This morning I received an email from a reader is Israel.  (Hi Moshe!)  He was kind enough to drop a line after reading The Sign for Drowning.  He also mentioned that he is the cousin of one of my blurb writers.  Blurbs, on the book jacket, are written by other authors, hopefully of similar type work, and are there to help promote the work, especially for a first time author.  A reader might say- oh, I really like this author who wrote the blurb and they really liked this new book/author- I’ll give it a try.  I dauntingly discovered when my book was in pre-production, that first time novelists are asked to track down their own blurbs.  Well, we know other writers to varying degrees.  An ex teacher is easy enough to approach.  Someone you met or even just heard speak at a conference is pretty excruciating to contact.  And writing cold to the agent of an author who’s work you think is like your own- except wildly successful- is horrifying.

Moshe’s cousin is published by my same publisher and thankfully they offered her up to me, and she was a generous and honest reader and blurb writer.  Two other authors I reached out to, were more nerve wracking.  I’d “met” them both at the Pirate’s Alley William Faullkner Literary conference, meaning one I’d sat at a crowded bar table with for 10 minutes, and both I’d heard speak.  But I asked Rosemary, the organizer and major force behind the Faulkner House and conference for their emails to beg for blurbs.  Yikes.

I’m thrilled to report that Julia Glass said yes, although she insisted to wait for the corrected proof- a nerve-wracking process for me since that left me not knowing if she’d write the blurb until quite late- but a practice I would adopt if ever so flattered to receive a request for a blurb.  Glass let me know that her agreement to read my book during a busy time for her was based on her fondness of Rosemary.  Fair enough.

And the other author was Bret Lott.  By the time my request reached Bret Lott through the new university he’d just begun teaching at, he was about to embark on a multi-country tour.  I had grown more assertive in tracking down authors, and sent Lott several emails towards the end, when I did finally hear back from him.  He had actually already read The Sign for Drowning because he had been the final judge in the novel category, who had awarded me second runner up.  So, I figured it was less of an inconvenience to him to write a blurb.  But alas, he wrote me a sweet and thoughtful email, turning down my request due to his busy travel schedule, and that he really would need to re-read the novel.  He mentioned in passing that he would be touring Prague, Jerusalem, and a half dozen other cities I don’t recall.

The funny thing is that the day I opened his email, I curiously saw that there was yet another unopened email from him a day later.  Having read the first rejection, I opened the second.

“Dear Rachel, Guess who I’m sitting here with at the Jerusalem Center?”  Your aunt Linda!”  Bret Lott went on to say that the coincidence was too great, that Linda was his favorite person in Israel, and he would write the blurb.  I was almost as excited by how much my entire family would enjoy this story as I was about getting a blurb from Bret Lott- almost.  Linda is my Uncle Tsvi’s sister and she has some incredible job of hosting visiting VIP’s in Israel among other things.  If you are someone of note, politician, writer, musician, artist, etc. who has visited Israel on official business, you have probably met Linda and she is one of your favorite people in Israel.  Well Linda, being a professional connection maker, innocently informed Bret that he had judged her niece’s novel in a competition that year.  And he probably struck his forehead and said- I just turned her down for a blurb 24 hours ago!

I’m enjoying this story all over a again, nearly three years later.  Hope you did too.  Thanks Moshe for the memories.  Thanks Linda and Bret!

There’s a little known fact about me that most my friends don’t know, that I go crazy for maritime books.  I’m also very fond of maritime films, museums, food, towns!, apparel, art- all of it.  But a great tale from the sea always captures my imagination and stirs deeper feelings than a land-locked story could.  I feel this way in the same way that if the world only contained blue grass and gospel music- I wouldn’t be too miserable.   That said, I probably haven’t read as much maritime literature as some other folks.  Of course I was swept away by Old Man and the Sea, also The Pearl.  Moby Dick didn’t bore me at all.  The Shipping News was a rare treat.  So it’s not just oceans I love, but knots, fish, fisherman and their women, rubber boots, weather, etc.  About a year ago I picked up the Perfect Storm in my basement- and I’m here to tell you that it is a fantastic book.  It’s non-fiction- in case you didn’t know- and it’s truly about the fishing industry off the eastern seaboard, love and alcoholism, as much as it is about that boat and that storm.  A few things I learned in that book, is that it’s not just getting a lot of fish that’s required to earn a living- but who gets back to land first with the haul and sets the current prices.  I was also inspired to write the first poem I’d written in awhile from a tidbit I found in that book.  There are lengthy, detailed accounts of deep-sea fishing- namely swordfish- that hold your attention for more than 20 page stretches.  With swordfish, the adult females are the largest and therefore choicest catches.  But they are the hardest to catch, being the smartest and most experienced of their kind.  The adolescent males are the easist caught, being the opposite.  There’s poetry just in that I think.  But listen to this.  If you go deep-sea fishing at night, on a full moon, you will catch the adult females.  Because they lose their heads.

This weekend, Saturday, the Red Hook Waterfront Museum in Brooklyn is having a Maritme book fair.  The museum is a barge in the NY harbor.  I’m planning to go, and maybe bring a few copies of The Sign for Drowning.  If I’m gonna be a poser ever in life, I think maybe the most dignified thing to pose as is a maritime writer.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m ready to show this draft of my new novel to a few people.  It was important to me to have a few readers at the same time, since I don’t think the novel is ready to go out into the world and I want feedback to do some more revisions.  Well clearly my agent was the primary person I wanted to give it to.  And Bill, my husband (still unbelievable to say), won’t read my work until it is finished, and was a great editor for my first novel and the first draft of this novel, so he is another person that will read it now.  And I chose one member of my writing group who is relatively new and hasn’t seen that much of the book or the first draft. 

So, first I mailed a hard copy to Joelle- my agent.  Can’t say I feel great- there’s much insecurity in putting a book in the mail.  And let me add, stay away from it once you do!  Suddenly every sentence could easily be improved.  Then on Monday, I dropped the bulky manuscript at my group mate’s house.  We had a lovely short chat (the time of 3 quarters in a parking meter), and I met her two sons.  One of whom is 7 weeks old, and I confess I gave him extra scrutiny, being 8 weeks from having my own!  Then this morning Bill was off to Palm Springs for a film festival, so last night he peeled off chapters 1 and 2 from the manuscript for plane reading. 

So it seems, we’re off to the races.  I expect everyone will need about a month to read the book and give me comments, and I’m looking at the writing sessions I could have in the next month with a sideways glance: a new new novel?  A young adult novel?  A play?  Take a deep breath!

Novelists don’t usually type the end at the end of the manuscruipt.  But screenwriters do, and I thought about the pleasure they must take in typing those words and I decided to give myself the same reward when last week I came to the end of my new novel.  But it didn’t work.  I felt something- but it was mostly preoccupied- and a little too much like- OK- that’s off the to do list.  I know why and it’s because I got married last Sunday and could think of little else.  As it should be.  But now I’m slowly sinking my thoughts back into the fact that I did make it to the end of the novel.  One thing that helped me return to this feat was a long talk yesterday with my agent.  We don’t talk that often- much more email- and it was very gratifying to discuss our next steps with submitting the novel to her and then to publishers.  Actually saying out loud, “I will send you the novel this Friday.” brought ‘the end’ a little more real and something I could relish.

But even as I type this my thoughts are racing to the beginning I started on Sunday.  This is a pic of the ceremony in Brooklyn Bridge Park- which left me flying high as a kite. 

It’s good to have ends, beginnings, and long middles!  By the way, my 7 month pregnant middle is hardly visible in this pic- but was very there.

Over the past year, I’ve maintained this blog as an author blog, a place to discuss, hash out, share with readers and friends things related to my novel, to writing life, books, you know.  Although it’s sometimes hard to continuously find writing-related things to discuss here, it has always felt right that this remain a writing blog.  However, there has been occassional temptation to slip in some more personal blogging.  I’m not that big on personal disclosure in my work life, but I really appreciate connecting with people on a personal level, about writing and otherwise.  And isn’t that an underlying desire in writing or reading- maybe especially for blogs?  Well, lately I’ve been very tempted to get a little more personal here because my life has been full of big changes.  The biggest being that I’m expecting my first baby!  In fact, this summer, my boyfriend, Bill and I are getting married and expecting the baby too, in the span of one summer.  Talk about year of the Tiger.  Well a baby, among other things, is a big motivator.  And the timing is such, that I quickly realized I could submit a draft of my next novel to my agent before becomming a mother.  And I could spend my maternity leave editing the novel with her feedback notes.  I know, all you parents out there, amidst getting to know and learning how to take care of a tiny human being and sleep deprivation!  But still- not going to my job for six months…some editing can take place, however adled this writer’s brain will be. 

Someone said to me at work the other day, “Well a baby is as good as another book.”  I certainly agree, a baby is better than another book.  But I was quick to tell her I’m striving for both.  It was a lot of fun emailing my agent recenltly to share that news and to tell her I’m going to make every effort to send her the manuscript before our baby arrives in August.  So there you have it.  I’m happy to share some very happy personal news with you, and I see I tied it into writing anyway!  Some people never change. 

p.s. This is me and my friend, Cassius.  I’m wearing a birthday crown he made for me, and I’m starting to show!

I received a welcome email from Rosemary James at the Faulkner House in New Orleans a few days ago.  She said she was including me and The Sign for Drowning on the home page for her literary conference, Words and Music, as a success story of the conference.  Indeed, I thanked Rosemary and her husband, Joe, in my acknowledgements as providing the literary event and celebration each year that also happened to give my book a new little engine.  Placing in their novel competition helped me secure an agent and ultimatley publish the book .  And attending Words and Music in 2006 and 2007, and visiting Rosemary at Faulkner House every year since, have given me a much greater sense of living a writing life- at least in part.  I am now able to envision what full time writers do.  They mingle with other writers and hear each other’s work.  They read, think about and discuss books.  You don’t have to write 40 hours a week every week of the year.  Rosemary also provided the connections to two of my favorite and most thrilling blurb authors for my novel, Julia Glass and Bret Lott.  I promise to tell the stories of getting those blurbs on this blog in the next month.  But meanwhile, if you’re an aspiring poet, essayist, short story writer, novelist- submit your work to Words and Music, the William Wisdom, William Faulkner Literary competition, and attend Words and Music this year.  You won’t regret it.

Once again, I’m appreciating my writing group, affectionately and embarrassingly named, the Exiles.  During the summer, due to ever-increasing work schedules, we lost several members and shrunk down to a core four members.  We did a recruitment through NYC writing spaces, like the Brooklyn Writing Space and Paragraph, etc.  (These are places where writers can pay a monthly or quarterly fee and show up anytime of day or night, let themselves in with their own key, and use a cubicle in a silent space- just for writing.) 

I’ve been told that applying for the Exiles is more onerous than applying to grad school, and having done both, I agree.  Yet, grad school is for two years, in the case of an MFA, and you can avoid the writers whose work and feedback you don’t care for.  Our group is pretty much for life it seems, and each person has a huge impact.  So, we had a lovely response and we took in three new members and the group is dynamic and lively once again.

It just so happens that a number of us are at or nearing the end of a draft of a novel.  I’m about 25 pages from finishing a draft of my next book, maybe a month or two of work and since we only submit our work to each other at a chapter or two at a time, I started to fantasize about swapping novels with someone in the group.  Reading each other’s full length work and giving notes- a novel swap.  I sailed this idea past the group, and it’s gonna work!  Sometimes being in exile isn’t so lonely afterall.

One of my co-workers shares my literary tatses and frequently lends me novels to read.  Since discovering my penchant for South Asian writing, most of the books she gives me are by Indian women writers.  Two weeks ago, she branched out and handed over a large hardcover book by Amy Tan, Saving Fish from Drowning.  I was in the thick of my spare Cormac McCarthy appreciation, and put this large tomb into a tray on my desk.

Two days ago, with this said co-worker standing next to my desk, I unearthed Tan’s book and declared I would start it.  Now, I’m asking myself why I’d stopped reading Tan after her second novel.  I went crazy for The Joy Luck Club and almost equally loved The Kitchen God’s Wife.  Amy Tan is a craftsman of prose, who I’ve frequently found spellbinding.  I’m now remembering how often I re-read a whole paragraph for the rhythm and cadence of it, and something she equally distilled in her perfect word choices- the meaning.  A few weeks ago I was asked in an interview, who inspired my writing.  Amy Tan- with The Joy Luck Club- certainly should be on the list.  

So, I’ve asked a few people, and it seems we all have some favorite writers who we walked away from.  Forgot to read their third and fourth and fifth novels.  Or perhaps read their third novel first- it being the first commercial success, and never read their first two.

My feeling today is that if you love someone, don’t set them free!  Read them entirely.  Libraries are perfect for this, go now and get the whole collection of a favorite you forgot to keep reading.

My cyber friend, Jill Dearman, interviewed me recently for a Barnes and Noble book blog.  This interview was thought provoking for me because Jill asked some questions I haven’t been asked before and made me think about events I haven’t in a long time.  I thought about who influenced my early reading.  My mom did becasue she was a big reader.   As I outgrew my childhhod books and young adult novels, I’d pluck what she was reading off her nightstand or off the shelves in the living room.  Lucky for me, she read good literary books.  I remember reading Saul Bellow, or Phillip Roth, or Elizabeth Rosner, and thinking- I can’t understand about 30% of this because I’m too young to get it.  Then my aunt Penny very forcefully wanted me to read the important books.  At age 14, I spent the summer in her home in Israel.  I was put through a literature tutorial including, Beloved, Song of Solomon, Sula, and other author’s who weren’t Toni Morrison but who I can’t think of now.  I also was instructed through many LP’s that had to be memorized, Bob Dylan primarily, Joni Mitchell, all the Beatles, and I learned how to make cake frosting and jelly squares, not to mention witnessing my first home birth of my cousin, Ya’acov. 

Long way of saying, talking to Jill provoked much reflection- on reading, writing and otherwise.

Also, if you’d be so kind to leave a comment at the B&N blog above, it’ll boost The Sign for Drowning in their esteemed ranking!

I’m not always happy with the way I’m writing.  I recently responded to an interview question for Barnes and Noble (to be posted upon release) that I do not write similarly to my favorite writers.  Certainly many of the writers who I think have influenced my own writing style, I also deeply admire.  But I am just not like my lifelong favorites including Philip Roth, Hemingway, Joan Didion, Saul Bellow.  I cannot emulate them.  Not that I’ve actually tried, but I know instinctually that their distinct prose styles, whether incredibly verbose, lightning fast, dry as hell, or beautifully simplistic are not my voice.  You’ll have to read my B&N interview to know who I do think has seeped into my voice.

But on days when I’m particularly not liking what I’m writing, when the sentences are piling together with much too much emphasis on language, I stop and sigh, and ask myself, “what would Hemnigway do?”  It works, the adverbs come out, then most the adjectives, then I try a sentence or two that’s subject verb only.  It’s refreshing- the reader leaps at the change- I myself do.

I just finished Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men.  I could certainly ask myself on any given writing day, “what would McCarthy do?”  He’d give you the action.  What were they doing- that’s all he cares about.  This is almost the opposite of my highly internal characters- and that must be the way it should be.   But a dose now and then of the subject verb, the action only, can only add oxygen to the thing, if you know what I mean.

I’d hate to think what a MFA workshop would do to a Cormac McCarthy piece.  What is he thinking, feeling? they’d all ask.  Forget it- you don’t always get to know.  And isn’t that the best sometimes?