Click cover, if you want the book.

I just received notice that TellTale Souls Writing the Mother Memoir: How to Tap Memory and Write Your Story Capturing Character & Spirit won honorable mention for the San Francisco Book Festival competition for the best books of the spring in the how-to category!

 What more can I say? I’m absolutely thrilled about this honor!

 Well, The Story Woman has this to say, “When you write your very own short, true story about your mother or someone who made you feel like a daughter or a son—you’ll be thrilled, too!”

Click for Amazon Selection

 Who is she—your mother—deep down inside?

 How will she be remembered?    Why does it matter?

Join author Lynn Cook Henriksen on a compelling journey, as she shows you how to discover your mother’s individuality and write to tell about it.

 TellTale Souls Writing the Mother Memoir: How to Tap Memory and Write Your Story Capturing Character & Spirit has the power to move people and change awareness.

The book takes readers on a journey through emotional terrain to access the deepest spiritual truths of intimate relationships. By way of specific triggers, unexpected impressions will emerge and evolve as Henriksen shows daughters and sons how to discover their mother’s individuality and write to tell about it.

 “If you could tell just one small story that would capture your mother’s character and keep her spirit alive, what would it be?”

     You will find secrets to answering this question via intriguing prompts and exercises throughout the guide’s Five Acts—steps to success—interwoven with 40 inspired memoirs by TellTale Souls who have walked this path.

 From a new perspective, Henriksen guides you to that tender spot deep inside to locate striking memories, and then to move the hint of fragrance, the turn of a phrase, the hum of a tune, the flash of an eye, the back of a hand, or a fragment of family ritual into a remarkable short, true story about your mother. People new to writing will find the writing process demystified, and professional authors will encounter abundant food for thought and techniques to get their creative juices flowing.

Reviews: TellTale Souls Writing the Mother Memoir

“Rarely does a book carve out a unique place for itself within the hallowed halls of writerly advice and wisdom, yet Ms. Henriksen has fearlessly stepped into uncharted, original waters with this book that brings to mind Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle… It is destined to be one of the classics required to complete the journey for writing the truth and writing it well.”

—River Jordan, author of Praying for Strangers: An Adventure of the Human Spirit

  “Every writer should read this book, as its combination of the spiritual and the practical transcends other memoir writing guides. The gifted Lynn, a lyrical, perceptive writer and teacher, brings incisive advice and technique together with true stories for a carefully devised, matchless performance, in which the reader will play a major part. I wish I had read TellTale Souls years ago; it would have saved me a lot of trouble. It is a tour de force and bound to become a classic.”

—Ann Seymour, author of I’ve Always Loved You: A True Story of WW2 in the Pacific Battlefields, in California, and in the Imperial Palace, Tokyo

 About the Author:  Lynn Cook Henriksen discovered a profound way to keep our mothers’ spirits alive after witnessing Alzheimer’s disease ravage her mother’s mind. She has helped hundreds of daughters and sons capture in brief memoirs the memories and feelings they never thought they could record.

              An intuitive leader and writing coach of story salons and workshops, Lynn knows tapping memory and learning to write with honesty about intimate, sometimes trying, relationships is the most valuable form of writing. To demystify writing memoir and make the journey more available, she wrote the guidebook: TellTale Souls Writing the Mother Memoir: How to Tap Memory and Write Your Story Capturing Character & Spirit.      

The tears, laughter, unique voices, and thank-yous from the spirited writers she has come to know will forever reside in Lynn’s heart and soul. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Meg Waite Clayton introduces readers to the unforgettable characters, Betts, Mia, Laney, and Ginger, whose convincing actions answer these questions during a fateful weekend on Chesapeake Bay. They’ve unwittingly returned to the scene of a few crimes, in their attempt to support Betts, whose Supreme Court nomination has threatened to expose more than they ever wanted to reveal, as the press pokes about in the dark places of their collective pasts.

As the book progresses, the Ms. Bradwells’ memories are rekindled during this long weekend retreat on Chesapeake Bay in the home of Ginger’s recently deceased mother. While skinny dipping and playing the game of RISK, the four women, in turn, by guarded turn, begin to tell each other how their choices to hold fast to secrets from their younger days, starkly affected their lives. As they became aware of their needs to be good role models for their college-age daughters, they recognized that giving up secrets and turning to honesty is the only way women can squelch the double-standard, cultural perception that being bold, smart, and assertive marks men as studs, but women as sluts.

Boldly laying shame aside for self-respect, the Ms. Bradwells mount courage to ride truth into the naked light of day.

Bio: Meg Waite Clayton is the nationally bestselling author of The Four Ms. Bradwells, The Wednesday Sisters, the Bellwether Prize finalist for The Language of Light, all published by Random House’s Ballantine Books, and all of them are major national book club picks. Her novels have been published in six languages, and her shorter work has aired on public radio and appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The San Jose Mercury News, Writers Digest, Runners World and other print and online magazines and news sources. A graduate of the University Michigan Law School, she lives with her family in Palo Alto and is at work on a fourth novel, The Wednesday Daughters, to be published in 2013. 

Creative writing lesson for all TellTale Souls: When you want to learn how one bestselling author uses characterization to its full extent, read Meg Waite Clayton’s novels.

Authors and Writers

 “Speed-Dating” by the Bay at our 9^th Annual Signature Event

Back by popular demand:  Keynote Luncheon (see below)

MEET-THE-AGENTS & ACQUISITION EDITORS

Lynn Henriksen, Event Chair, lynn(at)telltalesouls.com 

Saturday, March 24^th, 2012 • 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Sinbad’s Restaurant, Pier 2, San Francisco

$50 WNBA member, $65 non-member, or $75 at the door

(Bonus:  Coffee and “How to Pitch Training” included from 8:00 to 9:00 am)

Space is limited (we sold out last year) – REGISTER SOON

Register via PayPal at www.wnba-sfchapter.org or mail your check made out to WNBA-SF to P.O. Box 244, Half Moon Bay, CA  94019

Meg Waite Clayton is the nationally bestselling author of The Four Ms. Bradwells, The Wednesday Sisters, and the Bellwether Prize finalist The Language of Light, all published by Random House’s Ballantine Books, and all major national book club picks. Her novels have been published in six languages, and her shorter work has aired on public radio and appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The San Jose Mercury News, Writers Digest, Runners World and other print and online magazines and news sources. A graduate of the University Michigan Law School, she lives with her family in Palo Alto, and is at work on a fourth novel, The Wednesday Daughters, to be published in 2013. www.megwaiteclayton.com

This year’s list of Agents and Acquisition Editors are posted on our website.

Event sponsor:  Women’s National Book Association – San Francisco

WNBA-SF is a non-profit organization that fosters professional development and exposure of our members through a variety of book-related programs, workshops, and hands-on opportunities to make valuable contacts and connections that are beneficial at any stage of one’s career. WNBA-SF is part of a National network promoting the value of books and reading since 1917 throughout ten chapters stretching from coast to coast. Annual Membership is $45.

501(c) (3). 4061 East Castro Valley Blvd., #193, Castro Valley, CA 94552

We’re deep into winter here in northern California, although not a Russian winter by any means. Winter evenings, when afternoon light fades earlier each day into cold, inky sky, I relish the extra time I guiltlessly take to read good books. Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay was one terrific novel I recently finished. It’s not a short read, but its complexity interwoven with love, loss, betrayal, dark secrets, intrigue, life-altering revelations, and redemption make for a true page turner.

Daphne Kalotay crafts a magnificent novel rooted in well-researched historical facts with characters who compel attention. The personality of the ballet, life in Stalinist Russia and in Boston, and the exquisite depth of amber are superimposed on an interesting array of characters adroitly depicted by Kalotay in Russian Winter. Love affairs, lies, and political beliefs essentially trap humans in their tracks every bit as much as a spider finds herself forever suspended in time, emerging egg sack and all. That is until the urgency of fear on one hand and the promise of fulfillment on the other allow the determined to escape oppression and the resilient to open to trust and new beginnings. The intricacies of personality, politics, and personal choice, along with an attraction to fine jewelry and dance are absorbing—you won’t want to put this book down even after you’ve read the last word. And you’re sure to learn a great deal about the effects of political oppression along the way. Beware of what you hope for; it could come back as the end of freedom as you know it.

Memory plays a big part in this novel. In fact, you could say the plot revolves around memories secreted away. The Story Woman and all TellTale Souls understand the power of deeply seated memory. Have some fun with Russian Winter. For some of you, it may tempt the telling of tales you’d thought were secure!

The Buddha in the Attic

The Story Woman highly recommends this book. It makes a beautiful gift.

It may inspire you to become a TellTale Soul and write about a woman you know – as in the Mother Mother, where women are at once one and all.

Let this book spur you into action. Teresa LeYung Ryan opens the door and guides you directly into the world all writers and authors must negotiate if they want their work to be known. But she doesn’t stop there; rather than tell you what to do, she lets you do it for yourself. In a clear, affirming voice, LeYung Ryan takes you securely by the hand and shows you exactly how to Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase in 22 Days. The focused series of exercises that make up this workbook build on each other and really work. With her finger on the pulse of the community and media interaction, she’ll have you drilling down to the basics while reaching for the stars, the blogosphere, and beyond. You want success?  Coach Teresa’s got it all figured out, let her show you the way.

Book also review on Amazon (click title) by Lynn Henriksen, The Story Woman, for TellTale Souls everywhere.

Whether or not one believes the choices this family made in Zoe Carter’s memoir, Imperfect Endings, are right or wrong, Carter is an undeniably powerful writer, who has an easy way with words on a complex, but timely issue. She has taken the difficult, to say the least, subject of life and death and crafted it into an unforgettable personal story laced with wit, wisdom, humor, compassion, insight, and abundant food for thought. To be honest, when I first picked it up I wondered if I wanted to “go there.” I’m glad I did—I found it incredibly moving.

I know it took more than a little courage for Zoe Carter to write this provocative slice of life. Imperfect Endings meant paring familial façade to the bone and sucking out the marrow, which she did unabashedly.

How does a daughter say, “Yes, Mom, I’ll watch you die slowly by your own hand.”  I’ll be a party to your staged sit-in with death.

Hauntingly beautiful are the two words that washed over my soul when I finished reading Zoe Carter’s Imperfect Endings. A true page turner, brought together through a dynamic flow of the highs of love and tenderness, and the lows of anger and sadness, revealing what it takes to be, at once, a mother and a daughter.

I could see both sides as the drama unfolded: the mother’s perspective, as she desired to make her exit —actually to direct it, while maintaining a modicum of dignity; and the three daughters’ reluctance to come to terms with their mother’s wishes and say goodbye to Momma. Throughout much of the memoir, a cloak of angry sadness hung from Zoe’s shoulders—she was deemed the caretaker, ever flying from coast to coast, always at her mother’s beck and call, while growing numb by degrees to her mother’s flirtatious and ever changing dates with death. Zoe was the “good” daughter—but also a woman conflicted by daughterly duties over shadowing those of being a wife to a man trying not to lose his patience, and mother to young daughters of her own, needing her attention.

Fluctuating between flashbacks of childhood memories and present day dilemmas, Zoe creates authentic scenes that strip away allusion to expose the raw reality of the family’s intimate workings. The three daughters’ angst for their parent’s past transgressions and weaknesses was palpable, and their reckoning of their mother’s pretenses and denial, although heartbreakingly understood, at least by two of the sisters, stayed unresolved.

But, in the final days, as their mother, Margaret, slipped away, the atmosphere rang clear with tenderness and acceptance as Zoe’s arms, gently enfolded a feather of a woman as the parade passed by, and songs from her lips sent Momma’s soul soaring.

THE STORY WOMAN REMINDS YOU TO WRITE A TRUE AND TELLING TALE ABOUT YOUR MOTHER.

Once again, C.W. Gortner doesn’t disappoint. The Confessions of Catherine de Medici bring a terrible, bloody time in European history to light through the thoughts and actions of “the Italian Jezebel,” the label her detractors gleefully hung on her. As this intriguing, ambitious, intelligent, often desperate and deceitful woman struggled to maintain Valois–Medici power in France during the 16^th century’s religious wars between the Catholics and the Huguenots, I was torn between appreciating Catherine’s heroism and being wary of her insensitivity toward both her immediate family and the thousands of innocent people who perished due to her treacherous, although often ineffective, conniving.

Gortner skillfully marries fact and myth, pairs the seers, Catherine and Nostradamus, and places the duty of royalty above all else, in such a way that I turned page after page deep into the night. Each time I forced myself to put down this book, I could not wait to pick it up again. I was immediately captivated as Gortner described Catherine’s horrific ordeal as a young and tender orphaned child at the hands of the nuns at the Convent of Santa Lucia in Florence. Terrific pain and humiliation would surface again just three years later after she married Henri II of France, as her husband’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers, personally orchestrated acts of conception between Henri and Catherine; acts that would bring forth heirs to the throne one way or another. Gortner made me feel her physical pain, as well as the psychological pain of her prophetic visions, but I also felt the sting of her devious edicts as she, in turn, orchestrated the deaths of a past lover and the many formidable foes who dared to cross the path she had charted for herself, her children, and for France. After all was said and done, I wondered if the glory she sought for France was ultimately for personal glorification given what she deemed the destiny de Medici.

_______

I couldn’t find a memoir written by Catherine de Medici, but her memoir would have been more than memorable had she written one.

I have the habit, when reading brilliant authors’ works, of writing down certain passages that strike me with their eloquence or bite me with their awful truths.

The following are several extracts, in italics, from the ten stories in Munro’s newest book (short thoughts from me tagged on without italics). While reading these clips, as they flow down the page and with the characters’ thoughts out of context, I’m hoping the effect will not be too strange. If you take your time with each, and I believe the protagonists’ inner thoughts will grab hold of you like they did me so you’ll be enticed to read Too Much Happiness, although I don’t think you’ll find too much happiness overflowing the pages.

Love…if the great happiness—however temporary, however flimsy—of one person could come out of the great unhappiness of another. This thought had me questioning happiness altogether.

 She was nearly crying with exhaustion and alarm and some familiar sort of seeping rage.  This is another line from another story where familiar paired with seeping rage caught hold of me, because of the sad fact that seeping rage would actually sound familiar and resonate globally.

There is something I think you ought to know, said a mother to her daughter after her father’s funeral. These may be among the most unpleasant words that person ever has to hear. There’s a pretty good chance that whatever you ought to know will be burdensome, and that there will be a suggestion that other people have had to bear the burden, while you have been let off lightly, all this while.

I began to understand that there were certain talkers—certain girls—whom people liked to listen to, not because of what they, the girls, had to say, but because of the delight they took in saying it. A delight in themselves, a shine on their faces, a conviction that whatever they were telling about was remarkable and that they themselves could not help but give pleasure.

The worst was that her fingers had pressed my back. Through my coat, through my other clothing, her fingers like so many cold snouts.

The yellow paint seemed to be the very color of insult, and the front door, being off center, added a touch of deformity. I playing with the color of verbs.

But only adults would be so stupid as to believe she had no power. A power, moreover, that was specifically directed at me. I was the one she had her eye on. Or so I believed. As if we had an understanding between us that could not be described and was not to be disposed of. Something that clings, in the way of love, though on my side it felt absolutely like hate.

When I first saw the look on Charlene’s face I thought that her money had been stolen. But then I thought that such a calamity would not have made her look so transformed, the shock on her face so joyful. When you read this story, you’ll be shocked that Charlene could be joyful doing what she did!

From what I had said, Charlene seemed to have got the idea that Verna had actively harassed me. And I believed that was true, except that the harassment had been more subtle, more secret, than I had been able to describe. Now I let Charlene think as she liked because it was more exciting that way.

Memories of childhood were much more distant and faded and unimportant than they seem today.

He knew how much she valued me and now at the end of her life she seemed very keen to see me. She had asked him to get hold of me. It may be that childhood memories mean the most, he said. Childhood affections. Strength like no other. Yes, and the strength of childhood bonds are the mortar of memoir.

He still tells her things—it’s a habit—but he is so used to her now not paying any real attention that he hardly notices whether there is an answer or not. This time she echoes what he himself has said, “Never mind. You’ve got enough to do anyway.” That’s what he would have expected, whether she was well or not. Missing the point. But isn’t that what wives do—and husbands probably the same—around fifty percent of the time?

I have never been so tempted to write romances, as when with Fat Maksim. And he takes up too much room, on the divan and in one’s mind. It is simply impossible for me, in his presence, to think of anything but him.

And at the end of his letter one terrible sentence—“If I loved you I would have written differently.”

Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind, and when a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her. It will serve me well to remember this pearl of wisdom.

Which surely meant that he would consider she had some hold now, and would have felt it beneath his dignity to deceive her.

He had to be careful about saying what he really believed—that there must be something like intuition in the first-rate mathematician’s mind, some lightening flare to uncover what has been there all along. Rigorous, meticulous, one must be, but so must the great poet. I’ve been teaching for years that writing memoir is simply uncovering what’s already there mindfully.

She was learning, quite, late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood—that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements. It could be brimful of occupations which did not weary you to the bone.

­­­­______

Now go write a Mother Memoir, and if you think everything you write must be momentous, take to heart the last couple sentences above. And, while you’re at it, read as much of Munro as you can—if some of her brilliance seeps into your voice, so much the better.