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!

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.

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 who 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?

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.  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 want to tell her? What significant parts of her character seem to be hers and hers alone?  Seize that little gem you’ve conjured up in your mind’s eye. Take hold of it, round it out, and polish it as you develop it into a true story that captures her character.    

To capture the essence of the character of your mother can be daunting, but another way to think of it is that this is your opportunity to let her know you find it valuable to take the time to look at her as an individual – there’s no better gift or no better way for you to honor her than to write a true tale about her.

There’s a gift within this gift of story for you, too, as you will find the experience of writing “Mother Memoir” stimulating, poignant, cathartic, giving, and uniting.

 The Story Woman^TM asks daughters and sons to write “Mother Memoir” to make it real.

Attend this conference and you’ll see that I’m not the only one who believes writing can change your life and your words can change the lives of others. 

Will Your Book Be The One That
Changes The World…this year?

Headliners include: Dan Millman, John Robbins, Jean Shinoda Bolen,  Alan Rinzler, Cami Walker, Rosemary Daniell, and so many more…

Just added: ALL-DAY PRECONFERENCE–All About eBooks–with industry leaders Rob MacDonald (Scribd) and Mark Coker (Smashwords) on Friday, Nov. 12th.

The StoryWoman says, “Write Mother Memoir to change your life; become a TellTale Soul.”

  ZEN AND THE ART OF THE BOOK DEAL   

            Sunday, Sept. 12, 2010 • 2-5 p.m.

              San Francisco Main Public Library

          Women’s National Book Association – San Francisco Chapter brings you the latest news in the publishing industry from the following insiders:

• JENNIFER JOSEPH – publisher and editor of Manic D Press
• PETER BEREN – literary agent and publishing consultant
• BRIDGET KINSELLA – Breaking Books & navigating the publishing landscape
• GEORGIA HUGHES – editorial director of New World Library

Moderator: Mary Knippel, immediate past president, WNBA-SF Chapter.

September is National Literacy Month. Join our panel of experts as they share the newest insights into the publishing industry.

Participate in our Great Book Give Away. See you there!

Event address: San Francisco Public Library, Latino Hispanic Community Room, Lower Level, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, CA 94102. FREE TO THE PUBLIC

Chair, Lynn Henriksen, President WNBA-SF Chapter

Visit WNBA-SF website for more details on this powerful event.

 Harrison’s latest book, Felicity & Barbara Pym, about writing, reading and what it means to be truly educated (http://felicityandbarbarapym.wordpress.com) has just been released in the UK with stellar reviews and is available to those outside the UK from The Book Depository (http://tinyurl.com/fbpbd ) which offers free international shipping.

 Liminality

In a letter to a friend, not long ago, I wrote this sentence: “I’d like to be in Wales – my Wales, where the leaves on the ground lift in response to a wind that isn’t there and uncover for a millisecond, small vibrant worlds.”

 Before I comment on this sentiment, which was neither deliberately constructed, nor designed, but sprang from my hand, fully formed before I got a chance to see it, I would like to very briefly discuss the concept of liminality, which is a very new area in literary studies – or rather a very old phenomenon that has recently captured the attention of those in literary studies and thus, been named an “area.”

 Gwyn Thomas of the University of Wales, Bangor wrote an article in A Place That is Not a Place: Essays in Liminality and Text, called “Your Margin is My Centre” in which he invokes Arthurian narratives, specifically Vita Merlini (The Life of Merlin by Geoffrey of Monmouth) to illustrate the idea, as I see it, that people live in different Matters within the same space/time continuum. The literary idea of ‘matter’ originated from a medieval conviction that certain romance writing could be divided into separate spheres which were both physical and thematic, not unlike the “parallel universes” of science fiction in which disparate beings and cultures co-exist and (and occasionally overlap) in the same place and at same time but in different dimensions. These dimensions are similar, in literary imagination, to Matters and although they seem more metaphysical than physical, are actually verifiable by theoretical physics.

 In the Prologue of my first book, Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation (manuscript edition) there is a passage that illustrates what I mean:

 ”There is a sense in which time is always present as space. Quantum physicists and astronomers describe the time/space differential as the result of space travel at (or near) light speed. And yet the point at which space becomes time (and the reverse) exists as a constant in everyday life as the verb “to be.” 

“Where are you?” carries within it the word, “now.”

 ”What time is it?” implies both “now” and “here, in this space.”

 Among the many unanswerable questions I have pondered over the years was one posed by my son when he was about six years old. When asked: “What time is it?” he replied, “What time is what?”

This is the very heart of the spiralled and unending quest of science fiction:  “What does it mean to be ? In this time, in this space, who are we?” Its struggle to answer those questions is a tale of time slippage and alternate space; a delicate and determined unravelling of current quantum theory – physics to metaphysics and back again.

  Quantum theory gives rise to the postulation that the universe consists of several linear, simultaneously active dimensions which coexist as interweaving patterns of timespace that are not relative to each other except at “weak points” where they meet. It indicates that several worlds may cohabit the same space at the same time, and remain unperceived because the “fabric” of one dimension is atomically dissimilar to the pattern of another. Only at random points of exceedingly low probability, could the non time non space between these dimensions ever be traversed. The quest of science fiction is to somehow leap over that chasm called “between” - to discover the random, the serendipitous, the luminous light shining through the tight woven cloth of our timespace reality; to break through, as it were, and leave our swaddling clothes behind. ”

This is also akin to the notion of “tzimtzum” in ancient Jewish mysticism, wherein it is thought that there was originally one Matter, but that it was fragmented into many. The notion is this: When God withdrew into Himself (tzimtzum – the great withdrawal) in order to leave space for the world to be created, a vacuum was illuminated by a thin veil of light. When God attempted to re-enter this space, the delicate process went awry (for God is too large to be contained solely by His own creation and the vacuum, since it exists, is a creation) – the light of God was shattered throughout all creation (a cosmic calamity known as Shevirat Keilim – the breaking of the vessels) and was trapped in fragments, by isolated shells (people, nature, etc.). It is the duty of human beings to release this light from their shells. When all the light is again gathered together by much care and tikkun olam (repairing the world through good deeds and the monitoring of one’s own soul) only then, it is thought, will the Messiah come. Of course this symbolism can easily be applied to Christianity, whereupon when the gathering of the light is fulfilled, the Second Coming will take place.”

 The allegory of these fragmentary “lights of God” in their cracked and faulty vessels corresponds to secular chronicles of what is – records of perceptions of reality, or realms of knowledge, or imaginative narratives that attempt a cohesive answer to the questions of who are we and why are we here.

 I am writing such a narrative in my forthcoming book, Bendithion, (an extension of the essay of the same name that was awarded a 2008 Pushcart Prize http://tinyurl.com/solow-bendithion) to create a network, a wholeness, a vessel out of some very mysterious Matter – both the one in which I lived in Wales, and the one I came from, each of them barely perceivable through the membranes and thresholds that both bound us to one another for that short time and divided us forever: A matrix of stories and tales, poems and legends about the thoughts and powers and deeds that illuminate a land and a people and the silence behind them. And therein lies liminality.

 Perhaps this is best explained by the answer I gave in another interview (http://tinyurl.com/solow-americymru), in which I explored my own perception of liminality as the “hinterland between fiction and nonfiction.”

 “[Jan Morris, the inimitable Welsh writer, describes Welsh literature as] ‘the indistinguishable blend of fact and fantasy.’ But that blend is not only emblematic of Welsh storytelling – it is at the heart of my writing.

 My literary life began as the Western World’s did – with oral stories and fables, and then moved on to tales of daily life and very quickly thereafter to Lives of the Saints and the rigours of the Baltimore Catechism, as I have said, at a very young age, all of which inculcated a deep affinity with imaginary heavens and hells and the rich portent with which earthly life was endowed: Biblical parables, medieval pedagogy, Arthurian quests, Bunyanesque allegory, Chaucerian pilgrimages and Apologias of all kinds. This literature comes naturally to me. Or rather, as it was clearly imposed on me, it was not a resisted imposition and comes naturally to me now. I’m not fond of overly academic approaches to it – “overly” meaning the triumph of theory over art. And all of these literatures are both fiction and non-fiction; depending on which side of belief you live. The Welsh, with their Mabinogion and highly allegorical literary history, have no problem with this apparent dichotomy.

 I’ve spent a lot of time in what can appear to others to be fictive worlds, “closed-to-the-public” worlds: convents, Hassidic communities, the very tightly guarded world(s) of Hollywood, NASA and JPL. Monasteries, astronauts associations, the clans and tribes from which my families came, lonely insular communities in the backwoods of Canada, girls’ schools, private clubs and green rooms, the hermetic enclosures of the famous. Even our house in Malibu was closed off from the world by ten foot high walls with locked gates, no windows on the side of the house that faced those gates (the opposite side of the house was all glass – 20 feet high and overlooking the Pacific Ocean) – and then, of course, Welsh-speaking Wales. All closed worlds. Nothing significant within these worlds can be adequately portrayed by an outsider. These are cultures to which you have to belong in order to understand, in order to verify the messages you think you are being given – and because the codes and secrets, values and rituals, attitudes and assessments of these enclosures are not available to the outsider, when outsiders write about them, they inevitably get them wrong. 

 To return to the sentence that opened this short commentary, “small vibrant worlds” are actually what I see.  In Wales, where I physically lived and metaphysically live, the gathering of light is a routine task for the oft hidden indigenous inhabitants. Wales is put together for others to see, but not to occupy, by the shedding of light on a hidden dimension of itself that is only briefly uncovered at times by what the outsider might call “wind” and the inhabitants of that particular Matter, might call the breath of God.

 Liminality, in this sense, is both stance (perspective) and perception (“seeing” as opposed to “looking at.”) It is the uncertain entryway through which the writer enters into such a world – either the one he is creating, or the one that he sees, that others do not.

 There is no possibility of studying these worlds from outside their own Matter, as a scholar does. Not for a writer. A writer must stand on thresholds that are not revealed until she has reached – or created – them, and enter worlds that he has never seen until he gets there. A writer must live liminally, in a chasm called “between” because he can’t do what he has to do if he is looking at it.

~~~

© Harrison Solow, July 2010

About the Author 

Pushcart Prize winning American writer and one of the two best selling UC Press authors of all time (at time of publication) Harrison Solow has received many awards for her literary fiction, nonfiction, cross-genre writing, poetry and professional writing. Her most recent award is First Prize for Short Fiction in the Carpe Articulum Literary Review International Competition for 2010.

Harrison has lectured at a number of universities, colleges, arts and cultural institutions in the United States, Canada and Great Britain. A former faculty member at UC Berkeley, she accepted a lectureship in the English Department of the University of Wales in 2004 and was appointed Writer in Residence in 2008.

 She is a strong proponent of the traditional Liberal Arts, the Fine Arts and the Utilitarian Arts as separate and equally respectable entities, an advocate for Wales and a patron of literary endeavours.

 Harrison speaks various varieties of English as well as intermediate Welsh and rusty French. She is a member of The Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers, The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, The National Association of Scholars, The Women’s Faculty Club of the University of California, Berkeley, The Association of Welsh Writers in English, The Claremont Institute, The Association for Core Texts and Courses, The Red Room, The Association of Writing Programs, The Welsh Academy, and The National Coalition of Independent Scholars, where she served on the Board in 2009 and 2010.

 Harrison lives in the United States and Wales with her husband, Herbert F. Solow, the former Head of MGM, Paramount and Desilu Studios in Hollywood. She has two incomparable sons.

 You can find out more about Harrison at:

 http://redroom.com/author/harrison-solow

http://lamp.academia.edu/HarrisonSolow

http://tinyurl.com/amcyreview

http://tinyurl.com/harrisonsolowww

Review comment 7-2-10:

“Simply majesterial. As you know, this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. (And something I’ll hopefully write about in the near future, as soon as I have a house and a desk. Thrilled to know I’ll be able to allude to this brilliant essay.” ~  Elizabeth Eslami, author of Bone Worship.

Reply by Harrison: 

“Elizabeth, among of the happiest gifts in life, for me, is the exceptional bond that occurs between kindred spirits who are working in the same field with intellectual passion and creative limerance. Although we have only recently met, I have no doubt that this shared interest, among the others we have discussed, will lead to an invaluable association, a fruitful interchange and a lasting  friendship. I truly value your review of this essay. Thank you.”  ~Harrison

I especially like this photo, because it will be a great reminder, when I’m deep in overload, that we truly do have so much fun interacting, networking, planning, and hosting events. And this is exactly why we choose to belong to WNBA-SF, along with the fact that as a national organization our influence reaches far and wide connecting women and men to the greater literary community across the country, as well as, promoting literacy world wide as a member of the United Nations and UNICEF.

Speaking of literacy, September is National Literacy Month, so we begin our fall season of events with Zen and the Art of the Book Deal and the Great Book Giveaway. October promises lunch with a bestselling author during National Reading Group Month, and November offers members the extra benefits of Authors’ Showcase & Silent Auction, just in time for holiday gift buying.

In the next few weeks the final details of the above teaser notes will be worked out and posted as the  Fall Calendar of Events on our WNBA-SF website. Click here to peruse the site and join us in promoting women and the book.

Every author published or not, needs to know the basics of the book business. One of the most basic parts is distribution. When you pitch a publisher on a book idea, they have one eye on the consumer and one eye on their distribution system. It is only when both “eyes” say “yes” that they are seriously considering a book. 

 Books are ordered in advance of their manufacture. They are sold on the basis of future promises. Many books actually don’t exist at the time they are ordered. Most books are presented as unique, authoritative and complete even though they haven’t been finished at the time they are ordered by booksellers. 

20% of book sales occur in the E-commerce channel (statistics from Bowker) which captures all online booksellers, including Amazon. 27% of sales come from large chains

(3 accounts: Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-a-Million), 8% from Mass Merchandisers

(Costgo, Target, etc.), 11% from Book Clubs (membership Clubs by direct mail) and 5% from independent bookstores.

 When you or your agent pitches a book, the publisher is sizing it up on the basis of similar books and how they performed in these channels. Of course, if the publisher has a similar book on its list and the book was successful, it’s a lot easier to model it and project a reasonable lay-down across these channels.

 The “lay-down” is the sum of all the book units ordered in advance and the number of books in distribution immediately following its publication date. In my experience, if you wait 30 days for stragglers, you will have a complete picture of the number of books available to consumers in all the channels before the “sell-through” or sales out of the stores and etailers actually begin.

 It is shocking to note that most books do not sell more than their initial lay-down and that the size of the lay-down will determine critical mass in the channels and whether or not the book is successful. A book will succeed or fail according to the size of its advance orders or, in other words, the earliest possible moment in its sales life. That is one reason why authors need to promote their books ahead of pub date. When a publisher is asked how a book is doing and it’s already in the stores, the usual response is “it’s too early to tell…” what they mean is, “we know this book is going to be successful, we just don’t know how successful.” Or, the opposite.

 In the book business, perception is reality and distribution, the wider the better, is the single most important aspect in the success of a book.

 PETER BEREN is a Publishing Consultant to authors, self-publishers and independent publishers. Formerly Vice President for Publishing at Palace Press International, Publisher of Sierra Club Books and Publisher of VIA Books, he has more than 30 years experience in the publishing industry. The author of six books, including (with Brad Bunnin) The Writers Legal Companion and California the Beautiful (with Galen Rowell), his latest work, Hidden Napa Valley, featuring the photography of Wes Walker, was recently published by Welcome Books. Visit his web site at: http://www.PeterBeren.com/ and read his online column on Examiner.com at: examiner.com/a-25786-SF-Publishing-Examiner

San Francisco Writers Conference

 Become an author today by writing your Mother Memoir. Your short and true bio-vignette may be the start you need to write a memoir of epic proportions or you may deem it perfect just as it is – your choice.