write that!

Charlie the chicken

2011-03-09T12:19:00.000-08:00

Charlie the chick rescued from spending the night outside of his nesting box is now a Green Day fan.

It's all hatching

2011-03-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I heard peeping as I slogged through the muddy gloop of the chicken yard with buckets of feed and water. A chick's hatched! Our first! A fuzzy yellow peeper with a black stripe running from its head down its back, boldly came out from under mama's white feathers. She's been so determined to set that she hasn't cleaned herself, and she's speckled with black mud. Greedily the hen pecked at the chick starter I put out for the first of her brood.

This morning I tried to catch a glimpse of the newest arrival to the coops, but she's got the chick tucked away under her feathers - wings spread, tail fanned, guarding the clutch of about 6 intact eggs.

Earlier we'd wondered about the manliness of the Rhode Island Red rooster, but he's vindicated. It's saved his life.

I've ordered 150 chicks, including 10 guinea hens, from Ridgway Hatcheries in LaRue, intended as layers for next winter and meat for the freezer. The guineas will keep down ticks, bugs and snakes.

The chickens come as an apt symbol for the creativity we're feeling at chez Rosi. Since my husband quit the day job to go full-time in the winery, we feel creative and energized.

Who knew there is a cost to working in a corporation? We have more meals at home, more home fun with the family, and more time talking over ideas for the business. I suspect we will be healthier too.

This week he's working with our friend Jay to build the bride's changing room, and to transfer the wine into oak barrels for aging. The winery has its first wedding in April, and the place will be spiffed up and bride ready.

Lee and Coco Dancing

2010-09-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

I'm enjoying Mercoledi Creativo at Via Vecchia winery - aka, Creative Wednesday. Never know how many people will show up, sometimes more, sometimes a handful, even so I enjoy being in a time and space that's dedicated to artists.

There's something about sharing the energy with other artists who are not in my discipline that makes me appreciate what it means to make art your life.

Last Wednesday I hung out with my friend Sue, who's a visual artist, and watched Anna Sullivan practice climbing silks hung from a central beam, and talked with Jason the photographer about an upcoming article, and read poetry to Coco.

And, of course, there's Paolo's most excellent wine, which he sells half price on Wednesday. Paolo rolls in at 1am on those nights, totally stoked by seeing one of his dreams come true - to be able to support artists and performers with his space.

Here's a poem inspired by Lee and Coco practicing a phrase Lee choreographed for Independents Day.

Lee and Coco Dancing

I.
We take this bright drop of silver
and wish, work, grow

roll our hips around
swirl our throats around
our painted voice
our dancing song.

II.
Long throat
straight chin
iron torso
small breasts, tight to the body.

All of her belongs to her.

The Colors of All Souls

2010-09-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

Why is autumn the season of orange and black? The translucent brilliance of fall leaves? or the orange flesh of pumpkins? The ripe yellow squash and red gourds?

The colors of Halloween, of All Souls, represent two distinct concepts, and both have to do with creativity.

In the Earth cycle, autumn isn't recognized as creative. Instead, it's a time of fruition and shedding, of making provision for the cold months ahead. But the colors orange and black, and the symbol of the pumpkin, point to a different concept at work.

Orange contains the red energy of the earth, the blood of physical beings. Yellow is the light of the sun, the solar power to make us grow. When red and yellow mingle to conceive orange, they give birth to a creative glow.

In the pumpkins we see the shape of the womb. It's grown in the sun for months, fattening. In the center, seeds grow large, full of potential, protein, and nutrients. The center of the pumpkin, like the center of the womb, is black and warm, the home for nascent life.

"Hallowed" means sacred, as in "Hallowed be Thy name." The black of Hallowe'en - All Hallows Eve - isn't about evil, or death. It's about untapped potential, teeming with life. It's about formless energy.

Black is life waiting to become. This space of potential is a sacred space.

For people who are afraid of negative energy or see black as a negative color in an energetic sense, challenge yourself to a re-frame; these are places not touched by love. Touch these places with Love, and you will see the potential that had been sleeping in "negative" energy transform, and blossom into brilliant, positive fruit.

What about the Hallowe'en of ghosts? Ancient tradition has it that Hallowe'en, All Souls, is a thin time, when this world and the next become closer. Life goes on, this tradition says. We're still here; let that comfort you. Death is not the opposite of life. It's the opposite of birth.

All around us our landscape prepares for sleep, a sleep rich with life and potential ready to shoot up in the spring. In that richness we have dreams: ephemeral, non-physical, intangible, the shadow-selves of the forms we are about to create.

Which is why, after the riot of summer's fruition, we need autumn's shedding. As the trees shed, so do we. Our emotions intensify. Little crises force resolutions. You choose to stay or leave, to keep or to give away. We clean, we get rid of, we change over our bedding, our lightbulbs, our clothes. We cleanse.

All this sweeping, emptying, and choosing clears paths for the dreaming to take place. New goals, visions, friends, and foods arrive over winter along the pathways we swept clear, perhaps unconsciously, in autumn.

Creativity at work inside us, whether we realize it, or not.

Celebrate the colors of this season. The creative, joyful orange, and the teeming potential of night-sky black, strewn with stars and a bright moon, to light your winter's path.

The Panegyric

2010-09-08T11:58:00.000-07:00

Last night I had one of those 4am moments. You might be able to recognize it: waking up, staring at the red digital numbers displayed on our ceiling by a Batman-esque alarm clock, wondering if I had made a difference in the world, wondering if I would ever again move into writing professionally, writing for my living as I did when I lived in England.

Four in the a.m. is a kind of witching hour. I'm confused, in a fugue state, particles of my dreams swirling, dressed up like reality.

I thought of those people who'd decided to leave the planet early because they couldn't take the pain they'd carried: Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe. For some reason, my mind chose two people who could have been as much pushed into Beyond, as gone open-armed to it. They stood in front of me, so much good in their lives, but also that gnawing pain.

This morning I remembered this passage from Robert Louis Stevenson: "We must all be ready somehow to toil, to suffer, to die. And yours is not the less noble because no drum beats before you when you go out into your daily battlefields, and no crowds shout about your coming when you return from your daily victory or defeat."

Uncomfortable words for us modern-day, post-The Secret, positive thinkers. Toil, suffer, die. Yuck! I like the words: ease, choose a higher path, and cross over.

But I also really love the word sacrifice. It means "to make holy." Every time we choose that path of integration over the path of escape, it's toil. Turning the other cheek when someone spits on you is not an easy path. Transforming stinky energy instead of attaching to it is not an easy path. Going back into the past and healing old wounds instead of blaming the actors in the play is not an easy path. That is my definition of TOIL.

Washing those wounds to make them holy - that's pretty much suffering. Feeling that pain all over again while I heal it, that's not ease or fun. But the strength, the integration, the sheer ecstatic bliss when the work is done - that's ease. That's the higher path.

Yesterday when I came across the word 'panegyric' on my GRE review, I looked it up. I had the sense it was an elegy of some kind, but no idea it defined the times when we receive public praise. How many mothers out there put in a day of wiping bottoms and cleaning up dishes and wish for their panegyric? How many dads go to a job they don't enjoy and come home wishing for their panegyric? These are blunt examples, but we all have times when we wish for that moment that someone will eulogize our hard work.

We have our panegyrics: an acknowledgment at a wedding, or a graduation. A hug. They come at unexpected moments. Take photographs. Indulge in those memories.

We have many more days of going out into daily battlefields, when profound ambivalence, silence, or ignorance, keeps those around us from noticing the daily victories and defeats. That's when we have to create our own panegyric, and give it to ourselves.

I'm working with two practices at the moment. The first is out-loud gratitude. I say "thank you" to the Divine whenever I receive a blessing. Any blessing, no matter how tiny.

The second is to ask the Divine to align me with my purpose as a soul on this planet, and to align me with Divine Will, and show me a day that's in alignment with that Higher vision.

Talk about ease - every day I do this second step, I have a day of complete ease. Everything gets done, within the amount of energy that I possess, on time, and unhurried.

These two practices have become energy-generators for me. In a sense, they perform the function of daily panegyrics. They don't keep me from seeing my fears displayed at 4am, they don't stop me from having challenges, but through these practices I feel rooted and centered and peaceful.

Princess Di

2010-09-07T05:14:00.000-07:00

Thirteen years ago, my daughter was born in England on the day of the biggest funeral the world had seen since they laid John F Kennedy to rest.

Every television featured only one show: mourning for Princess Diana.

As the funeral cortege processed, so did my labor. The midwives disappeared frequently from our room to watch the Princes walking to the cathedral behind their mother.

My daughter came into the world, a beautiful light for our lives, while that meteoric life that Princess Diana had led, went out.

Scouring the shops, trying to find a bouquet for his wife, my husband could find only a few wilted chrysanthemums, the only bunch of posies left.

I distinctly remember three things about that day: out the window of the delivery room, the sky appeared to be fuchsia to me, although when I focused, it turned back to turquoise. As soon as my daughter was lifted up, she opened her eyes so wide, as if to take in all the world, and the first person she saw was her father. And that night the clouds formed themselves into giant heads, as if people had come to look down on the precious events of the day, and look in at the new lives in the hospital too. It thundered, and rained, and cleared up, and the giant heads in the sky drifted over it all.

We don't get a Princess Diana very often in this world. Some people will internally say to that "Thank God." Before she died she took flack from every pundit with a soapbox; the day after she died they recanted, or had to keep their opinions to themselves.

Only during the flood of national mourning could we all see that Diana had become what she had wanted to be - the Queen of Hearts. As cheesy as that title was, as close a reference as it was to 'tarts', she opened up the heart of a nation known for its curmudgeons.

Empower yourself!

2010-03-01T14:09:00.001-08:00

Self-healing is a fundamental right that we have as human beings. Costs and bureaucracy surrounding the medical profession, plus the constant barrage of advertisements for drugs, contribute to our forgetfulness of that fact. When you learn to connect to the free, unlimited inflow of Divine healing, you empower yourself, and reclaim your right to heal.

Big Chicken Day

2009-09-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

I thought this was a writing blog! Hah! I want to write about chickens.

MONDAY the guinea hens screeched at the boy-gang of marauding young roosters, who invaded the vegetable patch for my ripening tomatoes. The guineas have no sense of volume. Everything is at high volume - they sound like a high-pitched pitbull barking. Then the old rooster, a Rhode Island Red with a huge black-feathered tail, joins in crowing to protect his tiny harem of five overworked girls. Overworked, because one rooster is more comfortable servicing ten chickens, and mine have developed sore spots which means they need to wear chicken bras - a saddle made of canvas to protect their backs from his spurs. It's all at full volume and I'm wondering what the neighbors think.

The turkey is spectating from his strawbale hutch near the vegetable patch. He's a bronze-breasted, and his head turns red when he's upset or hungry. He must be enjoying the shenanigans, because his head is its natural shade of gray. He has a soft too-whit, too-whit as his call, not a gobble, and he's huge. He's too big for his legs - an unfortunate genetic modification that I didn't understand when I ordered the poults. He's so fat, he looks like one of those 300lb men at the zoo, who use a zimmer frame to hold up their stomachs. At least they try - and so does Christmas, waddling to his feed tray, scooping up huge beakfulls of grain.

We wait until dark and put on our gloves and jackets, even though the night is still warm. I tuck a flashlight in my pocket. We are robbers with chicken crates. We go to the main coop, push the crate in front of us, and close the door behind us. I shine the light on the sleeping chickens, my husband picks up the first one and puts it in the crate. I count. We put ten to a crate, load it onto the trailer, and bring in the next crate. By the last ten chickens, we realize we don't have enough crate space. Ten chickens go into a cardboard box while we rustle up cat carriers and dog cages from the basement. At the end of the night we have 78 chickens, 3 guinea fowl, and one turkey loaded into the garage, waiting for dawn.

TUESDAY my back hurts. I beg my husband to come to the slaughterhouse with me, but he needs his vacation days for the grape crush this year for his winery. My son has new muscles from a year on swim team, and he gets drafted for the job. We leave at 7.30am for Kings Poultry near Troy, Ohio (USDOT inspected, chickens chilled to 40 degrees and sent out on ice) for our 10am appointment. I try not to think about how much I love the chickens, how funny Christmas is, how the guineas protected him with their screeching. I try not to think about how I will have to buy my eggs now from the grocery store, or about the massive freezer in my basement. Most of all, I try not to think about leaving my chickens on the slaughterhouse loading bay, because even though the people there are terribly nice, it means one thing only for my birds.

I wonder how my son is going to take it. He loves Christmas, and used to spend time crouched near his coop just sitting with him. But we gamely unload all the heavy crates, line up our tubbies and coolers, and get our return time: 2pm. I keep saying to myself - this is the food chain. This is the food chain. But I also think - I'm going to become a vegetarian one day, when everyone in the house can eat beans without us stinking each other out. Then I'll be able to keep chickens just for the eggs and for the pleasure of it.

We arrive home at 6pm after problems strapping the empty crates to the trailer. We are exhausted, but still the chilled carcasses have to be unloaded directly from the ice into the freezer. One by one my husband hands me all the birds, and we fill it up. I identify several of them - here are the older girls, the layers, and their rooster, here is the Americauna, they were a bit runty. And here's Christmas - 40lbs of him with the three darker guinea fowls. I think of all the people lined up at our holiday table, waiting with forks.

This is the reality of eating meat. You take a living thing, you cut off its head and scoop out its guts, and then you bake it at 350. This is the reality of the most disposable meat in our culture - the chicken.

WEDNESDAY I can't wake up properly without the rooster's crow. I really miss him. We only got rid of the layers because we want to go on vacation this year, a proper family vacation, and can't leave livestock at home.

It's too quiet around here. I look over at Christmas's coop, and he's not there. He's in the freezer. I wonder what we will have for dinner. It's too early to eat chicken.

Good-bye Thanksgiving

2009-08-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

...he left the gate open, and the coyote seized her opportunity. We found you by the orchard. We are meat eaters too, and this half-chewed reminder proves everyone loves a turkey dinner. Happy coyote, happy coyote pups. Happy vultures, happy crows.

The three remaining guinea hens stick close to Christmas.

LESSON LEARNED
Predators and opportunists live by their own rules. If you don't want to lose something you've carefully nurtured, make sure you maintain your fences and close the GATES.

Dances with Chickens

2009-08-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

(Thank you Reg for the title)

Dances with Chickens

One day I will have an immaculate garden
with a deer fence, six-feet high
made of silvered wood. A sprinkler
system I turn on with the twist of my wrist
and squash that don't lie in a green mattress of grass.

One day I will write full pages of work, my train
of thought uninterrupted by the Simpson's latest mischief
or a request for food.

I might keep our rooster, even though he dances and flies
at me with his spurs,
his 20-hen harem long gone
to the slaughterhouse.

What will he do with those nesting boxes? Who
will he show the worm to, no
favorite to coo?

One day we will lie by a pool together
my husband and I, and wish for the noise of teenage boys
even though the price is a wrinkled pool liner
and a bottom gritty from unwashed feet.

The turkeys come toward my daughter, shaking
the feed bucket. They are so loyal and grateful
and wary.

One day it will be silent here, no bumping into dogs
the kids insisted on, no disgruntled cats
only the obsessive hum of neighborhood mowers.

You all will be gone from the messy garden
and vases I put down
will remain on the counter, unbroken
in a house
as still as a snapshot.

On strong, long wings
my children fly.

Brakes

2009-07-24T07:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I Googled my name. An interesting look in the public mirror - everyone should do it once in a while. What struck me was how differently layered the references were. And then one leaped out at me. A Detective Fiction website that had copies of Motherhunt for sale. This is how they described me:

"An American author who has lived in England most of her adult life. Caused something of a splash with collectors and readers with the publication of her first novel."

My first thought was - "I wish someone would have told me at the time that I'd made a splash." I began to write the novel when I was 29, a time when my emotions were governed by anxiety and confusion. I had a new baby far from home, and no clue as to how to be a Mom and a writer and earn a living at the same time. Two books, two babies, and two miscarriages in the space of four years - that was intense.

There came a time after I'd written Butterfly Eyes when I made a choice. I remember it clearly, sitting on the bottom step of my home in Bedfordshire with my baby daughter in my arms. I so wanted to get upstairs and write. I yearned to write. I yearned to publish, to go on book tours, to attend writing soirees - to lead a full life as a writer. To give myself completely to my craft. But who would raise my babies? A nanny could not give her what I wanted to give her; I had specific values and qualities that I wanted to instill in my children, and only I could do that job.

My frustration at not being able to write was so overpoweringly fierce, I wanted to abandon my job as a mother, to walk away. And that's when I made a key decision.

I'd learned that my books had a shelf-life and a life-cycle. My childrens' life-cycles would be longer than the books'. The books had to come second. That, I knew, would have consequences. I wouldn't be able to write as fully as I needed to write in order to fulfill my potential in my profession. I would have to focus on other, more mundane, things.

Writing time, henceforth, became tucked here and there. It got stuffed in the cracks. I felt confused, my identity as a writer stripped away, piece by piece, until it no longer mattered. What ascended instead was something I didn't value when I viewed myself as purely a writer - the healing work. Ten years of self-healing, then helping others to heal. Like a glass shattered against a marble floor, I picked myself up piece by piece and healed myself back together. Instead of a glass, there is now cut crystal, sparkling with rainbows.

Through it all I've written personally, kept stacks of diaries, this blog on and off, written and published short stories, written another novel, a non-fiction book proposal, had a radio show. And for the last six months, since beginning to teach for Healing in America, I've been on a writing fast, and it's uncomfortable in some ways, and feels exactly right in others. As a person, my largest inner cogs have been turning, re-gearing, to put my personality in a completely different place.

Last week, my son left for a month with his grandparents, and I cried at the airport. University will be coming around so fast. The crack in the cliff-face, that tunnel upwards into a meadow of writing, where I can once again explore the potential I chose against with the baby in my arms - that's within view.

What's really cool? All the healing work I've done for myself and others over the intervening years has put me in a very peaceful, centered, and connected place. Writing now comes from a new well. A very deep, and full aquifer. I see people in a completely different way. I react to stress with peaceful resources. I deal with conflict with strength and clarity. That's the crystal. That's ten years of healing and becoming non-attached to the label of 'writer'.

It's a completely different space.

And the writing that flows from there will be ...

An Apache saying

2009-05-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

I've been following the series "We Shall Remain" on PBS. Last week they featured Geronimo, and one of his grandsons made this statement: "As Apaches, everything we do is sacred."

I bet there were some viewers who thought: "what makes you so special?"

A fascinating book for me at the moment is Lynne McTaggart's The Intention Experiment. The book shows clearly, through the thousands of scientific experiments cited, how intention can have a profound effect on our world.

Through quantum entanglement we are always interacting with other parts of our universe than the one we are aware of at the present time. Not only have studies shown that people have a direct effect on their environment with the thoughts they focus on, they can also alter their brains which become measurably thicker in areas which receive intense focus.

If everything we think has an impact, then everything we do has a definite effect. We are working with the whole, if only in small ways, at every moment of our existence.

In native culture, you make a prayer before you do anything. In today's parlance, you set an intention. An intention is a specific request, which is then released to a higher energy which orders it to the highest possible outcome.

The Apaches and native peoples remember it; others will have to re-discover it. Everything we do is sacred.

Live richly

2009-04-14T12:47:00.000-07:00

Live richly
in the center of life
tumult of growing things
chaos of fractals
unfolding to light
iris
of God's living stream.

Live richly your fears
salting the sauce
give yourself freely
to mistakes

let love flow
from the center of your smile
and your feet
absorb the rain.

Another chicken story

2008-12-17T19:04:00.001-08:00

I just took 10 chickens up to a USDO processor in Bradford, Ohio and
got the excellent price of processing at 1.75 per chicken, processed,
weighed and inspected and refrigerated to 40 degrees. I now have
chickens that I can sell legally from my freezer at home. I plan to
raise and sell 150 chickens this summer - a mix of finishers at 8
weeks and 3-4 month meat-layer crosses. I will process at the Bradford
facility in batches of 50 chickens, and take pre-orders from friends
and my neighbors. I expect to have all my chickens sold before I load
them up in the trailer and take them to the processor.

I loved the processor - on an Amish, family-run facility which is open
to the public. The people there obviously have a love of their
community, and the matriarch happily answered my questions for 20
minutes as a newbie chicken farmer.

We took on 20 chickens this summer as an experiment on our 5 acres in
Powell, and I get to eat the first one tomorrow. We've been enjoying
eggs since October, and the whole experience of being on the meat end
of the food chain. It's been a pleasure from start to finish, since we
bought the chicks at Ridgeway hatcheries in April. Ridgeway supplied
me with a list of slaughtering operations in Ohio. I chose the one in
Bradford because it is USDO, and they also have a telephone. Some of
the other facilities I had to write to, and wait for a date back!

How a surrogate 'Dad' taught me to run, and lifted us all in the inner city.

2008-10-30T10:39:00.000-07:00

I went to Middle School and part of High School in Seattle's south side, bussed into the inner city. In eighth grade I ran cross country, pounding the pavements and parks of south Seattle as our legs ate up the miles in fall conditioning. In ninth grade I ran track, and received the great gift of a coach I will never forget.

Rocky Adams stood about six-foot-two, with a big belly and grizzled silver and black hair. In his sixties, he’d been through segregation in Alabama where he’d been made to use ‘colored only’ washrooms. He’d run track in the Olympics on the same team as Jesse Owens, and talked about Jesse like he was just around the corner, or a phone call away.

I don’t think there was a single girl on our team who had a father living at home, including me. Somehow, they’d divorced or died or drifted away. So Rocky became OUR father, the father of every girl on that team.

I remember how we’d drift out onto that red cinder track after school, and gather in a little cluster around Rocky. Every girl gave him a hug. It wasn’t like Rocky asked for hugs. We just went up to him and put our arms around his big belly and we hugged him for all the father we could get.

Some girls would hang on him, and he’d have to peel them off and before sending us all around the track. “I have a headache Rocky,” we’d complain, buying time, or “I’ve got pains,” and he’d get stern: "Your head hurts, your belly hurts, next thing your hair is goin’ to hurt! When I was guardin' them women in Korea, suddenly they’d go off in them bushes, and come back with a baby half an hour later! And you tell me you can’t get round that track?!”

Rocky worked at a sports store, and he never let a girl or boy go without the spiked shoes we needed to run our races. He made it clear, if you didn’t have the money for a bag, or Bengay, or a new set of spikes, he’d get them for you.

Years later I wondered how much of his own money he’d spent on those shoes. At the time I thought they were magical, free, but now I understand he must have sacrificed for us, like a good father would. He lectured us tactfully on athletic wear, that a good bra would improve our performance – go buy one. He drew the line at supplying those.

With his stories of Jesse Owens, with his chiding, he encouraged the girls to stay in school and the boys to give their best. Don’t get pregnant, he told the girls, but he didn’t shame or shun when one girl did and had to leave the team.

As a fatherless girl, I counted on my hugs from Rocky. He gave me unconditional love and support for all the years I ran track with him, at school and during club in the summers when I’d take the bus across town to practice, even though I never came in first, not once. I am grateful to have lived in a window of time when he could hug us like a father, and we could respond like daughters.

When I look at Barak Obama, I hear in my mind some of Rocky’s stories about growing up in the south, and I definitely hear how proud he would be, just like he was so proud of Jesse Owens. Rocky’s stories of Jesse lifted up those inner city girls and boys, gave them a shot at a new horizon.

What if people who are weakened by despair and limited options suddenly find strength through Obama’s leadership? Won’t it be a wonderful thing for our nation if everyone became stronger? That everyone feels they have a chance? What if the despair of the inner cities is suddenly lifted by hope, and the talent and beauty and life there has reinforcement for creating positive patterns?

IWWG Conference

2008-10-29T09:26:00.001-07:00

Got up at 3.30 am with my friend Reg to get a plane for 5, to be on a subway at 8 to be at the conference by 10am, to find there's no tea or coffee at IWWG. We listened, famished, to the opening speakers, then ducked out to Maloney's bar and I had an "Irish" breakfast. Sorry Maloney's, and the homesick Irish chap who served us, but it was really the Full English - 2 eggs, 2 bangers, 2 rashers, tomato, black & white puddings, tea, toast, orange juice. Everything except the baked beans, porridge and fried bread. An obnoxious man at the bar kept on talking loudly about OJ Simpson decapitating his wife "DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS? HE DID IT WITH A KNIFE" until the barman asked him to "stop talking about what you're talking about."

Reg and I rehearsed our pitches for the 6th time each, and headed back to the hall to listen to the agents' panel.

The night before, my daughter did our nails, made sure we had adequate makeup, went through our wardrobe picks, sorted, discarded and added, checked our jewelry and made sure we'd look our best. With stunning prescience, she made us write down on cards what qualities we were looking for in an agent, and then told Reg: don't expect the person who's right for you will necessarily be a woman.

IWWG put on a lovely panel of agents. Because the group has a focus on spirituality, they'd picked several agents who seemed to be a good fit for me. We stood in two-hour lines at tables to meet our top picks, but it was worth it. I felt very at ease with the woman who asked me to submit my work. In my exhausted, befuddled state I still managed to give the book's synopsis and my platform, thanks to the morning's practice with Reg - who stood in line to see the only man there.

We bought a copy of "Next to Mexico" from the author Jen Nails, a book I'd actually picked up in Barnes and Noble the week before, thinking it would be a good choice for my daughter.

We also bought a book from Natalie Reid, who does 'soul readings' and helps people work with their soul's voice through her book The Spiritual Alchemist: Working with the Voice of the Soul. Natalie holds workshops at the IWWG annual conference at Strathmore. I'd love to go in June, but that's a busy time for my chicken, bee and garden operation, and I plan on pasturing 100 chickens this year - a substantial increase from 20.

What I loved about the panel of writers who spoke to us in the morning, was their diverse means of publishing. This used to make me feel very scared: "if there are so many more books being published, who will ever buy mine?" I wondered. But I see it differently now.

The publishing industry has opened up in such a huge way that everyone has access to some level of publication. Instead of a dozen carefully tended, clipped and sheltered rosebushes, there are fields of wildflowers blooming across the earth - in blogs, e-books, self-publishing or traditional publishing houses.

It gives authors access to publication according to their skill level and their desire to be published. So a person who just wants to get an idea out there could blog; develop the idea into an e-book and sell it; get it bound with artword and promote it as a self-published work; or try to really take it to a highly-developed, highly-polished level and submit it to an agent or a publishing house.

I do see writing and publishing as soul development now. This takes out the competitive element with other authors and writers. Instead of "my book - what have you written?" it's "how are you developing your soul?" or "what does your soul want to express?" Also, "what feeds my soul?" and for blocked writers, "how do I get in touch with my soul?" And ultimately, it's always:

"what makes my soul sing?"

New York - new pitch

2008-10-16T08:29:00.000-07:00

After working for a year on platform by creating the radio show Conscious Voices for WCRS, I'm back to novels and brushing up a final final version of Novel 3 to sell in New York. The International Women Writer's Guild (IWWG) holds a pitch session this weekend. Sunday there is a meet-the-authors open house, a book fair, and then a meet-the-agents open house. The blurb promises that past events have "yielded wonderful matches between authors and agents."

A friend and I are travelling up together on a 4am flight, (OMG - that's before my rooster is even up) and we plan to practice-pitch to our local IWWG chapter the day before.

Why is it taking so long to get novel 3 out the door? Last year at the Columbus Writer's Conference I had a session with editor Sally Kim, and she encouraged me to get in touch with several agents. But after listening to editors and agents talk about their needs, I felt that I had to back up and construct more of a platform. I dove into creating a radio show for WCRS fm. Twenty-two episodes later felt I'd earned a break, and that it was overdue time to get that novel once again into position for an agent.

A girl can only do so much!

When it's my turn to sit in front of an agent, I'll tell her that Sally did want to see my book, when I'd found someone who could talk to her. (Some editors in the big publishing houses can't talk to writers unless the writer has an agent.)

The trainer at the gym had the nicest thing to say to me when I told her I'd be going to New York. "I wish you luck - you deserve it. You work so hard at it."

Maybe that's why I feel so calm going into this. I've done the hoofwork. The novel's been combed through 13 times. I've had a professional editor comment on the manuscript, and taken her advice to heart in the subsequent redrafts. I've taken time to build the platform and labored over designs for the final website. Is it worth it? Has it been worth it? Yes.

When the conference is over, when my plane touches ground back in Columbus, if I don't find a match at IWWG I'll start contacting agents one by one until I find that right someone. In the meantime, I'll begin novel 4. I'll record a show. I'll be starting on the promotion for the NFSH Healing in America training courses in Ohio in March 2009. And it will all come together eventually, and it will all be good.

Decision Maker

2007-09-14T11:51:00.000-07:00

After a long, hot and glorious summer with the kids and my beautiful neice, swimming and bouncing and camping and eating from the garden - and yes, writing too - I'm at work. Just turned in a 20-minute segment for Bexley radio about the Columbus Writer's Conference. And last night, I was approached at a radio party to host my own weekly hour-long show on my favorite topics: conscious living, holistic health, sustainability, and travel.

What an amazing opportunity! And I've got enough ideas to fill 20 hours of programming!

How different from Wednesday when I'd hit writer's block. I felt so drained, a kind of panicky drained, where I'm afraid I'll never be able to write again. A writer friend called, and she talked about her artist dates, and how they seemed like a complete waste of time, but the day after taking time for her inner artist she worked more easily, smoothly.

She's right, I thought. Without hesitation, I grabbed my favorite black and gold fountain pen, my journal, and headed out to the pool where my son lounged in the hammock with stomach flu. I put on a California Guitar Trio cd, and sucked up the freedom of letting myself just BE.

After about an hour, I began to see vivid images in my mind, and this poem fell out. This is its fifth draft:

Decision Maker

We are arrows shot
black against turquoise sky
a silver-tipped swish.

We the bow
the burning bicep
white fingers, blood starved,
hot scrape of string to arm
and the vibrating core
of the bow-master.

In my quiver, a thousand decisions,
aim of my eye,
each shot, destiny wrought.
The arc interrupted by an act of will, or not
interrupted at all.
----------------------

The poem reminded me of something I'd read in Khalil Gibran's The Prophet. So I scurried upstairs and found this on page 18:

“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

It's no shame to be trumped by a master, and I have to give the blue ribbon for archery metaphors to Gibran. But it was interesting to see how my language differed from his. We also talk about different subjects - Gibran about the separateness between one generation and the next, between child and parent and how important stability is for how far a child can fly. My poem is about how our decisions govern our life's experiences, and how we can choose to change old patterns through the act of will, or create a positive life by using the principle of trajectory.

In a business and marketing class I'm taking from Freelance Success's Erik Sherman, I've posted this piece of advice on my wall: "through ordered and diligent work, you can take advantage of business that happens by accident." I think that, too, also resonates with the bowmaster and the vibrating core.

I didn't realize I missed blogging this much!

Last day of school blues

2007-06-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

Last day of school, and I feel a bit sad because I'm picking up steam in writing work and now the schedule shifts - to what? How will I create time to write? How will I find solace?

But I know, if I look to past summers, I will be able to integrate my life: kids and summer fun with writing. Somehow!

The kids know of my need. One day when my son was trying to think of a punishment for some small trespass I'd committed he said: "I know, you're grounded from writing for three days!"

"OOOOHHHH!" I wailed. "You really know where to hurt me!" And he grinned and we giggled.

I can see it now: they're putting me in a nursing home but checking out the internet connection and finding a lap table so I can still use my computer, diary, pens....

I'm working on two stories at the moment: one non-fiction about Nazi-era provenance art for Bexley Public Radio, the other fiction, a 2,000 word short story I want to enter into the Ohio Writer's competition.

The online competition service CRWROPPS (which you can subscribe to as a feed, see previous posts for details) spits out five to eight competitions per day for me to peruse. And I'm getting picky.

Competitions can be a scam. Think of a good name for your comp, set up a PO Box, advertise and watch the checks come in. That's why the website which keeps an eye on comps, Preditors and Editors, doesn't take as valid any comp which charges a reading fee. (Ditto for agents). However, comps are one way magazines and writers' groups get revenue in to keep them afloat.

My rules have become: if it lists a PO Box as its address, don't enter. Wait for comps from magazines and writer's groups you recognize, then check out their websites. One website CRWROPPS listed had a rolling competition - ie, they gave winners out every few months. But when I clicked through to the site, the poetry was diabolical, and basically pay to play.

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Hurray Italy!

2007-06-06T10:43:00.001-07:00

Picture 390
Originally uploaded by cynthiarosi

Happy memories....

Be the explorer on the edge of your world

2007-06-03T17:48:00.000-07:00

It's being so scared, and yet deciding to do that thing you're most afraid of, and getting beyond it and finding out you're not only alright, but better for the experience, and then seeing the next thing you're scared of, and then saying to yourself 'I'm a brave person. I did the last thing that scared me to death. I'm a person of courage and I'm going to do this next thing that scares me to death,' and you do, and it's ok...that's what makes life such an adventure.

You can be Marianne the Librarian and lead a wonderful, adventurous life because you're facing your fears every day...and it will look to other people that you're just an ordinary bod going about ordinary bod things every day, but you won't be.

You'll be an explorer on the edge of your world; you are the bravest person to face the fears that make you the most frightened, and the most courageous to do those things anyway.

For everyone who lives like this, their reward is the most wonderful freedom; their life is the most exciting; their dreams are the most fulfilled.

The Gift Day

2007-05-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I received a wonderful gift from my mother: a clipping of an article from the Christian Science Monitor which she'd written in 1953. In the article she described how she'd bought and trained a budgie to take to her grandparents on a visit from her apartment in New York to their Seattle cottage. During the long train journey across the US, passengers took a shine to the parakeet as she tried to teach it to speak. 'Cheerie' refused - until he arrived at Grandma's house, settled in, and began to sing "I love you Grandma" and "I'm Hughie's bird".

I'd been down in the dumps that day. June's upon us, and that's when I switch out of writer to childcare expert and chief play wizard. I hadn't got as much published as I'd hoped in the previous nine months, and couldn't understand what I'd achieved. Mom's article cheered me up, particularly her large vocabulary and her clear style. I remembered how she took such great care to teach me interesting and difficult words, and to pronounce them correctly. I know that my large vocabulary, easily handled, has to be due to this childhood training, as well as our daily study of the King James Bible and Science and Health - a book with tortuous and awesomely difficult words for a child.

After reading Mom's letter, I opened my email to doggedly face the work I felt I'd failed at, and wonderfully there - an acceptance! The Christian Science Monitor had taken a piece I wrote about our trip to Tuscany. As I looked again at Mom's article, I noticed publication day was May - the same month as my acceptance.

Agent & Editors List

2007-05-22T12:10:00.001-07:00

If you're looking to publish a novel, non-fiction or young adult book, and you've done the groundwork which makes you ready to approach an editor or agent, then subscribe to Publisher's Lunch. You get an email digest for free, and if you subscribe (tax deductible remember!) on a monthly basis you have access to a database of editors and agents which you can search by category or with keywords.

At the moment Pub Lunch is advertising the BEA in New York, and if you click into the writer's conference and scroll down to the pitch slam, you'll find a list of editors and agents listening to pitches. These people are actively trawling for new writers to boost their lists.

I've archived my list in my email in-box under editors/agents. I'm also archiving everything cwropps (the contest bulletin board) sends. Then I will search my email by keyword and up will pop lists of editors and agents looking at manuscripts this year. Then I can search on their names and see if they match what I write. Pub lunch makes this an easier process because of the category function.

Ok, you twisted my arm. Here's the Pub Lunch list of editors and agents listening to slams at the BEA. Have fun!

Linn Prentis
Lynne Rabinoff
Jenny Rappaoport
Jessica Regel
Janet Rosen
Rita Rosenkranz
Emma Sweeney
Olga Vezeris
Cherry Weiner
Ted Weinstein
Larry Weissman
Jennifer Weltz
John Willig
Michelle Wolfson
Caroline Woods
Helen Zimmerman Marilyn Allen
Janet Benrey
Daniel Bial
Regina Brooks
Sheree Bykofsky
Debbie Carter
Jennifer Cayea
Adam Chromy
June Clark
Donya Dickerson
Jen Dunham
Stephany Evans
Grace Freedson
Mollie Glick
Emily Sylvan Kim
Jud Laghi Michael Larsen
Meg Leder
Julia Lord
Jonathan Lyons
Michael Mancilla
Sharlene Martin
Paul McCarthy
Jeffrey McGraw
Laurie McLean
Jackie Meyer
Peter Miller
Michael Murphy
Colleen O'Shea
Lori Perkins
Alicka Pistek
Elizabeth Pomada

The Art of Happiness at Work for writers

2007-05-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

The good news: returned from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) conference brimming with ideas and a pitch to-do list that made me sing. The bad news: what's happened to my time? How can I be working so hard and standing so still? Time, like money: where's it all gone?

Then when I hit the page after accomplishing so little, I feel the mountain of work left to be done is just that, a mountain. My friend calls my method of writing "drip drip" - like Chinese water torture.

I'm reading the Dalai Lama's "Art of Happiness at Work" and loved the insights. Flow, defined as the state of losing yourself and track of time through focus on work, is apparently psychologically unachievable on a regular basis. I thought in order to be a proper writer, I had to achieve flow every day. I get frustrated when I don't. But this says that if you achieve flow a mere six to seven times a year, you're going very well.

But it also pointed out that "flow" people can be pretty grumpy curmudgeons. Can you be a people-pleaser and an achiever at the same time? I really struggle with trying to carve the time and space to write while still managing a family, keeping healthy friendships and being energized enough for a successful healing practice. It's a huge balancing act and very often I fall off the beam, frustrated.

What is this frustration? It's fear. Fear that I'll never live up to my pre-kids potential as a writer; that the hiatus I took from a writing career was a full stop, not a comma. Yet I look at the way my work flows now, at the power, the purity, the effortlessness of the language and I know that's due to the time out I took to develop my character, to walk with integrity in every place in my life.

Another insight came from a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the author Howard C Cutler, MD, on how people see their work: as a job and timeclock, a career with attendant ambition and jealousy, or as a calling.

His description of careerists as ambitious, jealous, and competitive brought to mind my years as a reporter, when I chaired the Women Writers' Network, and wrote my first two novels. I collapsed due to exhaustion and inspirational burnout. After re-orienting myself through growth as a healer and subsequently opening a practice, writing also needed to shift into a calling. But first my healing practice went through a smaller version of the same process after I realized I did not want to be a career healer, making a living from classes, workshops, healings and how-to books.

Writing as a calling sees the body of work. It sees the growth of the writer, through skill, deepened experience, and for me through a broad range of contacts plus cuttings and books that show maturity. It's about curiousity, and other people's stories. It's a celebration of where we are on the planet, in this incredible time to be alive.

During the transition out of career writer, I wished to be able to read other people's books without jealousy, and love them for the light of new ideas they bring into the world. I can. I wished to be hungry to write again for publication. I am.

And now I wish to be able to integrate my calling for writing and publication into a very rich and diverse life that I lead as a person.

I will.

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Two More Contacting Editors Tips

2007-03-08T11:02:00.000-08:00

I heard two editor contacting tips this week. These are the short versions. And it's much better if you do the longer version (two blogs ago) because then you're forced to examine the magazine, which gives your pitch a higher chance of acceptance. But once you know these tips, you may be tempted, (as in the chocolate cake is in the fridge and I just need a teeny slice, no, better not dirty a dish - I'll tackle this with my fork) to take the shortcut.

For magazine contact information: www.hoovers.com

For insider information on magazines: www.bacons.com

Don't say I didn't warn you.

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Ad infinitum

2007-03-02T11:22:00.000-08:00

My son pointed out a few weeks ago, that mathematically .9999999 repeating to infinity is the same number as one.

The reason? Because in math, a pattern takes precedence over numbers.

I like to think of this as I work out in the gym. I don't lift as much weight as the other ladies. I don't run as fast. I can't do as many reps of v-ups. But I show up. Every week I lift weights twice, get my butt kicked in Boot Camp on Fridays, and spin for an hour on a leftover day. I have a repeating pattern. As I slog around the gym, last in line during the Indian running (do Indians really do that? I don't think so...) ready to drop to a walk, I remind myself that I don't have to be in the gym at all. I could be home watching tivo.

This is like my resurrected writing career. I'm creating patterns: send out queries to editors, get more ideas, send those out, follow up queries, get rejected, try again. Here I'm .999999 once again as I build a reputation for myself, and get back on top of my game. But I remember as I send out another query letter, that mathematically I'm the same as 1. Because it's the pattern that takes precedent over where I physically seem to be today.

There's another theory that the life you're living today, is the life you created for yourself three months ago. That's how long it takes for the ideas you envison to precipitate into the physical world. In otherwords, it will take three months for me to see the life I'm actually creating today, and I'm living the results of what I created three months ago with my actions and intentions.

You may feel like .9999999. But if you're laying down repeating patterns for yourself and struggling to create a different life than the one you didn't like, you're actually mathematically 1.

I'm going to get kicked out of Boot Camp if I keep on trying to tell them these things during our clapping pushups.

Tricks for contacting editors

2007-02-28T13:10:00.000-08:00

Getting through to editors at magazines can be like trying to wiggle a limpet off a rock. Do they want submissions? Apparently not. Read the mastheads and it's a rare editor who lists their email address or telephone number.

However, if you read the masthead you will also find out there are precious few people running that magazine. It's stripped to the bones. Which is why they rely so heavily on freelance input. But if you're a new freelance, how do you get to the editor? Generic emails yield extremely few results.

I will reveal the secret. But if you use the secret you're going to look like a fool unless you have a slick delivery about your idea by phone, or you've got a professional looking, well-researched query letter. With that caveat (because I have been in busy newsrooms, and I do sympathize with overworked editors who get into a groove only to be interrupted by a nuisance call) use the following tips judiciously:

Go to the masthead on the magazine and write down the names of the editor, managing editor, assistant editor - whomever you want to reach. Then go down to advertising: they're the bunch that want to give out their email addresses. Look for the pattern -firstinitiallastname@mymag.com. You'll use that same pattern to email the editor with your white-hot, well-researched query (no attachments).

Then see where the editorial offices are located, and look for the number for the advertising or circulation department which is located in the same building. Now you've got the switchboard number and you can call the operator for the editor's number. If you get through to voicemail you can: call back, pitch to the mailbox, or go back to the operator and ask for the person's assistant. They don't really have assistants, I'm finding out. These magazines are horribly short-staffed.

This method takes a bit of sales practice. I like to have my pitch written out in front of me pared down to one sentence. Then they can ask for more information or send me away if it's not right for the magazine, or I can try to pitch a second article. I think if I had a list of articles it would either be impressive or annoying. I haven't tried that one yet. I'd love comments from other freelances about this method.

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2007-02-22T08:17:00.000-08:00

Has it really been that long since I posted? Time's all crumpled up these days. I could have sworn it's only been a week.

But since then, I've had my first interview broadcast on Bexley Public Radio (Local Power FM - 102.1 in Columbus), and sat down with our engineer Eugene to edit tape for a couple news pieces. We've had lots and lots of snow, so that's been a distraction. At one point we were under a level 3 winter weather warning, which means you're not allowed to go out in your car.

Since last week I've signed up for the ASJA conference in New York, booked my flight, found somewhere to sleep; and signed up for a 'write your non-fiction book proposal class' through Freelance Success on-line. Jennifer Lawler teaches the class, and although I won't be able to take part of it due to other commitments, I thought I'd better have my proposal ready for the conference to punt to agents and editors. I've also joined the Freelance Success query challenge, and have to get some queries shifted off my desk today so that our group gets some points.

It's been a HUGELY busy and productive ten days. Almost overwhelmingly so. On Saturday night I dreamed this amazing dream, and spent Sunday with my head in the computer turning it into a short story. It's a firecracker - but now it needs redrafting before it's in shape to send out. The week before that, a whole novel plot landed in my head ready-born, and I'm very, very excited about that project too.

I've shut down my healing practice for the month of February. That's because I concentrate so hard during the day, I'm too tired to give clients full focus once my evening office hours roll 'round. (I will be back up and running in March). However, one client came in under the wire. She's a writer too, and asked a question about writing sad or dark stories. For people who believe that intention creates our world, or that thoughts can turn into things, writing dark stories feels like contributing to the evil in the world, rather than being part of our Earth's healing.

I found a diary entry I'd written while re-drafting The LightCatcher. I had real problems with that book trying to make it dark enough. I'd become so deeply involved with my healing practice, and identified so strongly with the characters, that I couldn't give them enough pain to make the story interesting.

"One of my many blocks to writing I discovered yesterday. In all metaphysical texts they talk about not only the importance of action, but also of thought: how it's important to send good thoughts, pure thoughts, into the world, for the health of other people and also for your own health.

"Writing a dark book is an action, and it makes negative thoughts concrete. As a healer I don't want to participate in that cycle. However, the canvas (flat or sculpture or a novel) is a place where we can safely manipulate imaginary icons without damaging real people as we explore human nature for ourselves and others.

"That's why art is such an important spiritual medium, and a safe and right place to direct emotion, our wonderings and our wonderment. It's another vehicle of birth which allows the expression of emotion and the safe passage through to communion with ourselves...with others. Snapshots of other minds, other situations. Birth, and out the other side."

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Which agents actively trawl for writers? Plus a cheerful look at conference etiquette

2007-02-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

Don't have an agent? Don't have conference fees? Feeling out of the loop?

The best way back into the loop is through conferences. There you can hear all the tips and advice and find out what the industry needs as it moves in this rapidly changing information-driven world.

BUT if you've been to the conferences at a time when your work wasn't ripe to sell, and need to know who's trawling for authors now, then go to writers' conference websites and find out who's touring. Agencies will send people who need to build their list of authors; newly-opened agencies will cherry-pick from conferences; and one-man bands will also trawl for writers.

It's best to get your butt to the conference, get your mug in front of the agent with a good-looking business card that lists your website and your blog, practice your thirty-second pitch speech in the mirror the night before, and give it to the agent with lots of direct eye contact and a firm handshake. Professional. That's what sells and that's what you've got to appear to be.

I learned two conferences ago not to have pretty folders with my tear sheets and the first ten pages of the novel ready to hand to the agents. Each person said they never accept manuscripts at conferences. They prefer to receive your information by email. So don't look like a dork and try to thrust anything on them bigger than your business card. And be ready with pen and paper in case they've run out of cards and want to give you their contact details.

I'm like all writers. I sit in my office, most of the time with a makeup free face and my weight-lifting gear still on. If I remember to put on earrings and extra deoderant after my workout (I do shower every morning, so it's not as stinky as all that), it's a bonus. But the dog and the cat don't care. However, as my children continue to remind me when I get too freaky - looks matter. As much as I hate it, people respond better to people who look normal. They give you more attentive service for looking normal. They want to please you if you make an effort to please them by wearing nice clothes.

Clothes at conferences - I consider them tax deductible. These are clothes I will never wear other than at a conference, or some job interview I may attend in another incarnation. Makeup for conferences - same. I don't wear makeup, (despite the blue lady), except for eyeliner and mascara and lipgloss from CVS. So if I have to get my nails done and put Crest strips on my teeth and buy shoes, foundation and the whole Eddie Murphy, I think that goes down as a conference expense.

Do not go to conferences on what you cobble together from your existing wardrobe, ok? I did that my first conference. What was I thinking with those beaded cream party shoes and a sensible skirt? Apart from falling off my shoes regularly because of the hefty case - full of all those useless folders for agents, remember? - I felt stupid and out of place. Wear a black pumps and black trousers, a decent jacket and a nice sweater or not-too-dressy blouse.

Get the Mary Kay lady to show you the latest tips for applying makeup, and then practice at it. Hold dry runs. Makeup is a real pain-in-the-tuchus for me. I played in trees and wrestled with the neighbor boys, instead of Barbie. I was disappointed to learn the makeup I'd bought and worn forever - blue eyeshadow and silver eyeliner - had to go, despite the 80s being 'back' this season. In came various shades of brown, with matching shades of brown lipstick. Sadly, sparkles are out.

You're going to be at it for a couple days, back and forth to the coffee table and in and out of sessions, so be comfortable while you look nice. Show your personality through your earrings and your manicure, rather than mis-matched I-live-in-a-garrett clothes, or drama queen scarves you bought because you wanted to look like a writer.

Writers who make it are extremely together and professional. Be her.

PS - Thanks for the comment Isabel! (Previous post). I'm glad I wasn't the only bluesy chick scrabbling for inspiration last week. Hope you found yours!

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The business of freelancing

2007-02-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

It's hard to face the computer and the tasks I know I have to do today. We've had freezing temperatures in the below-zeroes for the past two days, and now there's snow falling horizontally outside my window.

Weather isn't any reason not to write. (Ok, revise that. It's very hard to write in August when it's blazing sunshine and the cool pool beckons). I don't know why I'm feeling discouraged. I've got two wicked-awesome tapes in the recorder - the first a collection of stories from the non-violent communication conference, the second the drug story I'm doing with the OSU professor. Both I like. I also got a 'good' rejection from Natural Health magazine for one of my stories today, and reminded them of an outstanding query on another story they might like. And emailed a contact to thank him for an interview, and sent him an idea. All good stuff.

But I feel blocked. I'm having a difficult time with this drug story, wrestling it on the page. Problem is, it seems like two stories, or even three. It has angles to sell to mens and women's health magazines, Psychology Today, as well as military and mainstream magazines.

I think what it needs is a day at Borders, going through magazines and collecting names of editors - but why don't I just use the Writer's Market? Because I get a better feel for the pitch when I see the real magazine in front of me. Sometimes there are magazines I've never seen, either - like the day I ran across Tea Experience Digest and that sparked an essay idea for me. Borders, Writer's Digest, or the Internet? What will it be? Of the three I like Borders best because I can buy magazines and bring them home to precisely target my piece.

So that's why I'm blocked. Because I really need to be at the bookstore instead of watching incessant, falling snow.

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Non-Violent Communication conference

2007-02-01T13:19:00.000-08:00

The Non-Violent Communication movement is big in Columbus. Following the work of Marshall Rosenberg, NVC teaches people how to speak heart-to-heart and connect to their feelings and needs when handling difficult conversations.

I went to the two-day conference as a paying guest yesterday, but took along my digital recorder and a microphone to get some tape for the community radio station. I talked to several people and came away with about five interviews. It's a balance - I wanted to participate in the workshop but also knew that with the growth of this movement in our city, it'd be a great story for radio.

So that meant taking time to chat with people at lunch, and slipping interviews into break time. I made myself work when I wanted to relax, but I'm happy I did. Today I'm exhausted.

Marshall Rosenberg spoke for two days, and broke us into pracitise groups only twice. This gave him almost no breaks in his speaking, story-telling, ceaseless demonstrations of the techniques of Non-Violent Communication, and songs. His energy filled the room, making him seem younger from a distance than he appeared up close.

Time after time he coached participants through difficult conversations, helping them to breakthroughs of empathy and understanding. I saw profound healings of old emotional wounds all day, and believe that, on an energetic level, the healers in the audience also participated in making this happen through their attention, presence, and engagement.

But there was also a strange thing happening to me. Because I wanted to cover the story for radio, I'd emailed the organizer ahead of time asking for an interview with Marshall Rosenberg. I'd been a bit sloppy and left it to the day before. However, I knew another reporter would be at the conference, and that she'd emailed well in advance. So I thought we'd get one interview between us, and expected a fifteen - at the outside 30 - minutes shoed in somewhere.

Instead, I got an extremely chilly shoulder from the organizer when I introduced myself on the first morning. And continued to receive the same chilly demeanor when I bumped into him for the next two days. On the morning of day two, my colleague revealed that the organizer said he hadn't even asked Marshall about an interview. We put together a note with our bios and left it on his chair.

Funny thing was, I knew the organizer! We'd actually conducted a conference opening some years previously, and had attended a couple meetings together. I thought he'd at least put together half a smile at some point in the day. But it felt like I'd received the label 'Press' and he couldn't see past it. I felt sad that at a conference where we learned for two days to speak heart-to-heart, I'd been labeled. And also sad that the radio station for which I'm creating the story, was put together by the same organization (Simply Living) whose conference we'd opened together in 2004!

We didn't get the interview with Marshall. Although we approached him during a break, he referred us to his team. And when we approached the team at the end of the conference for one final bash at it (reporter 1: if you go up and ask, I'll give you lots of empathy if you get rejected. reporter 2: Deal.) their manner was closed down and brisk. Get rid of the press.

I loved the conference. I received tools I'll use for the rest of my life. But I wanted to share that joy with a wider community through my gifts of communication, and got blocked by being labeled as a pest.

Do I have a point? Maybe. Perhaps they've been burned in the past. Perhaps he's too frail to give one ounce of extra energy during two days of teaching, that he must reserve all juice for his healing work. Fair enough.

An editor once said to me: "Don't be a reporter unless you enjoy sticking your head in a meat grinder." In situations like this, that piece of unfortunate advice still seems to ring true.

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Writing Contests

2007-01-31T17:26:00.000-08:00

Here's a site that sends regular lists of writing contests. But check Preditors and Editors before you enter anything you don't know by reputation. Some charge entrance fees just to get your money in the door.

Preditors and Editors is a fantastic site for anyone considering an agent, a book deal, entering a contest, or whether a person in publishing is legit.

To sign up for the contest list, send a blank e-mail message to crwropps-subscribe@topica.com

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Journalism

2007-01-26T11:56:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling my way forward as I reconstruct my writing career in Ohio after building it in London.

It's not easy. But I've found a friend in radio to buddy with, and we talk on Monday mornings and Friday mornings, for an accountability check. A radio friend works well because she's not selling to my market, so I feel good about talking about my stories, and I'm not selling to her's. She also encourages me to get into radio, and I encourage her print sales.

It's also a matter of finding out where to look for work. I joined Freelance Success. They send a monthly e-newsletter with publications to pitch, and host several on-line forums where I can chat to other freelances and authors. The group has strong ties to the ASJA and several members go to that annual conference.

Another great resource is Publisher's Lunch, an online daily newsletter from the publishing industry. You can get a short, free version which is enough if you want to just keep tabs on your genre. Or you can subscribe for a monthly fee, which gives access to an editor and agent database. Then it's a matter of typing in your genre, and up pops a list of potentially interested editors. You can also pick out a book that matches your book's theme, and find out who agented it. Then it makes it an easier approach. People at conferences rave about Publisher's Lunch.

If you're looking for writing work in your area, try Craig's list. Please add your comments to this blog if you've got any writing work tips or urls.

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Reality?

2007-01-23T10:18:00.000-08:00

This morning hefting a 15lb weight for a bicep curl at the Y, I said to my compatriot on the next bench: "this isn't reality you know. It's just a series of events that we label reality. What's reality is the template behind the events that precipitate them into our lives. Birth and death are the huge clues that this is all an illusion."

She told me to shut up.

So I tried again at the bank. While the guy notarized my letter, I said: "It's a 'what is the nature of reality?' kind of a morning. I guess this is a sign that I've got too much time on my hands."

He said: "Go to Starbucks and get a coffee and then drink a Red Bull. That'll shake it out of you."

He seemed so certain that caffeine would solve my existential questioning, I didn't have the heart to tell him I've given up caffeine because of palpitations.

I think I've been more existential than usual because A: I saw a client yesterday for an energy healing session and B: I'm working on a story about how people withdrawing from drug addiction have difficulty solving problems where multiple solutions present themselves.

So (A) the energy healing session showed me once again that there's a template level for our physical bodies and if we can alter the template we alter first our moods and our level of possibility in our lives, and then our physical bodies start coming into better alignment.

Part of (B) is that they've discovered a commonly-available drug which can help people in withdrawal solve complicated problems. This has wonderful implications - it means that addicts have a way to keep performing and reduce anxiety as they get clean.

What do A and B have to do with each other? Well, they are different ways of tackling our problems. Some people might say they're mutually exclusive. But I see both as part of a raft of solutions.

What is reality, anyway?

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Toffees

2007-01-18T11:58:00.000-08:00

One of the guys I worked with in London has THE premier blog for Ireland. It's rude and fun (but not explicit) it's http://www.blogorrah.com/ I think you'll like it!

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Spinning

2007-01-17T10:05:00.000-08:00

I love it when ice crystals skate across the road in gray, ectoplasmic swirls. The temperature finally dropped after weeks of rain to a clear 28 and a crisp frost descended over the grass. Ice-cicles hung over the park's stream, and with the sun shining on the water glittered like our twinkling Christmas lights, so effortless without electricity or plastic or wires. Ice-cicles, our original sparkling inspiration, created silently, invisibly, unshouted, over a little stream.

This poem came to me:

I am the spider
weaving in darkness
creating what is to come.
Purposeless these silver threads
seem to me
over a stream with no fish.

But when the world turns
and lifts its burning eye,
for that day
my web

completed
a mandala of moonlight hope
circle and spoke

will catch what
Earth provides -nothing less -
and I will be satisfied.

Timidity

2007-01-12T09:14:00.000-08:00

For all our bravado as a nation, we've been timid about standing up on a local level. Problems seem to large. The country itself seems to big. DC is too far away. We're afraid of repercussions, from being blanked by the other parents at school to being shot by a lunatic for voicing our minds.

I felt this keenly when I moved from Britain back to the US, and voiced my disapproval about the Iraq war at its beginning. People told me to 'go back where you came from' if I though our nation was wrong. Even though I'd originally come from Seattle.

Every time there's violence in my community, I feel cowed. That if I speak up against guns, some NRA nutjob will leave poop - or worse - in my mailbox. Yet how will we stop our children dying in school, on their own porches, in their own homes from guns?

I remember Britain after Dunblane, the terrible Scottish tragedy when a lonely, backwards little man gunned down a school in his home town. I felt amazed as I watched the British Parliament swing into action to ban handguns, rifles and shotguns once and for all.

They held gun amnesties across the nation. People brought Uncle Fred's service revolver down from the attic, and into the police stations. They collected piles and piles of guns - even a few ancient muskets that would kill the next person who tried to fire them.

Why can't we do this? Our kids die each year. If we can try to get a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage - which hurts no one and helps a bunch of people - why can't we ban guns? Is there really a justification for bearing arms now that its historical context is gone?

Guns do one thing. Kill. And it's totally within our power as a society to stop gun violence.

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Keep on keepin' on

2007-01-10T09:53:00.000-08:00

The act of creation is the hero's journey. Anyone who creates an organization, a company, a novel or a piece of art embarks on the hero's journey.

We are so used to working en masse, of doing what's been assigned to us, or what the prevailing current provides, that it's the toughest act to create from an idea that no-one seems interested in or bothered about, and to imbue that idea with energy, with its own spirit, and charisma.

There comes the point in each hero's journey where he can choose: to return home to safety, or to soldier on against exhaustion, starvation, and harm. At this eleventh hour, he always gives up and loses hope, if only for a few minutes. When he decides to try again, the hero finds he's changed. He's died a little death, and given birth to himself. A new, stronger, more determined and experienced person tackles the final summit to fight the last ogre.

We have all given up and returned home at some point in time. We've all plumped for safety over plunging on. But we all have to turn again to the hero's journey if we want to feel truly alive and engaged with the world.

What part of the hero's journey are you on today?

Under Construction

2007-01-08T09:13:00.000-08:00

Got the stomach bug this weekend, and a gurgling tummy put me flat on my back in bed with nothing to do except comb through my energy system.

What does that mean?

It means visualizing the body as energy, and find the gunky places. Then you scoop out the poop, take it away from the body, and pour light (kinda like spraying on bleach) into that place. It's fun when you get good at visualizing your body and taking the virtual tour. And it works. Apart from tiredness, no more stomach sickness. All gone.

I found these little erector-sets around my chakras, the funnels which bring energy into main points in the body. (Acupuncture uses the chakras to help rebalance the body.) I seem to be under construction.

It certainly feels that way. I have SO MANY dreams. How can I bring them into the physical world, so they can be manipulated and played with? Work.

When I was a kid, work scared me. It meant picking up rocks in the back yard, .25 cents per bucket. But now I want it. Work means engagement with the world. Work means creating my life.

Mister Hat

2006-12-29T17:36:00.000-08:00

Paolo had a great birthday and got a cowboy outfit - yes, really. I gave him a hat and a belt to match, and his mom got him the plaid flannel shirt and he had the boots, a wedding gift from my brother, so that goes back a few years.

To understand this hat, you have to picture Rod's Western Palace. It's off the freeway in Columbus, and you know it from the full-sized fiberglass horse standing on the front porch. A wooden Indian says 'How' to customers, and cowboys croon over the P.A.. You've got cowgirl chaps and riding britches, saddles, lariats, whips, spurs, horse-shoe earrings and lone-star necklaces. You've got pink boots and brown boots, turquoise boots and white boots, for all the cowfolks in your life.

Well, this cowboy hat was so authentic, Paolo had to take it back to Rod's to get it blocked. They steam it and put in the crease on the crown, and a curl in the brim. The man behind the counter was so po-faced in his grey felt hat, deep-yoked shirt and fingers hooked around his shiny belt buckle, I thought he'd ask Paolo to show him a picture of his hoss - or at least his 200 acre spread - to prove he was a re-ul cowboy before he'd shape the hat to Paolo's skull. (Ok, so Paolo's English accent didn't make him sound like a minor character from Brokeback Mountain, but our counter-cowboy had ingested so much of Rod's soundtrack and southern atmosphere, he'd got a good picture of himself as Mr Stallion. All non-hat knowledgeable people who stumble into Rod's from mainstream america were geldings....)

And I felt thoroughly ashamed to have only 5 acres and no chickens until I saw a Mexican fella skulking around the hat counter. He caught my eye and gave me a sly grin, as if to say these gringo cowboys don't know sh*t. That made me feel better, because I knew that guy had more cowboy in his little finger than Mr Hat had under his button fly. Later I saw the same guy pick out a pair of black matte boots with a square silver toe which were solid working plus a little bit of show, an easy double for salsa on Saturday nights.

We climbed into our SUV and drove home to the range. Paolo will look fabulous riding the tractor this summer in his black cowboy hat, button-down banker's shirt and sarong.

The Moms of Powell

2006-12-22T07:02:00.000-08:00

Ok, we get bored in the 'burbs some of these gray days. At the bank, the sour face of a middle-age woman (and then in Kroger...and then at the Y) inspired this rap. Why's everyone looking so miserable? Cheer up guys. It's not the end of the world.

Dah boom boom boom...

We drive da SUV
we on da cellphone constantly
Da moms of Powell
Da moms of Powell.

We like da blonde highlights
we stay inside at nights
we drink da wine
and wish we could go back in time
da moms of Powell
da moms of Powell

Kroger is our only store
we shop there more an' more
what we buy is instant trash
but we give dem all our cash
da moms of Powell
da moms of Powell

Da YMCA is our gym
we swim and stretch and spin
and when we finish wit da pain
we weigh and see what weight we gain
Da moms of Powell
Da moms of Powell

To da soccer we are slaves
to da dance class, gymboree and skate
we buy our children many ting
and ourselves dat diamond ring
but when the bank say cash is due
we look around for someone to sue!
da moms of Powell
da moms of Powell

Happy Christmas everyone. Don't spend more than you earn. Make cookies instead!

Time Candy

2006-12-01T09:53:00.000-08:00

Everyone has their time candy. The thing they do when they're avoiding that thing they should be doing. Mine is reading New Age websites. I'm particularly addicted to Solara's NVisible and her work with the 11:11. Ok, don't switch off. Hear me out. As an addict, I'm also a connosieur, and I read Solara's because she's so damn accurate. She says things like: this week we're releasing pockets of the past, and it's going to be painful but quick (my paraphrase. check out Solara if you want the horse's mouth). Purification. And that's what it's been like for me.

The weather's doing some purifying in Ohio at the moment. Traffic lights are at a horizontal as high winds kick leaves into crunchy brown vortices. I'm in Borders, and Tony Bennett's singing his creamy and mellow 'there'll be peace at Christmas' while the wind snaps branches in the parking lot. And that's sort of what it feels like in my body at the moment: that abiding peace that's moved in and decided to make a permanent home in my chest, but at the same pockets of the past burst, showing me the fear I used to feel reaching out for my deepest desires.

Overlaying it all is this vision of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest where my family lives. I missed Thanksgiving for living too far away for the 20th year in a row, and I'm really done with that. I'm beginning to seriously dream how we can make life there a reality for us within the next 2 years. (I've actually set a personal deadline, but I'm not telling yet.) It inhabits alot of my thinking during dawdling time - dishes, driving, or catching myself staring out the window, body in Ohio, spirit in Oregon.

When I moved to Ohio, I had these dreams of going along a river road looking at houses. I saw how the light moved in bars through the trees, and how the bank cut steeply above the road. Six months later, I drove along the same road looking for houses with a realtor. That hasn't happened yet. But I have begun its precursor - the dreaming. Make it an expansive dream. Give it room for everyone to grow and thrive. Dream big! This is the intention, the planning phase. I can feel it coming, like when a woman knows she's pregnant before she takes the test. The exciting part is the journey, our onward journey of never-ending change.

May peace inhabit your heart.

Belief speaks

2006-10-30T09:26:00.000-08:00

It seems that now is a powerful time for belief. That belief separates and defines us at this moment in the USA in a way that is overly or supra-significant. It feels like belief is as important in this time as belief was when fascism was on the rise. As if people must create or adhere or attach themselves to beliefs in order to have power in the world.

It's not about achievement right now, a litany of accomplishment. It's not about what you've built or the good deeds you've done. But what belief brought you to this point in time and your choices in the now. George Bush showed this when he climbed to power on the back of belief, an ex-addict with a track record for spin.

The election next month is all about 'what kind of Christian am I?' and candidates hand out business cards with the ten commandments on the back. We are in dangerous territory, and a hop, skip and a jump from the rule of Ayatollahs. We are at war with Islamists because of oil but also because they are fundamentalists. They mirror part of ourselves, the part of this nation that wants control over women's minds and bodies and wills, that seeks to control entertainment, sex and free speech.

The Lord supports us; everything we do is right because we are in service to Him. You are not us, you do not serve our Lord. You are dangerous as an outsider.

Belief is a precursor to action. So what we believe, we create. Ideas become words which become strategies which become things. What are we creating with our National beliefs? What intentions do we send into the world?

Crush!

2006-10-05T12:22:00.000-07:00

Saturday we crushed 375 cases of grape - cabernet sauvignon, merlot, pinot noir, San Giovese, syrah - to make 27 barrels of juice and must. A big party! Brothers Mike and Marty, their parents Marie and Ott, Fairy Sue, Jay and Susan and little Cory, Kevin and Martha, and James the blue barrel supplier and his new, very tiny blonde girlfriend, Anton the elder, Mike and Katrina and us - Paolo, Cynthia, and our kids.

Our first surprise came when Marty picked up a bunch of blue-black San Giovese and found a black spider with a red hourglass belly clinging to the underside of the stalk. The black widow, chilled but alive from its refrigerated journey, went into a little salsa jar. Later we found another spider on the outside of a box and popped that in too. Jay said he saw two more on empty wine crates he'd loaded into the truck for his homeless friends to burn.

And as Sue and Susan and I sat inside with cups of tea and leftover lunch we found another black widow crawling up Sue's sleeve. Susan dispatched it with a squish inside a paper towel. As Anton-the-elder changed out of his grapey, tractor-man clothes, he found he'd been cuddling with another one of the arachnids for god-knows-how-long. It kinda freaked him out.

But no-one received injury despite this spiderly plethora as we sorted grapes for hour upon hour (barehanded - rubber gloves are in order next year) and we had a little production line: grapes go into the tractor dumper, which toddles off to the hopper, where pulp, seeds and grape gets sucked into the basement via hose & pump.

Guests began to dwindle at 4pm, but the men still had several pallets of grape and kept it up through a thunderstorm, then hail, then spectacular double rainbows before sunset that called everyone away from their posts to gaze in admiration, rainbows stretching from the southern to northern horizons.

We finished cleanup by 10pm and fell asleep soon after, exhausted by the day and by the preparations for it, holding the energy and vision for all who come to our house to participate in a joyful event.

Our wine will be full of the chattering of friends, of our silly jokes as we sorted grape, and of our dreams for what the success of this venture will bring.

Moon Dancing

2006-09-12T10:29:00.000-07:00

Naked pagan hippies, dancing in the moonlight. Maybe a mudbath or two. That's what I told the winemakers we'd be doing at the women's retreat last weekend. Writing in our journals and sitting in a circle listening to each other cry doesn't sound so glamorous.

Ok, so we did some of the first - but clothed. Modesty and mosquitos are powerful incentives. We camped next to a pond and they were on the buzz for blood to lay more eggs. I've got bites on my legs and my hands, but none on my eyelids. That's the worst place for a mosquito bite because the skin is so thin and it swells up like an apricot.

I'm a huge believer in women pampering themselves, in whatever ways we can. I'm cast in the supporting role at home, as mom and cook and household visionary, and I need outside air. This one, at the Ecological Center, had plenty.

We cooked a meal on the first night from food raised at the center, on its farm. Goat milk ice-cream with apple crumble, the goat milk not goaty at all, but a nice undertone like a ripe cheese. Stuffed green peppers, a salad with flowers from the herb garden including orange nasturtiums and yellow citrus marigolds, herby purple potatos, and good bread.

At 7am we got up to feed and milk the goats, cut sunflowers for the farmer Laura Ann to sell in the town market who also led us in stretching exercises. As well as a farmer, she's a polarity therapist & mom. Then off to an incredible breakfast including fresh-baked bread, blackberry muffins, eggs from the chickens and sausages from the pigs.

As well as cooking and eating, we also played bubbles, jumprope, kicked a medicine ball, walked in the woods, and meditated. I felt like my feet chewed on the gravel, and when I closed my eyes I saw indigo and green, orange and violet.

In the forest we tried to feel the woods observing us. I felt a tree's energy field expand to encompass me as if the tree's field took a cast of my body as it wrapped around me. The tree sensed how far my roots grew, and knew I was a thing that travels on top of the soil. It knew I don't fly. Then it communicated this to other trees through its trunk, branches and leaves.

Whether these impressions are flights of fancy or the way a tree truly senses, doesn't matter to me. What I treasure is a brief, possible perspective of another living being.

Mountain King

2006-08-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

In the hall of the Mountain King you must fight the demons, unless you choose to be turned into a cardboard cutout of yourself, and go to sleep. When you wake yourself up, there will still be demons to fight.

So goes the only story on earth.

We are all called to step forward to take our natural places in the world. And if we do, we receive magic. But with the magic we have to fight demons - the demons of torpor and anger, of resistance and fear, of danger, uncertainty and the unknown. Or we can choose to sleep.

If we choose to sleep, we lose the magic and join the queue of the ordinary and turn back into our everyday selves, until we decide to wake again.

This is the only story for humans on earth, because it's the story of the hero's journey. All stories - from Star Trek to Spongebob to Mission Impossible to Brokeback Mountain are the same story. Anyone who tries to write outside of the hero's journey writes a book that won't sell.

The hero's journey is the walk we all take. If you're awake and fighting, joy to those around you. Zap that demon!

In the end, we become the Mountain King. Because his cave is the cave of our hearts, and the demons are places of our darkness, waiting for transformation. Each demon transformed becomes a new magical tool, until we become king over all the demons, the Mountain King himself. We also become the Mountain, and the hero's companion (Dr Spock, Patrick, That Pretty Girl with Tom Cruise) supporting others on their fights to become wholly themselves.

We can continue to pursue our dreams and fight obstacles or we can go back to sleep, to the safe life of errands, to-do lists, and live without a vision. Safety's price is torpor, and the reward of safety is uncertainty.

The vision's price is energy and uncertainty and the fighting of 'demons' - internal and logistical. But the reward of the vision is magic and accomplishment, true security arising from a core of internal peace, and the view from the mountain.

Accident

2006-08-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

It's been hard to write today. This morning it's a move your hand for 20 minutes across the page and don't look back kind of start. That's the trick to jumpstart writing. No, I'm not really going to write anything. I'm just going to sit here and doodle in sentences. Then it comes out.

When a big emotion sits in my throat, it's sometimes hard to write. At which angle do I start? What bit do I want to describe? Was it the man from the AAA with his long curly blond ponytail and his lined face, driving us almost into (yet another) ditch as he scrabbled around with the paperwork after he recovered my broken car? Or the baby racoon on the road, newly squashed? As I sat on the roadside waiting for a breakdown truck, I kept hearing this obscene pop as people drove over the small body, until they'd worn a groove through its guts. I wished for a shovel and gloves, to give him a little burial in the woods, or at least scrape him off the road into a plastic bag. I know people who carry shovels and bags for that reason. So far, I haven't been one of them.

We very nearly ended up in hospital on Sunday carting a load of tiles home on our trailer. We had a blow-out which caused the trailer to jacknife several times across lanes of traffic, missing - like dodgeball or jumprope - an oncoming black jeep, then missing a telephone pole and finally into a ditch with a gentle slope and two piles of gravel at the bottom. We coasted to a stop so slight it didn't even engage the seatbelts.

I kept silent as Paolo negotiated the crisis, but remember thinking: "I have to stay alive for my kids. They need me." When we got out of the car we discovered one rear tires off its mud-caked rim, the other too compromised to move, and the left wheel of the trailer had blown. Incredibly (upon incredibly) we lost only one box of tile.

Paolo didn't touch the brake or accelerator and steered in the opposite direction each time. Little did he know he hadn't the use of either back tire. He practices in the snow in the back field with the Ford to improve his driving skills, and that experience kept us from flipping. But the oncoming traffic, the telephone poles - that was sheer serendipity.

Afterwards I watched them cart away my Explorer with it's bumpersticker: "Angels, don't leave home without them," with its corny graphics showing flying angels with lunchboxes.

You do the math.

writing in the woods

2006-08-24T07:27:00.000-07:00

Stratford Ecological Center in Delaware provides a great place for rest and retreat. Yesterday, with pen, backpack and sarong for cover from the mosquitos I took their walk down to the river, now a dry bed, for solace and inspiration.

Muggy and buggy, with spiders webs strung across the path, tree to tree every five feet, high season for gnats. Plentiful nets. One spider looked as if it had a moth attached to its back, perhaps a female carrying spiderlets.

I sat down by the river that a friend and I visited two winters ago, then in full flood with bright orange shelf fungus against the black logs, when her marriage seemed dead and I struggled with my family's divisions.

In the morning, I'd prepped myself to write a poem by reading my favorite book of poetry, 'Ants on the Melon' by Virginia Hamilton Adair, which alwasy opens my mind to fresh images and the play of wordsound. Faced with a dry streambed, slapping at the bugs, sitting on a fungus-infested log, I wondered how anything deep could emerge from such an ordinary woodland scene. So I began to play with words in my head, to listen, and got the first line: in a dry riverbed, stones lie with uncovered heads.

After some fiddling, it came through:

August
In the dry riverbed
stones lie with uncovered heads
waiting for water
to run again.
Humidity's potential presses me
air like sea.

September's thunderheads
will bring flooding rain
a log's fungal ears
hear a plish plash refrain.

Shadow is the progeny of sun.
In this swollen cloud
lightning's begun.

After the Pacific Northwest

2006-08-21T17:31:00.000-07:00

It's back in Ohio after being out in the Pacific Northwest gorging on crab and salmon, fresh caught, grilled on the beach, smoky salty and sweet all at once. After our engorgement, we lay on the beach under mover's blankets watching the meteor shower with my best friend Dani and her love Andy.

We listened to the swish of waves over the rocks - agates, carnelian, jasper, granite, shale. They knew a beach untouched by tourists, a local's preserve, a teenage hangout on one of the San Juan Islands. We revelled in it - next year it gets new owners and we will be turfed out by watchdogs, human and canine.

I love the beach with a deep love that gets fed by salt water every time I return to my childhood home and memories of swimming in water which numbed us before August and chilled us thereafter. We'd dive into the water with our open wounds, and it would sting and heal us. Any scrape or cut and we'd be sent into the salt with directions to bathe.

Now, returning to the Midwest, I reluctantly launder my clothes. I want the smoke to stick. I want to stink of smoke and salt, and greet the memory of seaweed and kelp when I wear them. I convince myself to wash them, eventually.

Ohio's as hot as ever. Tonight we ate from the garden - peppers, chilis, corn, tomatos with black beans, cumin and coriander. A fragrant, favorite meal. Soon, school begins and the autumn chores of pruning and moving trees. But I collected 38 stones on the beach for a medicine wheel, and keep them in my kitchen in the form of a sacred hoop, with horseclam shells and a sprig of cedar as living memories of the place I will always call home.

whisperblog

2006-07-31T15:17:00.000-07:00

Blogging at the moment feels like a secret whispered into a room full of people. I don't get much traffic (can't even find the bloody thing sometimes when I put in the url) so this site is a hidden little corner, a delicious place to play with words, day-to-day experiences and emotions.

It feels like a mini-vacation, a magical slice of time to write, explore...and maybe someone stumbles into this little corner of words and takes a peep. That's part of the fun - not knowing whether someone's listening in on this out-of-the-way space, or if I'm talking into thin air.

And really I don't care either way, 'cos I'm having fun doing what's always been fun for me, I'm playing by myself in the sandpit of writing with a glorious array of pinwheels, trucks, cranes and bright blue buckets and don't care who drops by to enjoy the sunshine too.

Actually, I know there's one other person in the sandbox with me - my best friends since I was eleven, Daniela (hi Dani!) gets the automatic email alert allocated by blogger. And so it's kind of our secret club in cyberspace that no-one else can join except by accidental click and then you get to be part of this whispered conversation.

While other blogs rack up as many clicks as possible, I'm revelling in being a microblog. All my professional life subscription figures - for newspapers, or sales figures - for books, or articles in nationally-read publications, have been important. And this is the tails to that heads.

Are there other whisperblogs out there? Others who write publicly in private? Who are just having fun writing and insta-publishing?

Where are you? Who are you? Let me know.

Downtown

2006-07-30T14:21:00.000-07:00

Today took me downtown to the homeless camp along the Olentangy River, located across the railway tracks on a piece of undeveloped ground. As you drive along the tracks, paths lead into the woods. If you follow these paths you come into encampments - shelters made of tents, or skids, or plywood with tarps for roofs.

Scattered over the ground you see spam tins or broken glass, or plastic bottles with the labels worn off. It's 100F if it's a degree, and there's little shelter from the heat. People nurse beer bottles and cans to escape, but dehydration must be an additional hurdle in the summer, along with food and hygeine and illness and fights.

I've always felt a connection to homeless people, and put an encampment in Motherhunt, my first novel. I guess in those early days in London when I was two steps away from the streets myself, being thousands of miles from home and dependent on the good wishes of my boyfriend and his family, it hit home how easily I could slide onto the streets. All it would take was a fierce fight and losing my job and I'd be under a bridge with my stuff in a backpack.

As young as I was I wouldn't have possessed the nous to present myself at a welfare office or the US Embassy, at least initially.

Later, as I moved into reporting the Hornsey and Tottenham beats, I met young girls who'd become pregnant to get onto the welfare housing lists. Their stories contained foster homes or parents who hated them and kicked them out of their homes at 16. With no network of established friends or willing relatives they literally had no-one to take them in, nourish them, and help them get an education.

In overcoming my own fears about going forward in life, I've often wondered about those people who have much less support in terms of education and childhood development. If I've had bundles of fears and anxieties which create hurdles for moving forward, with as much priviledge as I've been given in a first-world country with a college education, then what happens to people who don't have that? What happens when they face the same fears and anxieties but have race or poverty or bad government to contend with?

Today I picked up a friend from the encampment, a friend ready to rejoin society and get back on his feet. We ate fresh-picked broccoli from the garden (steamed, it turned day-glo green with energy) and fresh-picked beans and beets, and corn-on-the-cob from Kroger. He drank Pepsi and called people to let them know he'd emerged, laundered his clothes, showered and shaved, and then another friend showed up to take him home.

I hope he's out of the woods now - literally and figuratively - and feels the surrounding arms of the people who care about him, lifting him up, helping him to a place he can love, and feel is his own.

Agree

2006-07-29T14:13:00.000-07:00

Swinging in a hammock in the hot sun today reminded me so much of our trips to Tuscany where my husband's father has a home in his ancestral village.

As we walked over the mountain meadows, we crushed wild oregano under our sandals, and its scent wafted into the hot air. We heard the shush of a snake as it rushed through rattling, dry grasses, into cool homes under shale rocks. I love being in those mountains. They feed me like the ocean does, like the waters of the bays in the Pacific Northwest, like the creak of rigging and smell of creosote in boats.

Last year, while inhaling Tuscany through my pores, I wrote this:

Agree to pick up the next puzzle piece
to step
into a quickened labyrinth of fear
to walk through the static fog
of anxiety.

Agree and you will see
as future unravels into present
and you stand in a pattern of your own
knitting
you will see

See the past, dropped stitches, burls
whorls and how

How this now is safe and cuddled
How this now can relax and unwind
How this now can be gracious and forgiving

Stepping through the weft.
Step through the weft.
Next step.

For all of us who are repatterning our lives at this very moment, who face extreme anxiety and fear as we confront old programming, remember our safety.

And for every being on this planet who is caught in war or torture or starvation and is not safe, my prayers go out to you, that you find safety and peace.

Grounded

2006-07-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

Summer's suddenly got heavy. Whether it's the thunderheads outside my window, or the sweaty humidity of sauna Ohio in July, or this new moon, suddenly everything seems like a huge effort.

Everyone in the house is grounded - whether through misdeeds, or simply laying-on-the-couch with a good book, stomachs full of the muffins we baked as breakfast but ate as lunch. We got fresh blueberries from the store last night in a late, out-for-milk dash, and I broke up the muffin and ate it with the berries and milk in a big cup, like Peter Rabbit.

Sometimes the books I like to read aren't grownup fiction. I read Touching Spirit Bear yesterday. The author has raised his own 700lb black bear and his cover photo shows the bear - with a huge grin on its maw - giving the author an equally massive hug. It made me think about how important fiction was for me until college, when I had to read too much for work and couldn't justify it for pleasure anymore.

And going to England where I couldn't afford to buy books and let others convince me book-buying was frivolous and not a lifeblood thing. How long does it take sometimes to recover who we were and what we loved - and what would still nourish us if we could only remember?

It feels so good just to be in this house listening to the clock ticking and writing on my new toy. What's inside me today is a yearning for rest, and beneath that, a lovely sense of peace that's been occupying my chest since summer began. I would love for everyone to be able to feel this - although it was so disconcerting at first. What? Is nothing there? Who turned out the lights? Where's all that anxiety gone? I'd love for all people to feel this. Not just an absense of fear, but a unique sensation of goodness.

Blessings!

writer's life

2006-07-27T09:26:00.000-07:00

I'm having so much fun. A friend gave me a laptop and now I'm wifi. I think I just made my first internet error (at least one I know about) by subscribing to dadamobile.com for ringtones after seeing an attractive ad on my blog. Now I can't get through to the company and it looks like they're set to charge me 10bucks a month for a service advertised for free.

But I'm having such a good time! Choosing all those fun options (homestarr runner, the bhaghavad gita, the NYTimes) for my front page. I love how writing is evolving so rapidly that it's leaving traditional publishing spinning and shaking.

Really the industry now treats authors the same way they treat pop-star would-bes, and the author who builds a catalogue, progressing toward finer work and slowly building sales is non-existent.

This from The Author (journal of the Society of Authors, UK) in an article by Nicholas Clee: an author sold 18000 copies of a novel in paperback, not enought to cover the advance - but a respectable figure. 'The author's at work on his third,' the agent said. 'I haven't the heart to tell him not to bother.' The publisher had written him off and planned not to promote the second book (presumably, the author didn't know that either).

Can you imagine the bewilderment, the shame, humiliation, anger and even guilt that author will feel when he figures out the game that's been played? Books is the music industry now.

That's why I'm loving this tech stuff so much. In the same magazine, Danuta Kean talks about books-to-mobile phones - called iCue. But it's expensive. And the way publishers lag behind with websites. And the way they haven't figured out blog culture yet. Part of me reads that with a perverse glee. Part of me wants them to pay for being so short-sighted they see only the bottom line and not the glorious opportunities that exist for writers in cyberspace.

As a person who loves alternative culture, I'm excited about the ways that authors no longer have to play the big-books game. The cost of self-publishing is rock-bottom - and going down. You'd have to put your advance into publicity if you wanted another shot at the big cherry anyway, so an author who self-publishes and arranges professional publicity often makes more than with traditional publishing and all its middlemen.

We can publish instantly on the Internet. Turn up your noses - call us 'pajama writers', but look at how the music industry - wedded to vinyl, cassettes, and lps - lost out to the kids who dowloaded millions of dollars of music and sent those multi-million dollar musicians to rock bottom.

Will Barnes and Noble suffer the same kinds of shocks as the libraries did at the advent of dvds and vhs?

I love books. But I'm not wedded to books. I'm wedded to writing and the joys of writing. In The Right to Write by Julia Cameron she says: What if there were no such thing as a writer? What if everyone simply wrote? What if there were no 'being a real writer' to aspire to? What if writing were simply about the act of writing?

That's our future. That's cyberspace. There will always be room - and a need - for the person who's put in years crafting, making deadlines, and reporting responsibly. For the novelist who redrafts 16 times. But its an expansion that's taking place, a making room for many voices.

Today, we can all be writers.

airsoft for breakfast

2006-07-25T04:46:00.000-07:00

I'm staring at an airsoft course of ten camouflaged plastic 60-gallon drums with boards and scraps of cardboard leaning against them. They're spread over two acres in tall grasses, and we expect about seven teenagers today to dodge plastic bee-bees and ticks playing capture the flag, before cooling off with drinks & pizza.
It's disconcerting to think that in some countries kids their ages would be carrying metal guns and doing this for real, but I know that's true particularly in Africa and the Middle East.
I don't like gun games.
My son tells me that some parents at his school buy their children real guns. The children save up their allowances and the parents take care of what little paperwork is required. I find this disturbing too.
Airsoft is a game, but it's a child's game that prepares for war and violence. I'm sure they're learning other things too - like how to organize a group, how to work together, and to create rules.
I never thought I'd be the kind of person who would allow playstation or airsoft. I'm a books and wooden toys sort of parent. But I also know the importance of being in the culture you are raised in, and this is part of his culture.
Although I'm a pacifist, I know that oddly, somehow, this is right for my son, and he needs to explore this part of his psyche, and this is a safe way to do that.
Still, I keep poking him and saying: 'tell me again you're not planning to join the Army?'

Funky day

2006-07-12T11:20:00.000-07:00

It's a funky old day. Hot, but rainy, as Ohio does to grow the corn. Working on a piece of scupture in the garage the sweat drizzles down the back of my legs. I'm enjoying this piece, in a soft stone, which incorporates a snake as an orobous in a figure eight.

It's an image that's been with me since my grandpa called me 'squitchicumsqueeze' after a nursery rhyme about a monster that swallowed its own tail. (The squitchicumsqueeze that swallowed itself...). I loved the story and would have him read it to me over and over.

After 35 years I can see why I chose that rhyme out of the whole book, and loved to be called the special name: 'squitch'. The oroborous represents the eternal cycles: birth, death and rebirth, the sacred spiral. In our DNA, in our galaxy. In the cycles that women have - outwardly spiralling during ovulation, inwardly spiralling up and through menstruation. The snake coils itself as the spiral.

This summer seems to be about peace and creation for me. While people around me go through tremendous upheaval, I'm experiencing peace from the inside out. I'm exploring the idea of creating my writing through peace and courage, play and joy, rather than through the fear-driven paradigms I learned in the newsroom.

Peace and play are the ways I learned to first write, in the long, boring summers when school was out. I wrote for my amusement, for emotional release, to have fun!

Summer's here again.

The Cradleboard Story

2006-07-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

It's very peaceful this summer. A few days ago, a friend and I were de-cluttering my basement. Everything moldy or mildewy worth keeping came up and we wiped it down with vinegar and sat it in the sun. We rescued the children's old toys and games, and a toy from my childhood - a cradleboard - and a toy from Paolo's childhood, a purple velveteen frog stuffed with millet.

The cradleboard had been a gift from Mr Bird after my father died when I was seven. Mr Bird, who we knew from church, could see my passion for all things Native American and thought I should have a toy that a father would make. He took brown vinyl from Hancock Fabrics and sewed it to a wooden backing with leather lace. He tacked the front pieces down with tiny nails, and stapled two straps to the back. It used to have a little leather belt to go around my waist. The wood looks like yellow cedar.

My daughter never showed an interest in my cradleboard. I suppose the wood feels to stiff on a back used to the flexibility of a nylon pack. And so it got tossed around the playroom for years, and finally ended up mildewy and gritty with sand on a basement shelf. I didn't know what to do with it, but my friend Susan told me: 'make it your's. Add beads and strips of fur and make it pretty and keep it in your room.'

We're going to a pow wow soon and I think I'll follow her advice. Buy a strip of beading, some fur, a few animal effigies and decorate the cradleboard for myself.

Mr Bird died of a stroke shortly after making the cradleboard for me. But I've always kept it, remembering the kindness he showed.

Dream of the cross

2006-06-27T05:56:00.000-07:00

A dream of several nights ago continues to beat its wings through my days. It's such a profound dream to me that I don't want to forget it.

A real-estate agent on the West Coast had been trying to sell a property for $50,000, but she couldn't because the bungalow was inhabited by a dark spirit. And so I travelled to the house to help her.

On the hardwood floor of the livingroom-cum-kitchen I crouched down. On the north side of the floor I drew the first stroke (top to bottom) of a cross, and felt deeply at peace. I knew that making that stroke invoked peace, and I could feel that peace in my whole body.

Then I drew the second stroke (left to right) and I could feel joy in my whole body. I knew that making that stroke invoked joy. The true meaning of the cross was peace and joy, and drawing it invoked peace and joy. The symbol itself radiated peace and joy.

Where peace intersected with joy it created unconditional love. The center of the cross is Love.

I drew these symbols of peace and joy on the four directions which gave me a sacred space of pure love. I asked the realtor to stand on the northern symbol. She intuited what I asked rather than heard me, as if she couldn't see me in the room, but suddenly felt an urge to take a step backward. She became part of the sacred space of peace, joy and love.

With us standing in the sacred space, I breathed in light and let it flow from my hands. The light flowed to the dark entity and surrounded it. By breathing in light and letting it flow from my hands, it gently lifted the entity out of the house and into the arms of angels. Then I cut the cord from the entity to the house.

Immediately I woke up, and propped myself up on my elbow. Peace and joy and a center of Unconditional Love - the true meanings of the cross. And drawing the symbol creates peace and joy. It radiates peace and joy.

These concepts have colored my mind ever since.

Home Farm Here We Come!

2006-06-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

Although we've got the vegetable plot in, there's a yearning to address. And this is a yearning to take our little patch of earth into production.
[My dog Jessie, the Best Dog in the World. I only have to think of what I want her to do and she'll do it.]
Although we're flanked by beaucoup houses whose owners may not appreciate the smell of sheep, goats, and chickens, the township planners say the neighbours will just have to get used to new aromas! All those years of dreaming of our own farm when we vacationed in Italy, of eating the delicious mild pecorino cheese, of fresh eggs, of seeing farms on two acres in fervent production, with each nook a place for something to grow, might now be ours.

It seems so sad that the earth here isn't put to good use now, that we watch the grasses wave to themselves, never to be cut for feed or to give nourishment to goats, who will also eat the thistles. But that is About to Change.

Today I talked to the farmer at Stratford Ecological Center who - amazingly - said he used to be in business helping people like me set up their little farms. That the first step will be a soil sample, and a US Geological survey report. Then, when his piglets and lambs are a bit older, he will come by our property and have a good look at what can be done.

Exciting! Home Farm, here we come!

Fairy Sue's in love with The Land

2006-06-18T07:16:00.000-07:00

I've never met someone in love with a piece of land. But the way fairy Sue talks about her property in Hocking Hills is like someone talking about her child, or her husband. 'The Land' as she refers to it, is a character in her life. Like a long-distance lover who's rarely in the room, she talks about the gorge, the grassy hill, and the campground where she pitches her tent with all the dreaminess, excitement, and tenderness of a first crush.

Although she's given the land a feminine name - Melethwyn - I think of it as much more male. He's even got faults - swathes of poison ivy and hordes of ticks, particularly in the spring and late summer. He's got his inaccessible places, and the places where she loves to lie - for instance the big, flat mossy rocks by the stream where she puts herself flat on her back and wriggles, working out the knots and kinks. Or the downed beech tree across the river bed, a place to shuck shoes and play high-wire artiste, a sunny patch in the forest canopy for staring up at twilight to the emerging big dipper.

She's jealous of him too, and careful which friends she lets in on this great love. It's an honour to be invited by Fairy Sue to take the hour-and-a-half trek down to The Land, and test your SUV's 4-wheel capabilities through hood-high grasses, down a steep grade, onto a track marked only by a slight deepening of green which only Fairy Sue seems to be able to see. She's broken an axle against The Land, and on our last trip her uncomplaining Toyota had to sit it out at the shop with a mysterious oil leak, probably concocted by the Toyota's uberangel when she started throwing camping gear in the back.

I enjoy The Land, in the way that I enjoy talking to a handsome and amusing married man at a party. That is, I'm as happy to wave goodbye to him as I am to see him again, and happy that my friend is so ensconced in her love. She doesn't need much when she's on The Land - her plastic jerry-cans of water, tp, some food. She sits for hours on The Land with her two Jack Russels, drawing magical creatures, and seeing magic in all the happenings - from the hooting of a barred owl, to the deer trekking through, to the birds calling through camp. It's all For A Reason, and part of the magic of a lover so strong as The Land.

Ollie contemplates ripping us off

2006-06-09T09:24:00.000-07:00

Ollie came to meet me one afternoon in the front office of the newspaper, a tiny foyer with industrial carpeting and plexiglass windows. We could see the advertising department trying to keep the paper afloat with endless telephone calls, nose-pickings and screen-watching.

A girl walked out of the heavy, metal door carrying a plastic shopping bag. She tootle-ooed her friends saying "do you want any sarnies after I drop this off at the bank?"

Ollie lifted his wrist and stared at his watch. He said to me, deadpan: "Does she do this every Monday at this time?"

I may have been an ingenue but I'd watched enough cop shows to know what clicked in his brain. "Don't you even think about it," I told him. "I know exactly where you live."

ollie the hood

2006-05-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

Got up at 4am to deliver Mom to the airport, came back to get the family off to their pursuits. I love to see the sun coming up and the slow waking of the highways, and the birds chiming in like harps in an overture. I napped on the couch for an hour, until the piano tuner arrived. Although I envied his coffee I stuck to water and sat watching him, listless and reluctant to move. He told me about his army days, and I told stories about my reporter days as he slid the keys up a quarter to half a note.

Surprising that I remember Ollie so well. The ex-villian who inspired scenes in Butterfly Eyes, who taught me how foolish and naive I'd been, haring around the ghettos of London in my British-racing-green mini as if being a reporter gave me some invisible shield.

One of our regular assignments were 'death calls'. Someone dies, we hear it on the police report, the editor sends you to interview survivors. In the posher districts, death came via accidents, or dodgy fire alarms and rollup cigarettes that slow-burned the carpet. But in the dicier parts of North London, you got blown up or stabbed or firebombed. I'd pull out the A-Z street atlas, get into the Mini with my notebook and pencil tucked into my purse, and go knocking on doors trying to get quotes from neighbors.

In the nicer districts, neighbours would open the door, invite you in for a cuppa, and say a non-committal sentence or two. In the dodgy places, you'd stand on some dirty, crooked and cracked step staring at a door that hadn't seen paint in two decades, and knock. Years later when I studied energy work, I learned to recognize the feeling of static electricity pillowing out from a door as a warning signal.

It took a couple years on this beat to learn how British police work. They didn't run out and arrest a suspect. They let him (or her) marinate for a few days, and kept poking back for questions, biding their time, gathering evidence. Then at 5am, they'd pounce and make the arrest. It gave the villain a false sense of security. It lulled him. And it gave the reporter time to go knock on his door and interview - guess who? - the murderer! We'd be invited in, would make cups of tea for this "devastated" partner, get quotes about how wonderful the little spouse was and what kind of maniac would do this? only to find out from police later that the bloody knife was under the bed in the next room. Not a pleasant job.

Now I've got a guardian angel who's been doing double-overtime since my birth, and this spell in London didn't give the heavenly hosts much relief. I remember my first interview with Ollie particularly well. He'd come into the newspaper offices, wanting to see a reporter about a story and I got sent down, a little cutie in a size six skirt and a red bolero jacket with a pencil and a spiral-bound. He had a tale about an upstairs neighbour who tried to kill him with a shotgun as he lugged groceries off the bus and up 15 flights to his apartment in the aptly-named (because it was so damned depressing) Dylan Thomas block of flats. I couldn't tell which pissed off Ollie more: that he dropped twenty-quid's worth of vegetables onto the linoleum skeedaddling to his apartment, or that the man had the front to try to shoot him. I agreed to come hear the whole story on Wednesday, when we'd finished putting the paper to bed.

The day comes and I find myself staring up at this tower block of concrete and steel with drab curtains in each dirty window. The elevator reeks of pee and vomit, and as the doors close I get the feeling: I'm not supposed to be here. I make it safely to floor 15, and find his door at the end of the concrete corridor. My knocking creates a scuffle on the other side as he shoots back bolts and finally peeks out through two inches of brass chain, then apologizes for being so careful.

Inside it's a dragon's cave. He's got turkish carpets, parquet, black leather sofas, a smoked glass coffee table: understated, expensive, and careful. I sit perched on the edge of the sofa, and make chicken-scratches in my notebook as he talks about this man, who had been in The 'Ville, and their mutual criminal acquaintances. I couldn't print these allegations - no way to verify anything. Like the Ethiopian refugees I'd met who'd seen relatives thrown to the crocodiles, Ollie needed to tell his story to someone, and I was 'it'.

After giving me a fruit juice glass of orange squash, and answering a few questions, I got up to leave. It occurred to me, I might not get out. That my editor didn't know when I'd be back or Ollie's address or his name. And with all those locks and bolts and fifteen floors between me and the car...but there he was, all gentleman, bustling at the door. That's when I noticed a square box on the wall next to the door. Balanced against the lintel on top of this box was a long, sharp, cruel-looking knife with a wooden handle. He noticed me noticing the knife and explained: 'in case he comes again.'

That afternoon I turned a corner. That afternoon I realized that crime and criminals are cheap glamour, and I'd bought into that kind of excitement, at my own personal expense. That afternoon I stopped doing death calls. I'd drive by a house, but I didn't have the heart to knock and go inside. When my editor said: "weren't they home?" I lied, and felt like a weasel but nothing could make me go back.

Thank you Ollie.

Are you tired yet?

2006-05-22T15:54:00.000-07:00

These past two weeks my dreams became intense and technicolor. Don't know if it's a spring thing (I remember my friend Donna talking about her dreams going to ten or twelve a night this time last year) or if it's an energy thing. According to fairy-Sue, we didn't rest enough during the winter months and so now we're day-napping and yawning to make up for the energy we didn't gather when the earth was still. Whatever the reason, come 1pm I just want to fall asleep. Love the nighttime dreams though...bits of them swirl throughout my day.

My Mom's with me this week. She loves to organize. This afternoon she's moved the lids to a new drawer, queried me about where the milk should live in the fridge, suggested my knife block needs a new home, and said the craft drawer needs to be moved so the heavy pots could live on the sliding shelf, which was (evidently, but nobody told me) made for that job. All that time I spent with the personal organizer before she came so Mom (past eighty) could have a relaxing holiday...and there's more to do. Ok fairy-Sue - that's why I'm so sleepy!

got the publishing blues?

2006-05-15T07:51:00.001-07:00

Two weeks ago I went to a writer's conference in New York, and listened to 48 hours of speakers telling us how to make it as authors and journalists. I had my first novel Motherhunt published eight years ago, just as everything in the publishing industry began to change from a gentlemen's club to an industry focused on creating instant stars.

Publishers still talked about 'developing an author', taking a writer through three books to build a following, and breaking out on book three or book four. This means the author had a chance to learn what it's like to write over 80-100,000 words, how to work with editors and agents, and made a bit of money on the side (but don't quit the day job!) while they grew.

When I landed a two-book contract after networking my butt off, I received a sheet of paper which asked me to list, for publicity purposes, everyone I knew who might be influential in promoting my book. What a humbling exercise! The top editor I knew was in a woman's magazine writing a books column. I thought I had an ace in the hole.

Although the PR department of the publishing house made all the right noises about me, they wouldn't give me any information about how the publishing process worked: the role of the distributor, how the books got sold into stores, and how important it was that their sales team pitched my book to buyers. They didn't have a website, and barely knew what that meant. New PR companies sprang up to cater to authors as publishers saved PR budgets for stars. My single biggest mistake in publishing was taking the advice of my editor when she told me 'you don't need a PR company until book three' and not noticing that my agent was aghast.

Today, the PR company is a must-do for every serious author. You spend your advance on good PR. Sorry, the mortgage will have to wait if you've got ambitions to be writing for a big-name publishing conglomerate over the course of ten years. You will also need a website, a blog, and a support team which raises your profile through speaking engagements. It's best if you're an expert in a particular field (mine is holistic health) and write columns about it for national magazines and newspapers. So, in order to be a successful author, you need to already have cracked it as a writer and as a personality.

This suits people like me who live to write and like to talk to groups. But it also doesn't suit people like me who also want to spend time with a family and make a contribution to the planet, in my case through a holistic health practice. And who it really doesn't suit are those people with a day job, who slave over the Great American in the wee hours. Their best solution is to attend writer's conferences during their holidays, and get into the one-on-one sessions with the visiting junior agents who are trawling for new talent to build. Then, keep it professional with that agent. (Get a book on agents if you don't know what that means.) They are not your counsellor - get a shrink - your mother or your best friend. They do one thing - sell your book. Take their advice. Show willing. They know the business and it's tough.

However, that's traditional publishing. And it's more and more of a dinosaur. It doesn't foster great new writing over the long term. Savvy authors with business experience who come to the industry after researching their market, who provide agents and editors with forecasts of numbers of books they can sell (I have commitments from every Kiwanis club in the country) are like a box of Belgian chocolates to an agent. But we have a basic conflict in the book industry: authors are generally private people.

I know one man who has written NINE books between the hours of eleven pm and three am, and puts each one in a drawer (or on CD rom) because he doesn't want to confront the publishing juggernaut. We are not rock stars. We didn't get into this because we have big boobs, big personalities, and big hair. We were the nerdy kids at school, and we're generally nerdy adults, no matter how much the agents want us to be cool.

I love cyberspace. The click of the 'publish post' button. More and more, our really good writing is going to be found in the blogosphere, and then it will be siphoned off to agents and editors - or not. If you are not a big name already, and don't have the connections to become one in the next two years but you're sitting on a great book, why let your book be discounted on the supermarket shelves to $2.00 (assuming they get there) when you can sell it through your blog at $9, two bucks higher than the cost of per-book on your print run (try ipublish), and bank the money for yourself? It means handling stock and getting friendly with the gals at the PO, but it keeps you in connection with your readers. They comment to you, you're invested in them, everyone's excited to read the book, and your mileage to the PO gets written off against tax.

I always told my husband: if it's worth publishing, it's worth getting a publisher to do it. But I'm not so sure now. You can get a professional product by hiring your own editor and designers through a quality self-publishing company. And a relationship with readers through blog, website and podcast. This isn't the future, it's today.

Who wouldn't want to be part of that?

Crazy makers

2006-05-10T21:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was with a girlfriend who was letting go of a long-standing relationship with a man and it hurt. It reminded me so much of the year that I went through the same thing with M, that I scurried upstairs and ferreted out my diary.

I'd been angry with M and my energy healing teacher observed: 'you thought this man was a visionary; I saw he was a dreamer.' With hindsight I can see that neither is true; we were both stuck in our own despair, anger, and frustration. I prayed for guidance and felt that I had chosen to help M - he'd put out a call and I responded. My reasons for responding were full of shadows - self importance, ego, trying to be big in the world, ingratiation. And I lied to myself to hide this to my family and to M. Many veils. I wrote:

"On Friday night I diligently worked out the last weeds. Throughout the day the relationship - its beginnings, obscure little scenes, kept coming to me. As soon as I let these into the 'obsession loop' I had to turf them out. Sometimes they popped up spontaneously, sometimes they seemed called up as if I was trying to see if they still held power. I literally dug in the garden, rooting out dandelions and thistles, planting new seeds. A very curative activity! I put a rutilated quartz on the earth and dumped my thoughts there. At one point I just sat on the ground humbled and begged for mental relief.

I was taken back to the beginning of the relationship, and how I needed to fill an emotional empty space. I filled it with long, anguished, angst-ridden, gossip-spiked moans about my relationship. I got my needs met when M was also angst-ridden, gossip-spiked etc. However, if the power is siphoned away, it can't be used to build a strong emotional connection with my beloved.

I broke the lentils jar, and as it shattered, cut my left thumb and wrist. My son heard me and came into the kitchen and got a bandaid for me. He then announced: "I'm going to cook dinner Mummy, just tell me what to do." I mopped up the glass and tied an apron around his waist. He got the pasta from the fridge, put a pot of water on the stove, and made Angel Delight. I sat down and moaned, "do Mommys get to cry? What I really need is a hug." And my children put their arms around me and hugged me until I was full of little-people hugs.

For the past couple nights my dreams have been wakeup dreams - where I'm straining to open my eyes while I'm dreaming. At 3.3oam I called myself out of sleep with the imperative: 'Wake up Cynthia!' It's as if someone called to me from the room itself to wake me up.

I send M love and light and peace as we part, and always wish him well. I say to myself this little poem I've created: Light, come to me, transform this negativity; peace come to me, transform this negativity; love come to me, transform this negativity. Bring Light, Peace, and Love to me, to him."

The transformation that came into my home & family after I let M go into his destiny was radical. We each held a piece of the other's energies, and could not move on. I think what I instinctively did that day was a shamanic soul retrieval, but it felt like I was going nuts. Truly, the funny-farm looked like a safe haven. Was I competent to be in charge of children? I asked myself. Now I'm glad I had the courage to do the work, instead of burying my pain. I used that energy to help create a new life.

Detox, then re-tox

2006-05-09T18:51:00.000-07:00

I'm doing this crazy detox which involves a white plastic tub of 'medical food' - aka rice protein powder. Caramel-colored, sweet and gritty it goes down like candied sand. The first day of the detox - no sugar, no wheat, no caffeine, no CHOCOLATE - and I was on the couch sleeping like I'd drunk a fifth of vodka the night before. Next day, felt like I'd been kicked in the head by a goat. Next day, felt like my legs had been run over by small children on bicycles. Next day, finally got some energy together and tackled de-cluttering the back bedroom. Why does a detox always bring on boughts of spring-cleaning? Like scrubbing out the gut means you've got to scrub out all the back entrances, starting with the garage and working your way into the attic.
My husband's overtaken the basement with wine barrels, so I don't go there no more. He's a 'garagista' - see the cute picture of him covered in grape lees and looking happier than in his wedding photos. He and four other guys have found the entertainment of their lives making natural wines, hence their company's name 'Via Vecchia' or old road in Italian.
Paolo brought the first glass demijohns with him when we moved from England. He's been stomping grape in his father's garage since he was old enough to climb into the vats, and his father stomped in his village in Tuscany, and on back it goes who knows how many thousand of years.
We do these fun, big-production lunches with mafia top-tens blaring in the background on the stomping days, everyone working hauling grape, squishing grape between their toes, or sorting grape. I'm always in the kitchen, overseeing the menus which are a combo between traditional Italian and American pot-luck, and include (of course) cheeses and grapes and crackers; mortadella, salami, olives; pickled red peppers, good bread, olive oil; pasta or polenta, and usually some barbecque. Mike and Marty (the brothers Huster) stop at the pie place and pick up fresh buckeye (pnut butter & chocolate), blackberry, and an apple.
When we're ready to fall over with tiredness and full bellies, we sit around with our wine glasses and speak dreams about Via Vecchia's success, and laugh alot, and revel in the companionship and easiness of it all.

Small things

2006-05-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

Our lives are made up of the small things. The silver twigs of the maple unfurl tiny red leaves, sewed on for now, as if forever.
Our house deeds sit in a small, flat box, in a concrete room accessed by keys, protected by alarms. It's a dry, cool vault with brass edging each box. Our illusion of permanence: bought; mortgage-free; owner. Each hints at longevity but it's only tenure. Where will we fly next? And then, this place so dear now, slides past as slick as plastic photo wallets, their pages turning in bundles of white, slippery and thick.
We age before our eyes, time ellapsed. Our children grow teeth, lose teeth, grow teeth again. Soon there will be new faces to add - their loves.
I love to watch my face age. The little pooches at the jaw, and the wrinkles under the cups of my lower eyelids. My face is softer, more loving and lively with life written on it. I can smile at everyone now, and it means no more than happiness.
Sweetness, fondness and gentle stewardship; our memories of this earth.

who's the grandma?

2006-05-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, sitting in the sunshine on my back porch content as the cat, I got a call on my cell. An elderly, Southern woman asked for Adriana.
"There's no-one here by that name," I said, fully expecting to press 'end' the next second.
"I'm your Grandma!"
She said it so forcefully, it took me a moment to realize this was my cell and not a call from Beyond the Veil. "I'm afraid not. I haven't got any grandmas. They're deceased."
"I am not deceased!" the disgruntled lady almost shouted her indignance in my ear.
"I think you have the wrong number," I insisted.
"Is this the McCoy's?"
"No, it's not."
"Oh, I'm sorry dear," she replied, a bit deflated.
"That's ok," I said.
"Love you," she told me.
"Bye."
My cell captured her number. Part of me wants to call her back and ask if I can be adopted. I sure hope those McCoys are nice to such a lovely woman. How often do complete strangers say 'love you'? I can think of only one other time in my life, and then it was me doing the saying.

you gotta write

2006-05-01T11:41:00.000-07:00

It's an invitation. Write your heart out. Speak up! Let the Earth know you're living, and want to be part of the conversation.