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Porch-talk, Storytelling, & Writing Memoir

06/26/2009 By 2 Comments

Porch-talk, Storytelling, & Memoir Writing A couple of days ago, I went to a memorial service at St. Stephen’s Episcopal in Belvedere for a beautiful, remarkable soul, Elizabeth “Betty” McKegney. She was 99 years old. She would have been 100 on September 9th. I heard it uttered that it was too bad she hadn’t reach the milestone of 100 years of age.  Well, to me, it just seemed right for her to take the poetic route: born 9-09-09, she took her leave at 99. Nice.  The church was packed because Betty was significant in so many people’s lives as well as the one of the last of the “old guard.” I’m sure many of you know what I mean. This woman represented an era now past, the nostalgia of which is instilled in my heart. She lived in a house they say was graced by 150 cats, at one time or another, that was the first left turn just past our house and about 150 yards down one of the last gravel roads in town. This gravel road was fitting, too, as the last vestige of

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First Mine for gold, then Write Memoir

06/18/2009 By 2 Comments

First Mine for gold, then Write Memoir Hello, all you writers and authors and artists from across the board.  I recently read a great little book by Abigail Thomas, Thinking About Memoir, so I wanted to share my thoughts with you about this book and add it to my new Book Review blog category. By the way, my reviews aren’t confined to the memoir genre. From the inception of my blog, which wasn’t that long ago, one of my main purposes was to give voice to a wide range of nonfiction and fiction writers as well as artists in general who have caught my eye and my spirit. If you’d like me to post a blog about you and your work, please contact me and we’ll go from there. I believe the inspiration we get from each connection we make with art, whether through books, paintings, sculptures, theatre, dance, or music breathes life into our beings as we discover new ways to view our world. Abigail Thomas’ book, Thinking About Memoir, is oriented towards crafting the story of

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Can’t buy me love, no, no, no, no

06/12/2009 By 4 Comments

Yup, here is a terrific new novel by Tanya Egan Gibson - How to Buy a Love of Reading, and the book is every bit as engaging as the title. She a new writer of fiction living here in Northern California. I attended her very first reading the other night at Book Passage in Corte Madera, cheered her on, bought an autographed copy, and read and read and read some more. This book is a huge chunk of change - I think it was ten years in the making - full of emotion and passion, reality shows, and protagonists in search of love and self with a surprisingly fresh twist. I would characterize Tanya Egan Gibson’s delicious debut novel, How to Buy a Love of Reading, as love stories between three couples even though ‘love story’ isn’t the premise of her book. Or is it?  But these love stories come with a twist, wherein the power of choice prevails as the characters literally rewrite their stories, their lives, and their fate. Actually there are three tales of love within two

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4 Reasons to Give the Gift of Story

06/09/2009 By 2 Comments
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4 Reasons to Give the Gift of Story Yes, she's your mother, maybe your grandmother, or another woman to whom you felt like a daughter or a son. Have you ever actually stopped to think about whom she really is as an individual, as a woman unto herself? What aspect of her being, what quality, action, or anecdote could you draw upon to bring the essence of her character to light in a short memoir, a bio-vignette, which would give someone reading your story a pretty good idea of what she is like as seen through your eyes? At times she is mysterious, other times transparent. But of this you can be sure, she's not the same woman to anyone other than you. For our purposes here, we're not going to get philosophical, and we'll leave the psychoanalysis to the docs. Her character is multifaceted, her inner make up complex, but for you there are certain aspects of her spirit that stand out, those qualities through which her character comes to life. What do you most remember about her and

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