful blurb for the back of the book. Her research is meticulously extraordinary and her gift for storytelling knocks me over. I love her books. I am thrilled.

Ummm

2010-08-19T11:32:00.000-10:00

So, I haven't written in a bit. It was part dislocation, part disorganization and part sheepishness. I still haven't left. It is terrible. I am two oceans and a continent away from where I need to be. My family has a penchant for changing tickets, but even by their standards this is impressive. I am working on it.

It has been a strange fly went by few weeks. At the eleventh hour, I got sick, couldn't get onto the plane, moved out of my house because it was rented to vacationers because I was supposed to get on the plane, moved to my bedroom in my hanai family's house (in Hawaii you have your blood family and the the concentric circles of hanai family that are like real family--aunties, uncles, nieces, nephews--I love it), moved one too many boxes and got sicker, missed the next flight, and am now working on getting another one. Disaster.

Everything is being thrown for a hula loop. The very sweet, super lovely estate agent Alex in London, who I speak to regularly at three am because of the time difference, called my house, spoke to the renters at three am, worried where I was and why I had not gotten on the plane and sent me a concerned email. My angelic friend Adriana had her birthday in London and I missed it and my friend Sadie repeatedly called my UK mobile thinking I was in London and then worried that I might be ignoring her--disaster.

On the upside I am staying in my bedroom at a lovely house called Summerbreak, it has been a gorgeous string of hot, blue breeze days and I am still reading Pat Conroy. Not all bad...

Last Day

2010-08-09T08:47:00.000-10:00

Admittedly this is my second last day in the past few weeks. My family are big fans of moving tickets. United Airlines hates me. Still, it has come round again and I do not like it. The lastiness of it. Last swim here. Last muffin there. Last sunset, palm tree, shell, beach walk and rain drop. Although I am headed to a place that is very keen on raindrops. But fresh, warm Hawaiian rain smells lushly of palm trees and plumeria and seawater.

Today will be a day of hugs, kisses, goodbyes and forgetting stuff. Last year I left the mainland shoes that I meant to pack last, sitting on my front porch. They sat there for a month before the UPS man found the front door open and popped them inside--I love Hawaii. The year before that it was my favorite bikini, my sunglasses and my book--all left on top of the car in the garage.

I hate when I forget my my book. I feel like Linus does about his blanket about my book when I travel. I usually choose a beloved book that I have already read to take with me on the plane. One that is softened by reading in the rain and stuffed with phone numbers and movie ticket stubs. In the context of airports and baggage claims and Cinnabon, I want to read a familiar landscape. It the life that proves continuous as I zip over the oceans.

My book does not care that I have crossed seventeen time zones and cannot see straight. It marches along its prescribed trajectory in a wonderfully predictable old friend telling a story you have heard a million times before but love anyway kind of way. This time it is Pat Conroy's Beach Music. It is a vast, teeming giant of a book. It speaks enormously of home and love and friendship and selves loved, lost and found again only filed under another name. It is woven on a huge, finely wrought loom. It will be a lovely place to live on my last day.

Hopping Fridays

2010-08-06T08:48:00.000-10:00

I have not hopped in ages. It isn't that I forgot about it, but I sort of misplaced, mistimed it in the last few months. I think it migrated and got more Thursday eveningish instead of Friday morningish and then I came back to Hawaii and everyone else's Thursday evening became my Thursday mid-afternoon. Mid afternoon usually found me taking a cat nap at the beach to get over my jet lag. Tricky.

But now I have rediscovered the delightful, busy, populated roller derby hop! It is like that feeling of finding a dress that I love in the back of my closet behind the winter coat that makes me look like a sausage. I love that feeling!

August

2010-08-05T09:26:00.000-10:00

Right now one of my students is reading Middlemarch. He is wrestling with Dorothea's fierce opinionated independence set against the gloriously layered strata of the seething, gossipy town. The blurbs on the back are from Henry James and Virginia Woolf. Another student is reading The Red Tent. This and the Caged Bird are the required reading for her new school. Not such easy subjects for the first week. In at the deep end--diving only. All these books promise big themes, sweeping scope, epic drama. A list actors would take the leading roles.

I just finished The Castaways by Elin Hildebrand... not quite the same sphere of seriousness. Up and coming actors would take these small jewel box parts and re define their range. I like it when you read exactly the book you wanted. I was lured in by the beachy, summery, East Coast island cover and the shipwrecked title. It is a small story of loss and redemption in a fragmented un-whole, whole way. I like the smallness, the preciseness. I like the Nantucket-ness and the sand dunes and the grey shingled summer houses. I like the way the author circumscribes her story. It is clearly defined. It is about this. I like the strength of her choice.

Eight friends. Four couples. One couple dies. The other three shift and reshape. Simple, truthful. Bare, raw but unexpectedly hitting the mark dead center. I like when a book does exactly what is sets out to do. There are a series of promises from author to publisher to reader. The cover. The blurbs. The back cover copy. I like when a book meets these obligations. It makes me like a book that I already like, even more.

Things I Will Miss...

2010-07-27T22:38:00.000-10:00

I just washed my hair outside under a full moon in a warm shower by a stone wall. Can you tell my ten year old student and I have been studying prepositions? Prepositions and Julie of the Wolves--I love Julie of the Wolves.

I am about to leave. Conversations begin with "Have you got a ticket?" and I am eating more pineapple. There are things I will miss about Hawaii. Funny how things become instantly more valuable when they are about to disappear. The way I usually fall madly in love with a book as soon as I leave it on a plane. It is not that I did not appreciate outdoor showers and pikake and big bright full moons in deep black skies before. I did. But as I start to leave these things become numbered, last, few, and important. The ocean always looks bluest at that particular, last bend in the road when you are driving to the airport.

I have always loved it here. I have loved the unbroken family thread leading back to my childhood that is part of my every day in this place. My brother flying off a rope swing into the Kalihiwai River, doing math in the sand with my dad at Pine Trees at sunset, my sister jumping off a cliff on a dare, riding bikes at night and looking for wood for a bonfire on the beach. These things are current here. People remember them. All the ladies at Foodland ask when is my mother coming back and why aren't I buying more vegetables?

It was fun. We moved in family packs. Brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, we roamed from beach to house to beach to house in a sprawling, hungry, muddy, salty gang. Smaller siblings got to ride on the handlebars. It took eight friends to teach me to drive. There is a rainbow on my license. "Just us" meant my brother and sister and I. "Everybody" meant twenty kids. We spoke in plurals. Parents were Aunties and Uncles. Now we are Aunties and Uncles. I love it.

I love the quiet, soft air, the night blooming jasmine and the heavy, warm rain. I love taking my shoes off automatically before entering a house. I love sunbaked sand under brown feet. I love lizards on the ceiling, peacocks at the beach and chickens in the parking lot. I love worrying that a coconut will fall on the car. I love that a flower behind the left ear means that you are taken and behind the right means that you are not. It is the left because that is the side of the heart.

It will all be here for me when I get back. I will fall in love with wherever I go. I will love red buses and bookstores and hot chocolate and woolly mittens. But for right now, I will miss it here.

Surprise

2010-07-25T21:24:00.000-10:00

I do not know why I was so surprised. I have encountered nothing but kindness and support all along this nutty, twisty, yellow bricked writing road. But this past week has been different. This week has been yellow roses in a wicker basket, sunshine week. The book trailer, so generously created with such care and love by such an extraordinary friend, made the release sooner, realer, bigger, shinier, and funner, as my sister used to say.

Now it involves everyone. I love that. My dear friend Adriana pre ordered five copies for her book club--even though her wedding is three weeks away and she has so many zillions of things to think about. Amber (her wedding is 108 days away) pre ordered some for her husband to be and family. My mom pre ordered six and then pressed the 'I want to read it on Kindle button" eleven times. Everyone I bump into in Hanalei has looked up the book on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. A boy I had a crush on when I was fourteen shrieked "Great cover!" from across the road at the beach today. I had no idea he knew I was writing a book and I haven't seen him since I got my braces off. And lovely, lovely, steadfast friends from the Plum Bean pre ordered and pressed the button and looked up the book and want to set up blog tour interviews--amazing.

It has been one of those really special weeks of everyone checking in. Wonderful friends who forgive me for falling off the planet wrote to electronically bounce up and down with glee. My sweet friend Gersande from high school, who I have not seen in nearly twenty years (more Priya moving to distant lands and falling off the planet) wrote to all her friends announcing the book. My beloved, angelic friend Jack and his wonderful, wonderful wife Jess had a baby boy this week and he still checked in to bounce up and down. It has been an extraordinary, brown shoulder, blue water, white wave, yellow sun, buoyant, floaty, fizzy, happy week. And I have been so moved. Thank you.

Book Trailer!!!!!!!

2010-07-21T14:43:00.001-10:00

Second version of book trailer. No idea how to erase first version so here are both. I love the cello...

Yikes

2010-07-21T09:53:00.000-10:00

So it is down to the wire. Emails end in 'ASAP' and there is discussion of being in the 'chrome' phase. I think this is when the cover and back cover are set and cannot be undone? A last minute wonderful quote from Sharon Kay Penman arrived and my editor 'yanked' the book off the press to include it.

So far this has been a magical process for me. Magical in that is is surreal, happy and seemingly turning the impossible into the possible. I feel like my book has gone like a handkerchief into a top hat and is returning to me a fluffy white rabbit. Also magical in that I have no idea how it works. I have a sense of an enormous hive of talented, experienced people working at a ferocious pace. This book is being released on February 1, 2011 and there is so much work involved between then and now that everyone is racing--today--on a Wednesday in July.

It is strange that words I wrote utterly alone at a white desk covered in birthday cards, photos, books, postcards and my Nell portrait, are going out to meet this enormous fray. Definitely magic. It is also strange that there is a stop date. There is a point when tinkering must stop, hats are chosen, words are fixed, and chapters have chosen their dresses for the ball. The subtly shifting elements are no longer mine to move around, recast and repaint. A scarlet slipper shunted beneath a gilt chair is just going to have to stay there. It will never grow up to be a grey laced boot left out in a garden.

Somehow I never saw that day coming. But that day seems to be today. The book is really truly done.

Galley!

2010-07-17T11:55:00.000-10:00

It arrived. No. They arrived. Six galleys in my living room. Wow, that suddenly sounded very Pirandello-esque six books come looking for the author. They arrived just as I was running out the door to go down to Hanalei to meet a friend. I grabbed one and ran out the door.

In Hanalei I met up with my friend David. David has just finished writing his book and starting the dreaded agent search. We sat in the last of the evening sun and then wandered over to Java Kai where we bumped into two other friends sitting at a table on the veranda. One of them, Cris, is an established author and the other, Mark, a musician and rapacious reader. Both were super helpful when I was writing Exit the Actress. I took Nell out of my bag and she went out for her first walk in the wide world. They were delighted. They were thrilled. Suddenly it had all happened. Exit the Actress was no longer in the remote 'what if' of someday but it was that day, a Friday afternoon in Hanalei.

Tina, another friend, is a voracious reader and owns Java Kai. Recognizing immediately what was going on, she came over and joined us. Then we were five: three writers and two readers. Just then I heard my name called and my wonderful, recently graduated, about to go off to college student Wyatt and his wonderful, already in college, brother Max appeared on the veranda. It was one of those Sesame Street summer evenings where everyone stops by Gordon and Susan's porch. Now we were readers and writers and students. The conversation flowed around words expressed on a page. Unusual on such a small, remote island. The how of it, the surprise of it, the trickiness of it, the rhythm of it, the home of it, the who of it.

Group endeavor. It is so much more rewarding than solo endeavor. Sounds like the name of a space shuttle. This blog, where you have all been so supportive and kind, the world I where I studied and researched where everyone encouraged me to risk it and write, the happy communicative world where I concentrated and wrote: I have been so lucky to keep bumping into this conversation that flows around words.

Lovely People

2010-07-14T10:38:00.000-10:00

Exit the Actress: A Novel

Here is the cover! It is ready for pre-order on Borders.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon.com! When it says that 'someone who bought this book also bought', Philippa Gregory's The White Queen (such a marvellous book) and Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna--that 'someone' would be my mom. She had a pre-ordering fiesta yesterday.

I have beet dragging my little brown feetsies today as I did not want to write a new post. I want to keep up yesterday's post for yesterday's comments. I loved what everyone wrote yesterday. No, loved is the right word but the wrong word. I was astounded. The encouragement, affection, sincerity, support and generosity of spirit knocked me over.

I have never written anything that sailed under my own colors. I have always edited or assisted or co-written or ghost written. I have been half-lit, half-shadowed, tucked away, out of sight--safe. It is a wooden raft, open sea, sharky sort of scary to do this. It is my name on the book--twice. Yikes. Yesterday made me feel like I had thirty people on the wooden raft with me. It felt like the 'When You're a Jet' song from West Side Story. We are setting sail together. It feels so much better.

AMAZON!

2010-07-12T13:05:00.000-10:00

Exit the Actress: A Novel [Paperback]

Priya Parmar (Author)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A real triumph….A vivid imagining of the restoration London of Charles II with Nell Gwynn as a powerful and engaging heroine set in the busy world of the theater. This debut novel captures the glamorous world of the amoral court and the struggle of the city. Priya Parmar is a writer to watch.”—Philippa Gregory
Author of The Other Boleyn Girl

“Nell is irrepressible, spunky, delightful: who wouldn’t fall in love with her? Her story unfolds through diary entries, letters, news announcements, recipes. It¹s a tasty and often amusing confection, sure to please. I absolutely adored it.”
—Sandra Gulland, author of the Josephine B. Trilogy and Mistress of the Sun

Product Description

"A triumph" says Philippa Gregory, of this debut novel about the life of the legendary 17th century actress and mistress of Charles II, Nell Gwyn.

Product Details

Paperback: 464 pages
Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (February 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1439171173

I just found this! You can pre-order Nell! Exit the Actress will be released on February 1, 2011! You can ask to read it on a Kindle. You can put it in a cart. You can buy it for a mouse. You can put it in a house. Nell loves to eat green eggs and ham.

I love that they included the wonderful, warm generous quotes. I love that it will be out before my birthday. I love that my mom just ordered two copies.

Now it is getting real...

Wuthering Heights -

2010-07-12T01:23:00.000-10:00

I love Wuthering Heights. It is a controversial love as many people get fed up with Cathy's insanity and Heathcliff's surliness and their general inability to get it together until one of them is a window tapping wraith. These characters do not behave well. Their moral compass is absent rather than merely askew and they treat neither each other nor anyone else with particular kindness. But they are inevitable and absolute if not functional. It is just that extreme, awkwardly angled quality that appeals to me. Tepid Victorian tea time love with its fire-seething, passionate underbelly is wonderful but Wuthering Heights goes for broke right on the surface.

Bronte is a good reminder to consider ignoring all verboten writing cliches. She shows you that if you can really pull it off, with buckle and swash and verve and sass--do it. Emily Bronte does not adhere to the 'show don't tell' sacred precept of writing. She tells it all. "...he is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." Cathy does not shy away from the grand proclamation. She does not hedge round it, evoking desperate love through half suggested thought and the implications of a small scale action. She dives in and swims across the sea. Their devotion is messy, incongruent, fragmented, difficult and ultimately doomed. Her commitment lives in her words and not her actions--another broken writing principle. Characters are usually deciphered through action but again, Bronte shows us her passion driven hand through words. But what fantastic words.

Heathcliff, although he does a great deal of mumbling, grouching, stomping and rushing out of doors to go running through the rain on the Serengeti plain, finally makes his great statement of undiluted passion. And it is so worth it when he does: "You say I killed you--haunt me then! They say the murdered do haunt their murderers.... Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad! Only don't leave me alone in this abyss where I cannot find you!" I suppose shouting this at her dead body is showing as well as telling so Heathcliff does a bit of both. It is interesting that we most enjoy when the goldenest golden writing rules get snapped straight through. Bronte even uses exclamation points--a cardinal no no. But it works. I do not think you can invite someone to drive you mad without an exclamation point.

To try and capture the enormous raw emotion in the flattened real estate of the Roman alphabet is a dicey business. You have to be able to do it well--really well. You have to startle and illuminate, pull the reader absolutely into the gushing heart of the character and then show us something new. Anything less and you are done for. But what a thing if you can do it.

Sandy Feet, Left Turns and Cherries on Top

2010-07-09T09:39:00.000-10:00

How delicious. The wonderful Kate from Kate's Library gave me this perfectly pink, frosted cup cakey, perfect for a Friday award. People are lovely aren't they? Every so often that thought strikes me.

Yesterday I had to make a left turn. I dislike left turns and will go long distances to avoid them. They give me the same feeling I had in fourth grade when I had to stand up and recite a poem in French--everyone watching, sure I will get it wrong, yuck. But yesterday, as I waited in the middle of the intersection, starting to panic, a very nice old man in an enormous monster, fire breathing red, behemoth truck, staved off the oncoming hoards and cleared a place for me to go.

It is Hawaiian custom to wave to anyone on the road who has helped you: people waiting at the other side of a one lane bridge, people who let you in, and people who help you turn left. Actually you also wave to people you know, people you might know, people who drive the same car as people you know, grandmothers of people you know, and anyone who waves at you. You end up waving a lot. This man blew me a kiss and shouted, "Ya, you go get em". He shouted in pigeon, the local dialect, and it sounded like a cheerleading cheer. People are lovely.

So the Cherry on Top Award Rules:

I must:

1. Thank the person who gave it to me.

2. List three things I love about myself.

3. Post a photo that I love.

I already left her a note but just in case: Thank you Kate!

Three things:
1. I can swim underwater a long, long way.
2. I can jump off a cliff.
3. I can listen tot he same song eleven times in a row.

I have a friend who says, "Ah but can you do this?" and twirls around. I can't do that.

So? Five Blogs? Can I do three and save two? One rainy day there will be a saved award fiesta at the plum bean.

So:

Doctordi: for fearless honesty.

Whitney at She is to Fond of Books: for delightful insights.

Lindy Lou Mac at Lindy Lou Mac's Book Reviews for her wonderful reviews in wonderful lands.

A photo that I love?

Art and Life

2010-07-07T06:27:00.001-10:00

It is a strange and symbiotic relationship. My life seeps into my writing--shaping characters, reactions, figures of speech, mannerisms, footwear. It is not a conscious fusion. I write what I know but I mix it with the multiple layers and nuances of research, of history, of interpretation. Whether things are tumbling and tumulting in my life or whether familiar, long faded chickens are coming home to roost, it shows up in my writing. A scene that would have turned right follows my footprint and turns left.

I am not sure that I mind it. It rings true and is enough dissolved and diluted that it does not cause any uncomfortable recognition in others. Only someone who knows me really well would be able to spot the collisions and connections. It is not an exact translation but more a messy game of post office. Events get reshaped and trimmed and tinted until they are something new. But the bones of the real still hold the frame underneath.

It is not only large scale installation change but small detailed finish carpentry change as well. I saw a rainbow while driving my sister to the airport the other day. That elusive moment of pale striped sky stayed with me. Without rain there are no rainbows. It rained in my writing yesterday.

Kids

2010-07-02T20:29:00.000-10:00

So, I went down to Hanalei, the small town near my house, to teach one of my students. He is on summer break and teaching schedules get a bit erratic. We went to Java Kai and worked to the smell of kona coffee and whipped cream.

Fun. Spelling--"pulchritude"--wow, good word. He got it. He is going into sixth grade. Word games, noisy pop quizzes (he gets to give me one and then I get to give him one--only fair--he won). Adverbs--less fun, and reading comprehension. It was rambunctious, summery and whole. It is amazing to watch a sixth grader throw himself into English class on a sunny Friday in summer.

When we left Java Kai to go and find his mom who is a close friend of mine, we bumped into two of my other students--sisters aged ten and sixteen. All three are friends. It was wonderful to see them all together. Like chattering, chirping, chickens. I went upstairs, sat in the sun and spoke to both moms. Eventually another student arrived--the older brother of the recently graduated student. He is watching the sixth grader this summer and had come to take him to the beach. While I was talking to him, the ten year old put her hand in mine, pulled me down to her level and whispered in my ear, "I finished my homework already." Huge smile on her face. She kept hold of my hand and tried on my ring.

I watched them all. The ten year old is reading Mandy. The sixteen year old starts Wuthering Heights tomorrow. The sixth grader is reading The Mysterious Benedict Society. They are just discovering it. The pull of a book. The intense relationship between reader and story. It was wonderful to sit in the sun with them.

Brightly Blue

2010-07-01T06:09:00.000-10:00

So I am reading the House at Riverton. Beautiful, gripping, atmospheric stuff. I feel a bit bad as I assigned my student Middlemarch. As he will learn from Middlemarch: such is the way of things. I did give him Brideshead Revisited (I sent him on a bit of a Catholic author, Graham Greene/Evelyn Waugh adventure) before I sent him spiraling into the 19th century. And I will shore him up with Hemingway once he is done.

My other student is about to enter the violent stormy heart of Wuthering Heights as an antidote to her summer reading of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings--a gorgeous, raw nerve, screeching tire sort of story. Only Emily Bronte will be able to move her out of the desperate South.

I, meanwhile am wandering through the early 20th century countryside with Kate Morton. It is strangely at odds with the bright blue water and pale yellow beach. But perfect too. When I look up from the misted walkways and the rustle of silk, I am here. The sunny blue water is extra splashy, extra bright, the sand is extra sandy, the salt is extra tart and the great, green turtles are extra turtley in comparison.

Nell Gwyn

2010-06-29T10:02:00.002-10:00

I have a beautiful genuine etching of Nell Gwyn on my desk. She arrived on my thirtieth birthday and has kept me company throughout the writing process. It is the Valentine Green etching of the Peter Lely portrait and she is lovely. A small smile flirts across her mouth and her eyes are direct and truthful. She thrums with authenticity. She is the woman I wrote. I wonder how much that image influenced the writing? Bunches and bunches I'd say.

I recently spoke to the person who gave me this portrait. He has been rooting and cheering for me all the way through. I thanked him for his help. When he insisted that he did not do anything I told he was wrong. Beyond the immeasurable gift of belief and encouragement, he gave me my Nell. I wrote the woman in that portrait. Without realizing it until today.

Busy Books

2010-06-27T09:06:00.000-10:00

It is a strange thing when books take up seventy percent of your suitcase. My books seem to need more room than most. They spread out, get comfortable and expand once they are in situ. Stacked on the night table they look bendy, harmless and even friendly. Even waiting in their uneven, colorful stack, they are non aggressive and accommodating. Once in my trusty black, beribboned suitcase? They are ferocious. I do not know what they do in there. It is a case of Manifest Destiny. They get very pushy and ruthlessly edge out dresses and face cream.

And so the negotiations begin. That dress or that book--the book seems to get two votes to my poor blue dress's one. Only shoes and coats have enough authority to override books--sundresses just have no gravitas. Unfortunately, as I have been in the tropics for ages I am short on shoes and coats. My sister who is visiting, walks in and watches me talk to my belongings and then just walks out. She has seen this process before.

I am starting to get ready for my trip back to London. Starting and am already daunted. But it is unequivocal--I have to go. A very dear friend is getting married and if I have to spend a few months researching Next Book--so at least three months in London and then most of next spring in London-- when I will hopefully have a working draft of Next Book--yikes. It is not only the library research (which will be prodigious), but it is the small details, the number of windows on a particular house, the color of the wood on the floor boards, the lilac branches in the square--things I need to get right. Luckily there are wonderful blue plaques marking the houses I need to visit. Good for me as my eyesight is terrible and I am likely to count up the windows on the wrong house.

It will be lovely when I get there. I will see my friends, go to my dance classes, take notes, notes, and more notes for Next Book--but I am so unprepared. I have been a bit of an island savage for a while (with brief adventures on the mainland thrown in). I have just realized that I have forty seven puffed up research books that must come with me. Perhaps they would do better in a red suitcase? I can see that there will be much talking to my stuff before this is over.

My friend Michelle has just walked in and taken offense to my island savagery reference. She is now threatening to take me into the jungle for perspective. Oh dear--this summer is going to stranger and stranger.

Poetry

2010-06-24T21:24:00.000-10:00

I believe that it impossible to write without reading. It would be a static, stale, placid thing. I am an obsessive reader, but on rainy days and quiet days and greyer days and loosely knit days of shallow water, I love poetry. The economy. The heft. The precision. The balance. The song.

Thermopylae
Honor to those who in the life they lead
define and guard a Thermopylae.
Never betraying what is right,
consistent and just in all they do
but showing pity also, and compassion;
generous when they're rich, and when they're poor,
still generous in small ways,
still helping as much as they can;
always speaking the truth,
yet without hating those who lie.
And even more honor is due to them
when they foresee (as many do foresee)
that Ephialtis will turn up in the end,
that the Medes will break through after all.

I am on a bit of a Cavafy kick at the moment. "a" Thermopylae? How wonderful to find such an unsuspected metaphor. The single thing that you will defend with everything. To not define it in universal strokes. To understand that its boundaries shift slightly from life to life. How extraordinary.

There are days that are just ripe for Cavafy.

Also for Zbignew Herbert. He wrote this raw and luminous poem for Czeslaw Milosz and Milosz translated it. "Fallen nests"? What an incandescent usage.

Elegy of Fortinbras

BY ZBIGNIEW HERBERT

for C.M.

Now that we’re alone we can talk prince man to man

though you lie on the stairs and see no more than a dead ant

nothing but black sun with broken rays

I could never think of your hands without smiling

and now that they lie on the stone like fallen nests

they are as defenceless as before The end is exactly this

The hands lie apart The sword lies apart The head apart

and the knight’s feet in soft slippers

You will have a soldier’s funeral without having been a soldier

the only ritual I am acquainted with a little

There will be no candles no singing only cannon-fuses and bursts

crepe dragged on the pavement helmets boots artillery horses drums drums I know nothing exquisite

those will be my manoeuvers before I start to rule

one has to take the city by the neck and shake it a bit

Anyhow you had to perish Hamlet you were not for life

you believed in crystal notions not in human clay

always twitching as if asleep you hunted chimeras

wolfishly you crunched the air only to vomit

you knew no human thing you did not know even how to breathe

Now you have peace Hamlet you accomplished what you had to

and you have peace The rest is not silence but belongs to me

you chose the easier part of an elegant thrust

but what is heroic death compared with eternal watching

with a cold apple in one’s hand on a narrow chair

with a view of the ant-hill and the clock’s dial

Adieu prince I have tasks a sewer project

and a decree on prostitutes and beggars

I must also elaborate a better system of prisons

since as you justly said Denmark is a prison

I go to my affairs This night is born

a star named Hamlet We shall never meet

what I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy

It is not for us to greet each other or bid farewell we live on archipelagos

and that water these words what can they do what can they do prince

Nutty Week

2010-06-24T03:09:00.000-10:00

I have had a plum beanless week! I did not mean not to write but the days just tumbled over and over into themselves and now it is Thursday. I have missed everybody!

So. News:

Wonderfully sweet Melissa from My Reading Table gave me this fantastic award. If you have not yet visited her wonderful blog, hop on you bloggy bike and pedal away pronto.

How lovely to wake up on a dewy Saturday and find a fresh cut, green grass scented award waiting for me at the plum bean. And yet is Thursday... I am so disorganized. Unexpected kindness is often the nicest variety, don't you think? It is that swooping butterfly feeling of arriving home on your birthday to a long white box of buttered sunshine yellow roses.

Here's how this award works:

Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award.
Share 7 things about yourself.
Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic for whatever reason! (In no particular order...)
Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

Seven things?

1. I am seriously superstitious: No new clothes on Tuesdays (that is a family one), no hats on the bed, no washing my hair on Thursday... it goes on. I really believe in luck. The outfit I wore to defend my Phd was entirely made up of 'lucky' clothes that had brought good things in the past. I also drank lucky hot chocolate and ate lucky nachos.

2. I can't sing--at all. Ever. My friends and family would prefer that I not try.

3. I love French bulldogs. I stalk them on the street.

4. I am always in the midst of memorizing a poem. It is a practice, a hobby, a belief. Right now I am working on 'The God Abandons Anthony' by Constantine Cavafy. It is a poem based on the moment in Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra when Anthony hears the soldiers going over to Octavian. Cavafy could do so much with so little.

5. When I am in a city, I walk hugely long distances. I love it. I walk and memorize poetry at the same time.

6. I have never ever worn make up. It scares me.

7. I love lollipops.

I made the decision when I was writing that list to just go with whatever was true and once I began a thought, to follow it through. The result is that I came off sounding like a superstitious, poetry spouting, lollipop sucking, make up-less, walking nightmare. Nothing to be done about it.

Fifteen people? Is it alright if I pass it on to five and save the rest? I can stash them in my rainy day awards cupboard.

Stella at Ex Libris because her writing is translucently lovely.

Doctordi because her wonderful personality shines through her honest, beautifully wrought prose.

Grad at The Curious Reader because she is willing to drive through the dark of night to retrieve a book she loves.

Kals at At Pemberly because she revels in luscious words.

Whitney at She is too Fond of Books because her writing pulls us into her reading in such a lovely way.

Here is Cavafy's stunning poem. He intentionally chooses poor epithets. He leaves it for the reader to make up the space between. "this kind of a city"--genius.

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

- Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

Acknowledgments

2010-06-16T09:49:00.000-10:00

I have been thinking about them. They are tricky little beasties. There are so many people to thank. So many people who helped. There are the people who helped with facts and story and research and history and crunchy little plot problems and people who helped me live the life I had to live while I wrote. And they are numerous and invaluable.

And then there are the people (sometimes the same people) who helped me get there. They believed and knew and loved and wished and wanted and spoke. They made the road from idea to words to story to print to agent to publisher a bounded shape. Without them I would have been roaming around in a shapeless dark. I can never thank them enough. They have a stake in this book. It belongs to them too. Without that gravity of love and trust I could never have ridden my wordy little bicycle to the end of that road. Thank you.

Monday Papers

2010-06-14T15:56:00.001-10:00

Sorry I have not been writing but it has been a nutty weekend. I finished the '2nd pass for print pages'--is that what they are called? The publishing jargon can get a bit disconnected and unfamiliar when I write it down. The same thing happens if I repeat the word "fork" to many times. This was the last opportunity I will have to adjust any small words, spacing or punctuation. Stressful. Not so much with the sleeping this weekend. But 582 pages later--I am done!

There were lines I clean forgot. Those moments are so interesting as I actually do not know what the next line will be. It is like discovering fantastic old jeans in your closet. By next February, when the book comes out, I hope to forget much more and find ball gowns in my closet. Hey look, it can happen to the words "ball gown" too. Now it sounds like a frilly dress strapped to a tennis ball.

And then there were the acknowledgements. These and the dedication are simultaneously the two chunks of text that I worry over the most. I tinker and switch and cross out and rewrite and erase--tricky as I have a terrible eraser, so mostly I smear--and generally pick at it. There is a point of critical mass where you do more damage than good. I think I passed that point about six months ago.

But now it is done. Mary, at the post office, who knows me and my gigantic stack of pages bound for Avenue of the Americas in New York was patient and helpful as always. She reads bits while I write out the address. And now I am going swimming...

Awards and Belly Dancing

2010-06-08T10:37:00.001-10:00

The wonderful, wonderful Missy B at Missy's Book Nook passed along her Sunshine Award to me today. How sunny and summery and lemonade sweet. If you have not yet visited Missy B hop on your bloggy bicycle and hurry away today!

I love that idea of readers riding beachy, wide handled sherbet colored bicycles with woven baskets and bells zipping along the long brick, tulip treed paths of the bloggysphere.

The lovely thing about awards? That they come with many spoons to share. I am allowed to pass this on to up to twelve bloggers but if it is alright I will do five today and save the rest for a rainy day? Is that alright? Hmm, no idea.

So five blogs that make me happy?

Kathy at The Literary Amnesiac: Her reviews are incisive and thoughtful and her blog is a wonderful mix of understanding her reading experience and her response.

Beth at Maybe Tomorrow?: Her writing sparkles with humor and heart.

Leanna at Daisy Chain Book Reviews: The faded, peachy rose art deco heading would be enough but her writing is gracious and elegant to match.

Carin at Caroline Bookbinder: She explained huge aspects the publishing world to me and has been endlessly lovely and helpful. Her blog is a marvelous world of dry humor and huge scope.

Lisa at Bibliophiliac: Keats's letters, A Prayer for Owen Meany, graduating seniors? She reads it, absorbs it and shares it in such a profound way.

So there are my lovely five. Take a bow.

In other news:

I took a belly dancing with a woman named Kelly Belly and I learned how to link. It is already a very good day.

RGG

2010-06-07T12:34:00.002-10:00

I am in the throws, the midst, the swim, the tumble, the turmoil, the grip, the gripe, the grim, grinching clutches of the Reading Group Guide Questions. They are proving a timorous beastie and I am trying to wrestle them to the ground. It is not a lack of answers that is tripping me up but the reverse. An answer arrives, unpacks and then gets shown the door. There are muddy footprints in the hall.

It is an odd feeling of formal presentation. Readers meet Author. Author meet Readers. Shall we waltz?

Hop Hop Fridays

2010-06-04T09:01:00.004-10:00

Fridays are for blog hopping, hosted by the wonderful Jennifer at Crazy-for-Books. We take to the blogosphere on literary bicycles, tricycles, pogo sticks, june buggies, broomsticks, match cars, coaches, and pumpkins.

It summons the romantic Victorian notion of "calling" complete with silver trays, small, crested cards, and large black front doors. You ring the bell and the door swings open. You are shown through to the library. Your host will be with you in a moment if you would care to wait. Books to the ceiling. You get a sense of what your host reads, thinks, likes. You take in the family portraits, the smell of meringues baking in the kitchen, the fox hound lying on the rug, the sound of children running in the garden.

But you are in a hurry and cannot wait and so leave a brief note. You write a message flavored with all that you know of your generous host. A finger print. A wave. Goodbye I must be going, I have so many calls to make today...

It is Getting Real

2010-06-03T11:00:00.004-10:00

It is. It really is. Today my wonderful editor sent me the Reading Group Guide for EXIT THE ACTRESS. First the Discussion Questions. It was strange and surreal to see the book broken down into discussion topics. To see it quoted and questioned and unthreaded theme by theme? It was marvelous.

Then came the Book Club Activities. Suggestions for recipes and ways to make the two dimensional reading experience a three dimensional practical experience. I actually tried to make several of the recipes--they are all real Restoration era recipes--but they turned out terribly--flat macaroons and fizzy eggs. That is most likely due to my appalling lack of culinary sense rather than a historical hiccup.

And lastly came the Author Questions. I have to send them back next week. I am trying to think of what I would want to know from an author but my mind seems to have gone curiously blank this side of the curtain. How did I choose my heroine, my story, my style? Why, when how, who? It is difficult to convey just how unexpected it all was. The format, the subject, the period. Each element of the story just presented itself as fait accompli without bothering to ask for my input. Like guests who show up at the door with bag and baggage and move right in.

These elements were wonderfully determined. If I tried to throw one out at dinner it would show up at the breakfast table the next day and slurp its tea loudly to show it was not scared. If I tried to invite my one of own friends over to join the plot the elements would put her bags politely on the doorstep and call her a cab. This book wanted what it wanted and ran me over if I got in the way. I really liked that about it.

Long Lost Award

2010-06-01T16:09:00.003-10:00

I found an award! The lovely Book Quoter gave me The Prêmio Dardos award a few weeks ago and in all the chaos of coming home I managed to lose it. I just rediscovered it. Sometimes when I can't think what to write I go prowling through old posts, reading comments, hunting for a spark, a thread, a pebble, a path, a cottage in the glen. But today, poof: an award. It was like finding a curly beribboned, polka dot wrapped present on my doorstep this morning. How very lovely.

So (I copied this from the Book Quoter's wonderful blog which you must go and visit immediately if you have never been),

"The Prêmio Dardos is a way to acknowledge the importance of bloggers committed with spreading cultural, ethical, literary and personal values, showing their thoughts are alive through their letters and words."

Not sure I deserve it straight after I write a post about my nasty eavesdropping habit but nevermind, on we go. Thank you lovely Book Quoter for thinking of me.

The Book Quoter passed the award on to fifteen blogs and so I shall follow in happy suit. If it is alright I will divide the spoils into thirds and only pass it on to five today--is that allowed? No idea.

So, the First Third:

doctordi at http://doctordi.wordpress.com/. Her wonderful writing is saucy and true and full of fun. Be careful, her writing is addicting!

Mari at http://www.bookwormwithaview.com/. She is amazingly a writing, reviewing, reading, marathoning mom with an exceptionally lovely narrative voice. Anyone who can run that much, read that much and write that well will quickly get my attention.

Mademoiselle Poirot at http://mademoiselle-poirot.blogspot.com/. A daily must for me. Her sumptuous blend of Paris and London style and gorgeous photos are a wrapped in toile, lit by sunlight, perfumed with honeysuckle and macaroons moment for me.

Kathy at http://kathylovestoread.blogspot.com/. She collects new words and enjoys books in a down to the bone, draw out every drop sort of way. I love that.

Kals at http://atpemberley.blogspot.com/. I know I have mentioned this before but a weekly dose of Tagore? Genius. Plus a beautiful, sensitive way of moving through books and bring readers along for the ride. Can't beat that.

Thank you again to the lovely, generous, present bearing, Book Quoter.

Bits and Pieces

2010-06-01T07:57:00.010-10:00

I tend to eavesdrop. Awful, I know. It gets worse. I have been known to scoot my chair closer and take notes. The best places are shops, coffee shops and auto repair places. I listen to people on the phone, people in conversation, people on loudspeakers, people at the grocery store. It is a terrible habit and as I often do it when I am not wearing my glasses and cannot really see, I am sure I get caught out regularly and just do not realize it.

Trouble is that it is seriously helpful stuff. It makes writing dialogue, characters, shoes, bicycles, pets, names, hats, and hobbies easier and more grounded, more real and more fun. Often the things I hear are far better than anything I could make up...

Yesterday at the drugstore:

Six foot woman in line: "I look like a gecko when I wear v necks."
Her five foot eight husband: "Yes, but I like geckos."

Umm, genius?

At the bookstore:

A tourist lady in electric pink Aloha shirt: "Poofball is getting even poofier."
Her friend in matching electric pink Aloha shirt: "At least she is not as big as Sludge."

Poofball and Sludge? Amazing.

At a concert last night:

Thirty-something year old mom: "He is cute, but just in the way King Kong is cute."

What?

Friday Hopping

2010-05-27T20:55:00.002-10:00

Like intrepid reading, roaming rabbits the blog hoppers take to the blogosphere. There is a sense of welcome. Of purpose. Of bread and jam on the table and a fire in the fireplace. The invitations are sent. The music begins. The guest are arriving.

Frog and Toad have just left. Scarlett and Rhett are running late. Cathy and Heathcliff have gone for a walk. Elizabeth is refusing to give Mr. Darcy cake. Anna is worried about getting back to Petersburg and Vronsky is trying to talk her out of going. Beatrice is flirting with Benedick and Hero is not really dead. Claudio has gone to find her but has wandered into Titania's forest. Odysseus is late getting home and Telemachus is getting annoyed.

Damon the Mower is in love with Juliana but she has wandered off. Emma is trying to get them back together and Mercutio is teasing her. Shell Silverstein has turned on the lights and Dr. Seuss has brought in the noisemakers. The Whos down in Whoville have started to sing and Keats is finishing his letter to Fanny Brawne. Shelley has gone for a walk on the beach and stopped in to see Coleridge in a cave. The Ramseys are off to the lighthouse while Mrs. Dalloway buys the flowers. Lucy Honeychurch is sailing down the Arno while Cecil Vyse plays tennis. Nora is leaving the doll's house and Holden is having a bad day. Catherine Sloper is in Washington Sq. and Pip is talking about Australia. Tess wants to go walking alone but Captain Wentworth is very persuasive. Charles is returning to Brideshead and Sebastian will be waiting for him.

It is going to be a lovely party.

The End of the Affair

2010-05-27T08:50:00.004-10:00

So I am teaching Graham Greene's The End of the Affairat the moment. I had forgotten the triangular, impossible brutality of that book. Henry married to Sarah. Sarah in love with Bendrix. Bendrix obsessed with Sarah. Sarah promising God to end her affair with Bendrix and remain with Henry. Ouch.

It is like an earthbound Sartre where they can all leave the room. The lines are roughly cut with sharp scissors but retain a softly draped ethereal mist about them. Maybe it is the amount that Greene does not tell us. Maybe it is the post war London silhouette of tilted hats and exploded buildings. There is something about this book.

No one is likable--not really. You would not want to have Bendrix over for dinner or meet Henry for a walk in the park. Sarah compels but because of what she does rather than what she says. It is fascinating to watch someone make such an absolute wreck of two men who love her. Greene has done something extraordinary here. The novel is skinned with a thin dermis of politeness. All Greene's Brighton violence happens within the heart but is just as knifing. There is something about this book.

In the Rain

2010-05-25T04:17:00.005-10:00

My graduating senior student graduated on Friday. Graduations here are like nowhere else. The mayor spoke and then he sang and then it rained and then the students sang in the rain, and then they graduated in the rain. There is no 'moving it indoors'. Rain is good luck at graduations, birthdays and weddings and everyone just goes on settin' and a rockin' and a singin' in the rain.

And then the students receive leis. So many leis--orchid leis, plumeria leis, candy leis, li hing mui leis, pikake leis, maile leis, ti leaf leis, sweet white ginger leis, stephanotis leis. His wonderful family brought a huge bag of thickly petalled, perfect leis. The leis often pile up to cover the graduate's face and they stumble about like huge flower monsters hugging each other, signing yearbooks and saying goodbye. Hawaiian graduation photos are unmistakable.

My student is a musician a writer a reader and a poet and so I gave him the complete Allen Ginsberg to take to college. He will pack his battered Auden and worn in Neruda. He did it. He fell in love with reading and writing and it will follow him all his life. It is amazing to watch it take hold. To see language and experience weave together to cast their spell. It is a particular magic. It will never let him go. He is done for.

He reads with a careful, examining, passionate ferocity. He asked for a summer reading list. I did not pull my punches. He is already nearly through his first Graham Greene, is at--The End of the Affair and heading towards Brighton Rock. Greene's loose, stony, precise, spare language will join the other tempos in his inner lexicon of voices. His wonderful, wonderful older brother is considering reading the list with him. Middlemarch looms large, sprawling out on the horizon and they will tackle it together. It will win them in the end.

It is a marvelous thing. To watch the interest turn to excitement turn to confidence turn to habit turn to a quiet, calm expanding. There is no going back. I am so happy for him. It is a marvelous thing.

Mondays

2010-05-24T09:16:00.002-10:00

You know those days? Somehow you miss walking through the doorway and bump into the doorframe. The toothpaste falls off the toothbrush. You fail to see the new red sock in with the new white sheets. the car keys keep hopping from one random unlikely spot to another. You type the wrong word, erase it and type it again.

Those days have a power of their own. They snowball, change shape, snowball some more, pick up speed and then run over your foot. I am not sure if it is constructive or destructive to write on those days. It is something in the breeze or the lemons or the shampoo or the apples. I get the feeling that whatever I write I will unwrite tomorrow. And so, I am going to swim in the ocean, read about the death of the corset, get sandy feet, wash the salt out of my hair and start over.

Rainy Sunday Writing

2010-05-23T10:56:00.002-10:00

I love Brideshead Revisited. I read it my third term--the summer term--at Oxford. It was just the place to fall in love with that book. I was studying in the golden city that "exhaled centuries of youth." I had just turned twenty one. I took in Charles Ryder's exuberance, his articulated joy, his less articulated sadness, and his wanting to be vital. To describe your complicated, heartbreaking lost best friend and only love as "the forerunner" is a featherlight whisper of genius. To describe the wanting to live a truthful, connected, creative life as "finding the low door in the wall" is staggering.

Now I read it and remember. But now the second and third thirds of the narrative stand out in sharper relief than they did then. There is a scene in Marchmain House when Charles is painting. It echoes the earlier scenes at Brideshead when the magic held and heralded a perfect sunlit summer with Sebastian. In Marchmain House, the magic is of a different sort. He is painting the "four small oils" of the house and at each passage he waits for "the pile to be lost" and the spell to break but it doesn't. Each passage builds on the previous until he has, as Anthony Blanche points out later, "done something". And with a brutal lack of exactness, "Not all he can do, not all he will do, but something."

That is the carefully balanced, hushed moment of writing something you like. Later it can come apart and you may not like it anymore. Later you may move past it and wonder at its simplicity but in that moment, it is something.

The Jabberwocky

2010-05-20T05:44:00.002-10:00

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Wow does spellcheck not like Lewis Carroll.

So, Charles Dodgson was a controversial guy. It was rumored he stammered only in the company of other adults and was clear spoken with children. He was a singing, writing, mathematician with an aptitude for charades. Although Dodgson was close to Alice Liddell and the name 'Alice' is layered into the blueprints of his writing-- writing aside from his great Wonderland and Looking Glass masterpieces--Dodgson maintained that Alice Liddell was not his inspiration. Curiouser and curiouser.

However he came upon this collection of sharp, clean, satisfying sounds--it is marvelous. He sustains the clicking exactness of hard rhymes snapping together. It does not matter that the words are jumbled, nonsensical fragments. Each piece lands lightly on its four feet as if it has always been there.

I have been thinking about invention. There is a knuckle cracking pop when a good idea comes bouncing along. A trepidation in committing it to the three dimensional real estate of the Roman alphabet. And then when it works--it is delicious.

Write Write Write

2010-05-18T10:35:00.005-10:00

The last few days have been getting away from me. After months of rain, this island is lying under a great blue bowl at the moment. I should not say that out loud as the ocean has very good hearing and will ship over a thick bank of grey fuzz to stop up the blue hole in the sky.

There were five months (although I was not here for them) of rain--do people know this when they sign up in droves to get married in Hawaii? I think the tourist board leaves out such information. Vera Wang and wet sand do not mix. And so now--the summer. There have been friends visiting, old friends getting together, new friends going to the beach, and a subtle frenzy to each day. It has been lovely, companionable and not conducive to working. In order to get lots done my day has to duplicate the last. Sleep, write, eat, write, teach, read, beach, repeat.

For me a steady footprint of repetition is road to an evenly threaded working week. A racing, running, burst of inspiration--while fun and productive--can also derail my little red wagon. Good books, good friends, good weather--my wagon gets derailed very easily. So, back to routine. My small green flash pot of fresh ideas seems to like routine. It is like holding absolutely still so that the neighbor's unsocial cat will come and lie against your legs.

Awards on a Monday

2010-05-17T09:10:00.003-10:00

How wonderful to wake up on a to a small Easter basket of awards! I feel that running down the front stairs towards the shiny new red tricycle with the huge white bow feeling.

Thank you to Beth at http://www.maybe-tomorrow.net/ and Stacy at http://anovelsource.blogspot.com/ for giving me the Bodacious Book Blogger's Award! How thrilling! How kismet. How very very sweet of them. Thank you.

So:

If you are given this award you must first accept it by leaving a comment on the post you were nominated on. Then copy and paste the post and add it to your own blog. Make a list of the last 5 books you read and pass the award on to 5 other bloggers (no backsies!). Please also identify the blog from which you got the award and don't forget to tell your picks that they
have a blog award!

So, five books?

Matilda, Roald Dahl
Passion, Jude Morgan
The Forgotten Garden, Kate Morten
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene

They were all heavenly,

So, five blogs?

doctordi at http://doctordi.wordpress.com/ because she is fun and sass and heart
bibliophiliac at http://bibliophiliac-bibliophiliac.blogspot.com/ keats's letters?
june at http://writingisablessing.blogspot.com/ for sweets and smarts
kate at http://kateslibrary.blogspot.com/ for lovely wineglass fine writing
leanna at http://daisychainbookreviews.blogspot.com/ for art deco lettering and finely wrought wrought words

Thank you again Beth and Stacy!

Blog Hops and Pink Photos

2010-05-14T01:03:00.003-10:00

Blog Hop Friday! On your marks! Get set! Go! How wonderful to set aside a day to explore. Read, visit, read, visit, hop, hop, hop. How marvelous. I have found brilliant blogs, luminous writers, rigorous readers, insightful reviewers and around every corner, generous, generous people waiting with well tempered, gentle honesty and open minded conviction. It is a rare and wonderful thing.

And yet, this week has been a bit of a runaway coach and six. I have a student graduating--and I am champagne fizz proud of him, a student accepted to a wonderful private high school and I am bunches of balloons in bloom proud of her, a student reading Matilda with grace, ease and fierce concentration and I am seven swans a swimmin' proud of her (we are studying alliteration--can you tell?) and friends about to send their manuscript off to agents and I am delighted and have been editing their feather light, shot with sunlight words--and now I am exhausted. I feel a bit like a dog that has been chasing a theoretical tail only to find out that she is a polar bear.

And, my gracious, glorious friends have created another set of author's photos. I love the green church door photo but when you crop it it looks as if I am seasick and at sea. And so now instead we have... pink. My angelic, gifted friend Naomi took the photos (just before she whacked the head of a centipede with a nasty looking garden tool while still nursing her baby--seriously impressive stuff) and my dear, patient, genius friend Matt fancied em up and sent them out. Naomi made me laugh a genuine big laugh and then took the picture. Matt and I giggled, and giggled and ate salt water taffy while we looked at them. They were happy moments and now we have happy photos.

People Reading People Writing

2010-05-12T08:35:00.004-10:00

It has been a lovely thing. People read, write, return, read some more, leave a lovely, kind, supportive note, read, write... and round and round we go. How simple and truthful and good--and reciprocal. When someone leaves me a comment I inevitably hop on my bloggy bicycle and go zooming off through the bloggyworld to see what that person has been reading and writing and doing and saying.

Did Penelope (names changed) like her latest Murakami? Has Gertrude gotten to the part where Anna meets Vronsky? Is Hepzebah's new puppy going to eat the cat? Does Fenella agree that while Cathy is wicked she is utterly compelling to read? Did Roxelana get through all seven Harry Potter's in a night? Did Louella like her vacation in the Seychelles? Is Olympia happy with the latest draft of her first novel? Gripping stuff.

It is like stopping in at a favorite coffee shop on the way to work. I sit by the window and order books, news, sensibilities, thoughts, ideas, holidays, humor, kindness and a lemon vanilla scone. After a lovely chat and the feeling that i have been somewhere, met someone, I go home again.

News and Writing

2010-05-11T08:31:00.005-10:00

So, news first. My fantastic, genius, wonderful editor and extraordinary, brilliant, dynamic agent loved the photo. Whew. Done. Really? This thing that had taken on albatross-esque proportions in my head? Yep. Done. Yippee!

It seems--although I have only so far heard this through a lengthy, nutty text message exchange and a spectacularly unorganized game of phone tag, that my first home town author event has been organized. In a bookstore I have never been to. Now this will sound strange to people who live in places where bookstores grow on trees but here they are an endangered species. And up until yesterday, I thought there was only the lone Borders standing bravely and singularly in town; like a cavalry officer with no cavalry. Now I find there is another bookstore on this island?

One would think that being on an island, I would know it quite well--have visited every beach, trail, waterfall, restaurant, salt pond, water cave and bookstore. But no. I am creature of profound habit. I love the beaches, restaurants, waterfalls, trails, water caves that I love, but a bookstore? A book store will send me hurtling out of my comfort zone and off to the other side of island immediately.

Why don't I go there more often you ask? I am a prohibitively bad driver and cannot parallel park. Bear in mind that this is an island, an island with very skinny roads, and if you spend thirty minutes ineptly trying to park in a huge space that logic and physics say should be more than ample--you mill make people angry. And then you will see those people again. Eew. No one will honk at you. Honking is the height of rudeness here and deeply frowned upon. But everyone remembers every one's car and I will get that "Oh I saw you desperately failing to park on the West side yesterday, please do not attempt that again nor park near me" sort of look at the grocery store.

In other wonderful news, Kals from the luminous At Pemberly blog gave me an award! How wonderful. The award was created by Felicia at Geeky Blogger's Book Blog and she asks us to pass it along to five of our favorite blogs. Trouble is that I want to award right back to Kals as I love At Pemberly but you can't do that can you?

So, five blogs?

Bethany @ http://subtlemelodrama.blogspot.com/. Her blog 'words, words, words' is generous, fun and feels like a lovely chat with an old friend.

June @ http://writingisablessing.blogspot.com/. Her blog feels like a spring afternoon with green grass, a favorite book and a bowl of strawberries.

Doctordi @ http://doctordi.wordpress.com/. A fantastic blog brimming with life and writing and smart, self deprecating, engaged humor.

Missy B @ http://missysbooknook.blogspot.com/. Her heartbreaking, truthful, tenderly written Mother's Day post stayed with me all day.

Stella @ http://www.stella-exlibris.com/. I know I keep giving her awards but I just like her blog so much!

Now, writing. Umm, must write more?

Beginnings, Endings and Johnny Depp

2010-05-10T01:49:00.004-10:00

So the cover arrives next week! I feel like I am going to finally meet my book. Obviously we have met before but now I feel like she has been off to college and a year abroad and cut her hair and met new friends and is all grown up and totally different. She is coming back a book.

The funny thing about covers is that they really are the clincher in buying a book. I will absolutely judge a book by the cover. Sail right by the icky ones and not even pick them up. And then I will pick up the pretty ones and even if the subject matter sounds iffy, I will try to talk myself into it. And now I find out that the author has absolutely nothing to do with it--bizarre.

Not that I should have anything to do with it. I would probably want to paint it pink and gold, feed it macaroons and give it the flavor of Eighteenth Century Paris although it is set in Seventeenth Century London.

I miss Seventeenth Century London. The Second Novel is set in WWI and it is so bizarre to be able to ride the omnibus, discard the corset and use Pears soap. I miss the foggy rootling around in the obscurity of the Restoration. Digging out kitchen utensils and bedroom slippers and not bathing. I miss the strangeness of it all. The voluptuous beauty ideals (Nell was a rarity as she was slightly built and that was seriously unfashionable) and the scale felt so distant and absorbing.

Don't get me wrong, I have gained marvelous new, clear precise stuff in The Second Novel. I know what they had for breakfast--really for breakfast on the day that I am creating. That is good in that it gives me a super strong impression of the character and bad in that it gives me a super strong impression of the character. It is a lot to work around. I have decided to follow in the footprints but wear different shoes.

In other utterly unrelated news the Caribbean Pirates are arriving on the island this week, captained by Johnny Depp.

Author Photos and Blog Hops

2010-05-07T09:15:00.004-10:00

It is Blog Hop Friday! A day for bouncing round the blogosphere like reading rabbits on rollerblades. It is always a lovely day--meeting new people who love to read and write and review and connect. Thank you to the marvelous Jennifer at crazy-for-books.com for organizing this wonderful rabbit roller derby.

In other news I did it. I sent the photos to my editor. Well, I say I when really I just sat there and my friends Naomi and Matt did it. Really good friends who help with all their helping hearts are just wonderful aren't they? Precious and rare and so much part of the infrastructure of happiness. I am currently on the lookout for a lovely present to give Naomi so if you have any ideas please tell me! Matt helped me on his birthday no less so he gets presents and cake. Actually, everyone gets cake. Friday feels like a day for sunshine, a good book just begun, the ocean, bleached out salty hair, sandy feet, and then a thick slab of yellow layer cake with pink icing. Cake it is!

Nuts

2010-05-05T16:05:00.008-10:00

So, I got home to the oasis of calm that is the island I live on and then reality came a knockin. Have you ever left your life for almost six months and just wandered off? I did.

So:

The roof was leaking.
The car battery was dead.
The car stereo was flashing weird unfamiliar letters.
My shoes molded.
I had no food.
I forgot which way the hot water turned on and so took a cold shower.
I could not find my spare slippers and so had to wear my brother's slippers which are made to fit my six foot two brother.
I fell in front of a group of tourists who were waiting to buy rainbow shave ice because I was wearing inexplicably gynormous slippers.
I did not call people in the right order and so upset people.
I did not tell some people I was back and then got caught in Foodland.
There was a frog in the pool.
Our wonderful if very sensitive gardener planted orange impatiens and my mother will hate them.
I avoided the gardener and did not confront him today and so did not fix the orange flower problem.
I got the time zones wrong and worked with one of my students on the phone at 445 am.
I have to buy eleven birthday presents this afternoon for the eleven birthdays I missed.

You get the idea. Moral of the story: do not walk away from your life for five months without incredibly good preplanning and organization.

But. On the upside:

I own books that I have not read yet but forgot I owned and so have mysteriously acquired new books.
I am getting to spend time with old friends I dearly love.
After getting up at 5 am to take the car to town to get fixed (an hour drive to the other side of the island) I stopped at the beach on the way home and jumped into the blue, blue sea.
I had 17 packages of research books waiting for me from Alibris.
I got my hair cut incredibly short but then got hit on by a strange older man who kept insisting I wear make up for my author photo--ick on both counts.
Then I was able to drive away from the strange older man as I can drive on this island.
I get to work with my fantastic, brilliant, first student on Friday and will be on island to see him graduate high school and head off to the marvelous college he has been accepted to!
I am here for my dear, dear friend Matt's birthday tonight.
And my wonderful, patient, sweet, gifted friend Naomi took my author photo!

Golly Moses was she patient. I am not good with photos. I looked 'angry' for the first seventy or so. I was trying to look like an author and not like a Priya and I failed utterly. We did it on the steps of a very old green church in Hanalei. First I tried a black dress. Disaster. Then I put on my own clothes. Better.

I was going to not smile, look straight on at the camera, wear shoes, be relaxed, do a close up. Instead I turned to the side, smiled, did a full length shot, wore slippers and panicked. And Naomi was a patient wonderful genius. "It is going to be a one inch picture!" She kept reassuring me. In the end we giggled and giggled and had so much fun. I went to her house this morning and went through them and picked out some that I liked so please, please cross your fingers that they turn out ok!

Planes and News

2010-05-03T07:34:00.009-10:00

I am not on a plane! That sounds like a small thing but it is enormous. I am not on a plane, packing for a plane, waiting for another plane, driving to the airport, saying goodbye at the airport, waiting for bags at the airport, moving a plane ticket or popping my ears. I do realize that I sound like a very wordy loon but The Plane Ticket has hung over my head for three weeks while I got over bronchitis. We moved it three times. You know the sinking dread that pulls on you--or maybe just on me--when the airport and all the accompanying accoutrements loom up in your future--yuck.

My poor boyfriend and I have had four teary goodbye dinners in two and a half weeks. That is one of my favorite quotes by the way, when Peter O'Toole tells Audrey Hepburn in 'How to Steal a Million"-great film "And then you loomed up in your nightie and shot me." Great writing. Can you tell I have not slept enough?

And then this morning I opened my email and found a wonderful set of awards from Whitney! Her blog, She is too Fond of Books (http://she-is-too-fond-of-books.blogspot.com/) is superb. Anyone who lists "All About Eve" and "Dark Victory" among her favorite movies and In Cold Blood right after Gone With the Wind for favorite books will get my attention.

So, ten facts right? Maybe I should not do this on so little sleep,

1. I carry a book with me everywhere--really, really, everywhere--movies, restaurants--bizarre.
2. I could not read until third grade and the first big book with chapters that I read was Gone With the Wind in fourth grade. I think I have read it at least eleven times since.
3. I am as of last summer, allergic to bees.
4. I love 1930's poetry.
5. I am half Indian but people always guess Hawaiian, Italian, French, Spanish, Greek or Russian. When I say Indian they ask me what tribe.
6. I never listen to my messages and tend to leave my inbox permanently full.
7. I am the only one among my siblings who uses her given name.
8. I bump into stuff.
9. If my book sells lots of copies I intend to rescue a French Bulldog and a Pit Bull, and buy a vintage Dior 1920's dress.
10. I am a hug you when I meet you rather than a shake hands when I meet you sort of person.

Wow. Definitely should have waited until I had more sleep.

Ten blogs to give this too?

Lisa and Laura at http://lisa-laura.blogspot.com/, because they are vibrant and true and fun to read.

Kals at http://atpemberley.blogspot.com/. A weekly Tagore poem--does it get better?

Caroline at http://carolinebyline.blogspot.com/. A warmhearted, fascinating writing voice.

Tahereh at http://stiryourtea.blogspot.com/, a young writer with a brilliant voice. She calls her followers 'besties'--adorable.

Beth at http://www.maybe-tomorrow.net/. From Wales to Canada, a wonderful, generous blog with a great heart.

Michelle at http://redheadedbookchild.blogspot.com/. A sparkling, insightful, incisive, gracious voice.

Vivienne at http://serendipityteacher.blogspot.com/. She is taking a blogging break just now but her blog is worth waiting for. Cupcakes and books=genius.

Mari at http://www.bookwormwithaview.com/. Wonderful to read--generous, snap, crackle, pop smarts and fun.

Teddyree at http://teddyree-theeclecticreader.blogspot.com/. A beautiful blog. Her writing is personal, courageous, addicting, especially for historical fiction lovers!

Marie at http://www.theburtonreview.com/. Fantastic reviews, great books, illuminating writing--genius!

Hops, News and Awards

2010-04-29T15:49:00.000-10:00

Friday is for blog hopping! I imagine white rabbits with numbers taped to their backs like jockeys hopping though the blogosphere knocking at rose trellised, faded green doors and hopping into cosy rooms where books, tea and chocolate are laid out in expectation.

I have discovered wonderful, wonderful blogs over the last few weeks. Readers and writers: readers who write and writers who read, reviewers who write and reviewers who read--it is heaven for people who enjoy living in a culture of words. There are readers reading Hardy, Bronte, Tolstoy, Keats. Readers reading historical fiction, literary fiction, chick lit, sci fi lit, ya lit, mg lit, classic lit, and poetry. It is a lovely way to sail through the trees on swings built of language.

So, news. After changing my ticket seven times I am flying home to Hawaii. No one there believes that I will actually turn up. I seem to have become the girl who cried 'plane ticket'. But I am going as I have to have my author photo taken--yikes. From what I gather for the author photo I: do not smile, do look friendly, don't wear white, do wear something I am comfortable in, do not wear a sundress, do wear shoes, do look at the camera, do not look too serious, do look professional. Umm. How does a person who does like sun dresses and does not like photos manage this? Tuesday is the big day. Will let you know how it goes!

And happily, Sarah, at the wonderful "Loving Books" blog (http://always-books.blogspot.com/) gave me an award! The Prolific Blogger Award!

A prolific blogger is one who is intellectually productive, keeping up an active blog with enjoyable content. After accepting this award, recipients are asked to pass it forward to seven other deserving blogs.

Yipee! Thank you Sarah! And if you have not visited Sarah's lovely blog: hop hop right away!

Seven blogs I love...

bibliophiliac at http://bibliophiliac-bibliophiliac.blogspot.com/
She has the most wonderful posts about Keats's heartbreakingly beautiful broken poetry.

Carin at http://carolinebookbinder.blogspot.com/
This wonderful woman has tried so hard to teach me to link properly and as you can see I am failing miserably. A former Editorial Assistant her take on books and the publishing world is fascinating.

Missy B at http://missysbooknook.blogspot.com/
Her reviews are incisive, personal and beautifully written and the elfin drawings on her blog will make you happy every time.

Lindy Lou Mac at http://lindyloumacbookreviews.blogspot.com/
From Alice in Wonderland posters in Hong Kong to wonderfully written reviews, her blog is always fun.

Mademoiselle Poirot at http://mademoiselle-poirot.blogspot.com/
Her delicately wrought photographs feel like breakfast in Paris.

Grad at http://thecuriousreader.blogspot.com/
She loves letters and Wolf Hall and that is so much more than enough for me!

Faith E. Hough at http://faithehough.blogspot.com/
Read her post about the brilliant, brilliant Oscar Wilde.

Hop, white rabbits! Hop!

Mothers Day

2010-04-29T07:27:00.000-10:00

I have been thinking about Mother's Day. My mother loves to read. I have never met anyone who reads like she does. She reads six books at once, cross references, looks up, Googles, consults the gigantic, antique pulpit dictionary that stands in her study, laughs out loud, keeps a Jane Austen novel in her purse, remembers, re-reads, looks more up, finishes a book, starts a book, waits patiently while the animals sleep on the books and then reads some more. It is an extraordinary thing to watch my mother read.

She reads to music. There is always music in our house. My family is musical. Well, my mother and brother and sometimes my sister are musical. I am not. There is always music. As she reads she will stop and hold absolutely still to hear as Butterfly dies in Puccini's opera, the Count apologizes at the end of Figaro, Tosca kills Scarpia or Colline sings goodbye to his coat. She will play the trio of Rosenkavalier back to back twelve times and then re-read the history of Strauss. When I get into the car and discover the CD player volume is turned all the way up I know my mother was the last to drive the car.

My mother taught me to write. All along this funny, twisty, larkspur lane that has brought me to writing she has been in the background. When we were in the mountains in India my mother understood that we had to walk the long walk to the bazaar to get the next Nancy Drew because The Crumbling Wall had coughed up the clue sooner than expected. We were allowed to stay up all night reading. She knew it was important for me to find out if Scarlett ever wins Ashley and it just couldn't wait until tomorrow. A former professional editor, she would carefully sift my writing with ferocious, kind, precision, helping me to pull through the strongest threads. Looking back on it now I marvel at her patience. She wanted my fourth grade twenty-two page report on Sparta to be well written rather than just finished. "Is that what you really mean to say?" "Sort of." "Would you like to say it again?" and off we would go. I hear myself asking that exact question of my students in that exact cadence.

Once we could write our own papers she would try to stay up with us but fall asleep on the end of the bed with the dog. "So you don't feel like you are the only person awake in the world." She edited my novel. She is up to ears in research for the next one. She is endlessly fascinated by good stories and the people who tell them, write them, sing them, paint them, run them, dress them, and live them. It is an amazing way to read.