seduced by the written word

True, I write about Savannah, and houseboat living, and even writing, but I’ve been silent about my search for literary representation.  Why? Because I’m superstitious about saying something too soon.  Plus, the road to publishing is slow; imagine watching an upended bottle of molasses….actually, that’s a poor analogy because you can watch molasses flow….let’s just say I kept you in the dark FOR YOUR OWN GOOD.

You’re welcome.  

A few years ago I met author Tim Maleeny www.timmaleeny.com at the Book Passage www.bookpassage.com Mystery Writers Conference.  Tim’s writing and our dinner conversation made an impression.  

So, when I was ready to begin querying agents for representation I researched his agent, Jill Grosjean, and subsequently sent her a letter about All Things Unusual.  She responded with a request for the full manuscript.

Yes, I was excited, but I didn’t blog about it because…..I’m superstitious that way.  After the initial excitement of shipping off the manuscript came the fear of rejection entertaining part.  This is where you imagine the pages of a calendar turning…April…..May…..time passed and I bought this necklace:

You’re probably thinking, ‘She bought a necklace? That’s kind of random.’ Not really. I bought it as a talisman; Lulu, the main character in my novel gets a tattoo with a crescent moon and stars, and when I saw the necklace I decided it would bring me good luck (because I’m kind of superstitious  that way).  I began wearing the necklace and traveled with it to Savannah:

In my last post I wrote about returning home from that trip after midnight. Here’s what I didn’t tell you, because, yes, I’m superstitious that way: I opened my email at 1:24 a.m. and a letter from literary agent Jill Grosjean was waiting for me.

Jill wrote that she had begun reading my manuscript, loved it so far, and wondered if I was still seeking representation.  The week passed as she read the full manuscript, there were more enthusiastic emails, and on Friday we spoke by phone.  She told me about herself and how she works, shared her ideas for submissions to editors, and offered representation. I liked her, thought her ideas for representation were terrific, and…

Voila! I am now represented by the Jill Grosjean Literary Agency.

I hope you’ll join me for a glass of champagne.  Superstitious, or not, this is a slow process and I believe in celebrating when I can!

It was after midnight, and as I wheeled the carry-on down the dock toward our houseboat it sounded different, heavier against the planks. Must have been the extra weight from friend, Savannahian and tour guide, Harriet’s www.savannahsites.com gift to me: a first edition of author Eugenia Price’s 755 page epic, Stranger in Savannah:

Why did Harriet give me a book by Eugenia Price? Over one of our many lunches I mentioned that a significant character in my manuscript, All Things Unusual, is named Eugenia. Harriet reacted to the name and asked why I’d chosen it. As far as I knew there was no rational reason. It came to me while I was writing. Coincidence? Perhaps, but given some of our conversations, I’m not sure we believe in coincidence.

Harriet also gave me a tin of Savannah Benne wafers, but they never made it to my cookie jar on the west coast. If you don’t know what Benne wafers are, they’re low country, crispy, sesame seed Southern cookies, and you have added one more reason to your list of why you must visit.

Here’s what the historic district looked like over Memorial Day weekend — it was gorgeous:

This shot was taken on Jones Street, where my Eugenia lives. 

Relaxing on a bench in Madison Square on Sunday morning I mentally corrected a tour guide who had just walked past giving inaccurate information to a couple trying to keep up with him. His voice confirmed he was from north of the Mason-Dixon line.

What can I say? My research has transformed me into the kind of woman you can only hope you don’t sit beside on a park bench on one of the Squares on a glorious, lazy day. You just might find yourself learning more than you ever wanted to know!

Last time I traveled to Savannah I invited you to hang out here, went so far as to fill the cookie jar for you, came home and discovered the rugala was gone, the jar empty. I had only myself to blame; I did say ‘help yourself.’ Still, an empty cookie jar is harsh after flying across the country. And I really can’t be expected to write anything without rugala….not anything you’d want to read, anyway. Other baked goods will do in a pinch, but the idea makes my head hurt.

So this time, maybe you could try and save me one. Just to tide me over till the bakery opens.

You know where the key is; come and go as you please. And because you mean so much to me — I’m clenching my teeth now– help yourself to the rugala.

I’ll bring back some stories and pictures of Savannah for y’all – you know the kind – the ones that make you wish you were there.

Those of you who have been visiting my blog since the beginning know I have a love affair with Savannah, GA. This may come as a surprise to newer readers because I haven’t visited this Southern destination point since February and my Savannah posts have slipped into the archives……

Dim the lights. Okay, so watching American Idol is a guilty pleasure. Work with me, people.

Who is going home tonight? All right, so now I’m reeeaally stretching credibility here because Savannah’s not home (yet) and I’m not going there tonight (wouldn’t that be the best?!)

But I have plans to return soon.

Friend, photographer and Georgia resident, Jacquelynn Buck, www.jacquelynnbuck.com   recently wrote “You’ll be heading to the muggy South! And yes, it went from zero to gross in about 3.5 seconds the other day. And now it’s staying.” 

For some, this would have been a reality check. A wake-up call. But not for me.

Friend, Savannahian, tour guide and obvious proponent of tough love, Harriet Meyerhoff www.savannahsites.com has tried to do an intervention. “Sara, have you been here during the summer?” she has asked as I rhapsodized over her fair city.

Why do I love Savannah? I can list my reasons but in the end such a list is useless. I am like a woman smitten with a lover– even though friends shake their heads and for my own good try to make me see the light — I JUST DON’T CARE! That’s right, I’m covering my ears now — lalalalalala.

It comes down to this: Savannah is my muse and I am seduced.

The countdown has begun. The plane tickets have been purchased. The deposit on the apartment on Jones Street has been made.

And I’m sounding a little pitchy.

Week after next I’ll be in Savannah. Humid air will caress my skin as I walk into the night outside Savannah/Hilton Head airport. I can’t wait.

The sound of the brass knocker on the front door hammered through the houseboat. Definitely not one of our neighbors. It was a delivery – and a very special one – it was my Mother’s Day present from Hannah. As I tore open the envelope I thought, please let it be something she made. And it was, and here it is, waiting to be framed for my perpetual pleasure:

I cheated and opened it when it arrived on Saturday. Some things I can’t wait for, and there was no one here to keep me in line. Bill was out racing and Hannah is on the other side of the country digging into her final three weeks of school.

My favorite part of Mother’s Day, when my daughter is absent, is hearing her musical voice greet me and tell me about her life. I’m always amazed and impressed by her specific interests and original thoughts, by her passion and humor, and by the life she’s creating.

As a child and a teenager I used to tell my mother about my days, and I suppose I still do. I will talk to her about dinner with friends and she will tell me about the California poppies growing in her front yard that blew there from a nearby mountainside. Mother is, and has always been, a gifted gardener; she appreciates each bloom. Then I will tell her I’ve bought the tickets to Savannah and she will bring up the poppies and wonder why they only grow in front of her house and not on the lawns of her neighbors. Next, I will tell her about Hannah’s Mother’s Day painting and she will announce that there are beautiful poppies in her yard and wonder how they got there. The thought that one day my daughter will listen as I cannot remember the last thread of my conversation terrifies me and I push it away.

There is a photograph of my mother, Hannah, and me, standing on a bridge on the Seine with Notre-Dame in the background from ten years ago. We are bundled up against the cold, Hannah has not yet dyed her red hair black, she wears glasses instead of contacts and not a speck of makeup; she is a little girl. But because the light isn’t great and our faces are partly in shadow, my mother and I don’t seem that different from the way we look today. I stare at the photograph and remember; she had begun to lose her memory even then.

There are days when I could use my mother’s special encouragement, and I choose to wear a piece of her jewelry; the glittering marcasite broach or the little gold turtle with seed pearls I pin to a collar. They’re talismans, and with them, I summon the inner strength and pride she gave me.

I see it in Hannah and am reminded it is always there if I just remember to look for it.

Happy Mother’s Day.

First thing this morning I finished a chapter of my new manuscript. This go-round I’m trying something different; I’m writing the first draft longhand in journals, with the intention of revising on my laptop. One of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, www.neilgaiman.com uses this technique and I’m giving it a try for a couple of reasons:

1. throwing a journal in my bag is even more convenient than packing a laptop, and
2. friends keep giving me journals I’ve never used — they’re stacking up

But change always brings a new set of challenges. Over time I’ve developed a relationship with the blinking cursor that represents commitment. For some reason, I find it easier to close the journal and walk away from my work.  Just as my manuscript is a work in progress, so is adopting longhand over the keyboard; time will tell whether I embrace the journal or return to the blank screen. Let’s call it an experiment, shall we? 

My last post was about tourists visiting our houseboat community. We also have tenants who only share the water for a portion of the year. For example, we have a neighbor who somehow always works the phrase, “our home in the South of France,” into every encounter. This is particularly annoying impressive because our conversations are extremely superficial, leaning towards basic greetings and remarks on the weather.

Sara: “Hi! How are you?”

Neighbor: “I was just noticing how the light reflected on the water reminds me of my home in the South of France.”

 But I digress….here are our neighbors from Canada. I have no idea what they’re saying when they honk as they fly past our windows, but it doesn’t sound like they’re name-dropping:

“Enjoy the sun while it lasts!” “It’s a beautiful day!”

We’ve experienced months of rain and these were the words that greeted me as I walked down the dock and went about my daily errands.

But when I returned home and couldn’t find a single freakin’ parking space I realized it was more than a gorgeous day.

It was the kind of day where…….the tourists arrive in droves.

The parking lot was a free-for-all, clogged with drivers who didn’t think the rules of the road applied to the street running through our houseboat community.

I navigated around clumps of people standing and gaping in the middle of the street and cars angled in impossible directions, until I found a parking space, albeit a space in the small, despised lot where I never park because it floods during high tides.

Tourists!

I was feeling snarky. Put-upon by the visiting hordes. And then I remembered……  

They were here to visit the artists on Issaquah dock. How wonderful to live in a community of artists. It’s a gift to live in a spot where people turn out to take photographs and the following statement was overheard: “The houseboats go on forever.” Yes, someone said that with a whispered inflection of awe in their voice, and trust me, the houseboats don’t. Go on forever, I mean. But it’s a nice idea; one I carried with me as I snapped these photographs to share with you.

Perhaps someone was remembering a lawn that needed to be cut, or a garage that needed to be cleaned, and imagining what their life might be like if they lived a bohemian lifestyle in the water on a glorious day. Or some may have wondered, ‘what kind of crazy people live like this?’ and looked forward to returning home to a more spacious life and three-car garage. Whatever people were thinking, they chose to come out and take photographs and enjoy the day. 

As the seaplane – carrying tourists — droned in for a landing in Richardson’s Bay, I headed down the dock with a bag of groceries and the week’s dry cleaning. My mind was on what I would be writing that afternoon and I pulled myself back to the present when a couple of male visitors with cameras held open the gate for me. Not sure whether they were welcome on the dock, they shyly smiled and mumbled “hello.” I greeted them and remembered to be grateful. You can write anywhere – but it’s lovely to live and write here.

When the tour buses pull out, and the seaplane pilot goes home for the night, and the parking spaces free up for the residents, I’ll be pouring myself another cup of tea, appreciating how long it’s light outside at this time of year. And glad, that for a while, I can live this life.

This past Saturday I took a walk at Crissy Field with writer, poet, and friend, Letitia Momirov:

Route and destination were not important; we wanted to talk writing, poetry, process, passion.

What emerged from our discussion? We both share a fantasy of living and writing in the Irish countryside. Tish finds she’s happiest with her work if she writes in the morning and has made that her practice. As a night owl, I made the commitment to set my alarm an hour earlier to give morning writing a try. Yikes!

We both recommend The Keep, a novel by Jennifer Egan www.jenniferegan.com and Tish recommends Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, www.pattismith.net

And because April is National Poetry Month, Tish taught me to carry a poem in my pocket.

We had just shared our thoughts on psychic proclivities when we discovered both of us happened to have Billy Collins in our pockets. Here’s the sly poem Tish chose for me:

Writing in the Afterlife 

BY BILLY COLLINS

 

I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,

shot with pristine light,

not this sulphurous haze,

the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.

 

 

Many have pictured a river here,

but no one mentioned all the boats,

their benches crowded with naked passengers,

each bent over a writing tablet.

 

 

I knew I would not always be a child

with a model train and a model tunnel,

and I knew I would not live forever,

jumping all day through the hoop of myself.

 

 

I had heard about the journey to the other side

and the clink of the final coin

in the leather purse of the man holding the oar,

but how could anyone have guessed

 

 

that as soon as we arrived

we would be asked to describe this place

and to include as much detail as possible—

not just the water, he insists,

 

 

rather the oily, fathomless, rat-happy water,

not simply the shackles, but the rusty,

iron, ankle-shredding shackles—

and that our next assignment would be

 

 

to jot down, off the tops of our heads,

our thoughts and feelings about being dead,

not really an assignment,

the man rotating the oar keeps telling us—

 

 

think of it more as an exercise, he groans,

think of writing as a process,

a never-ending, infernal process,

and now the boats have become jammed together,

 

 

bow against stern, stern locked to bow,

and not a thing is moving, only our diligent pens.

 

www.billy-collins.com

Letitia Momirov’s poetry will be published in Compass Rose www.chestercollege.edu/compassrose in May and The Healing Muse www.upstate.edu/bioethics/thehealingmuse in October. Neither is National Poetry Month, but I do intend to carry her poems in my pocket.

A few posts back I mentioned being stuck at Ontario Airport. In hindsight, this was fortuitous because I killed time in the bookstore. My eyes roamed over the spines of books, I pulled Katherine Howe’s The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane from the shelf, the cover intrigued me, and I bought it. 

What’s that phrase I’m searching for? You know the one….you can’t judge a book by it’s cover? Not true!

Immediately, I was drawn into the story, and like a demon, I read the book at every opportunity. Howe’s writing compelled me to stay up past the witching hour midnight because I couldn’t put it down, and then, I regretted the moment when the read came to an end.

Katherine Howe’s author bio tells us her ancestors include Elizabeth Proctor, who survived the Salem witch trials, and Elizabeth Howe, who did not. Howe www.katherinehowe.com expertly shifts us between the events of the Salem witch panic of the late 1600’s and a 1990’s witch story. Her writing is fluid and evocative. The story has magic, mystery, romance, and history. There are even spooky scenes. You know these are my favorite elements and my imagination was captured.

Three days after finishing the book, I discovered the author was coming to my local indie bookstore, Book Passage. www.bookpassage.com No use denying it; when I love a book I’m such a groupie. So that was me in the front row reveling in Katherine Howe’s discussion of Puritan history, cunning women, Marblehead, Massachusetts and writing. She was fascinating and very generous with her responses to our questions. What a great way to spend an hour.

I wish you could have been there. Visit http://www.physickbook.com/trailer.html and watch the book trailer. You’ll be tempted to read it if you do. As for me, I’ve begun the countdown for Katherine Howe’s next book.

This morning the wind was whipping down the dock of our houseboat community. While I drank peppermint tea and worked on my manuscript, Bill took his mistress boat, Ergo, out to compete in The Corinthian race. Around noon he called to say there were gale winds in Raccoon Strait and he’d dropped out. Suddenly the day was empty. We decided to take a field-trip over to Tiburon. Bill’s the Commodore of the Singlehanded Sailing Society and he wanted to check-in on the race committee. Here they are on the race deck, braving the elements at the Corinthian Yacht Club www.corinthianyc.org  

You’ll find me in the  restaurant or bar thinking about the people braving the elements. The Corinthian is over 100 years old and it has a true sense of sailing history. Beyond the sailboats and across the water you can see ferries that travel between Tiburon and San Francisco.

Here’s a view from the race deck toward San Francisco’s city-front. Typically it’s breathtaking but it was dismal today:

Main Street in Tiburon is tiny, picturesque and fun. And if you enjoy shopping, I’ve saved the best for last: Citrus www.shopcitrus.com The shop’s tagline is: Hand-Picked Little Luxuries and that is certainly true. Hannah scored a birthday present and I’m very tempted to return…..once I figure out what color I want my cowgirl boots to be…..honestly, I probably do need a chaperon.

The photograph doesn’t do it justice: Citrus is bright and colorful and you’ll just have to visit and find out for yourself. Kelly, the owner, is darling and you will be unable  to resist the selection and her welcoming spirit.