Cathy Lamb's Blog, page 44

Thanks to Huffington Post and writer Brandi Megan Granett for this interview. I can’t seem to copy and paste the original to here…technology can be tricky for me. So baffling. So confusing. Here’s the original link to it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/t...

 

The Language of Sisters:  A Conversation with Cathy Lamb

By Brandi Megan Granett

In Cathy Lamb’s beautiful new novel, The Language of Sisters, she weaves together a tale of family, following sisters, Toni, Valerie, and Ellie Kozlovsky, as they grapple with their family’s past in the Soviet Union and their own futures. 

The Kozlovsky sisters find the power of love to carry them through, and readers will be swept along on the journey, too!

The Language of Sisters features such a diverse cast.  How did you pick these women to create?  Who did you have the most fun with?

I am one of three sisters.  And, I’ll have to say, so peace can be maintained, and no swords will be wielded, that none of the sisters in my book are based on me or my sisters.  Truly. BUT, I do understand sisters, sister friendships, and sister dynamics. It can be a complicated and semi – crazy relationship.

I wanted each sister in the story to represent something, or many somethings, in women’s life journeys. For example, Valerie is a prosecuting attorney with two kids.  She’s juggling full time work, a demanding career, kids, and a husband.  That’s hard, it’s really tough.

Ellie Kozlovsky owns a business designing pillows.  She’s engaged, but is wrestling with whether or not she wants to be married…at all.  What will marriage give her? What will she have to give up? Does she want to give that up? Marriage asks for compromise and sacrifice. Does she want to do either? Is something wrong with her for not wanting to get married or is it perfectly fine that she is most happy on her own?  Does she want to have kids? Really? Is she allowing society’s messages to push her into marriage?

Toni, through whose eyes the story is told, is struggling with losing someone she loves, which happens to all of us, very unfortunately.  She lives on a yellow tugboat on the Willamette River in Portland, and she’s a reporter for a newspaper. She’s trying to breathe again after her life fell apart. Most of us have been there with Toni– the life falling apart and the trying to breathe again part.

Together the three sisters are part of a huge family, immigrants from Russia, with a ton of quirky and odd members who do quirky and odd things.  They’re funny. They cry. They fight. They laugh. So, it’s sister dynamics, and family dynamics, and all the complexities and laughter therein.

I had a lot of fun writing about the girls’ fiery mother, Svetlana, the Russian restaurant she owns, and how she puts the family’s problems up on the Specials board every night and admonishes her kids through her recipes for all to see.

Are secrets always dangerous?

No. Secrets aren’t always dangerous at all.

I absolutely think that some secrets should be forever kept.

Some secrets are dangerous to keep, obviously, if someone else could get hurt, there’s something illegal blah blah blah. We all know when secrets shouldn’t be kept.

But I also think that almost everyone has secrets.  Why share? What would be the point of sharing? Will it cause someone else pain? Will it wreck a life or relationship? Will it bring in more honesty, more wisdom? Does it need to be shared for comfort, for reassurance? Will it cause someone else great happiness if it’s told?

Ya gotta think of all those things…

In  The Language of Sisters  there’s a whopper of a secret. Where did Dmitry, the adopted brother, come from? No one has wanted to talk about it, no one has been allowed to talk about it. But the secret has followed the Kozlovsky family from the Soviet Union, twenty five years ago, and it’s about to explode. In a good and bad way.

What did you need to learn about tug boats to write about Toni’s unique living arrangements?

Oh, I learned more about tugboats than I thought I would ever need to know. But, most importantly, I went to a tugboat that was being used as a home. It, too, had been remodeled. In fact, Toni’s  yellow tugboat on the Willamette River is much like the one I saw in Portland.  The crew quarters are now a closet. There’s an office that used to be the office for the tugboat captain, the bedroom was expanded, the wheelhouse has been remodeled, etc.

You write beautifully on social media about your own daughters.  What did raising them teach you about creating sisters on the page?

Raising daughters is a lovely privilege.  And it’s tricky. You want to raise independent, strong, courageous, interesting, smart daughters who absolutely will not buy into this dangerous and ridiculous media – based image of what beautiful is.

When I created the three sisters in my book, I wanted them to be as I described above. But I wanted them to be real. I never write characters that are perfect. No one is, my characters aren’t. Really, if I wrote a character who was perfect and had a perfect life, everyone would hate her, right?

The sisters really screw up sometimes. They also love to have fun. They go skinny dipping. They go to a bar and Toni does cart wheels across the stage. They go to family parties and, one time, end up in a bathtub together. There’s a fight on a floor with one cousin over a hair brush, and they sew pillows together.

They survived their dangerous childhood in the Soviet Union.  The sisters stick up for each other. They’re great friends. They love each other dearly. That’s what I want for my daughters, and my son, that forever love and friendship.

A very short summary of The Language of Sisters…Three sisters. One brother. A secret that is chasing them down.

A little longer summary:

1) Toni Koslovsky lives on a yellow tugboat in the Willamette River in Oregon. She needed space to breathe.

2) Toni has two sisters. They can sometimes hear each other in their heads, a message coming through. It’s odd, it’s inexplicable. It’s a gift handed down from the Sabonis family line through their widow’s peaks. Their mother had it, too.

3) The family immigrated from Russia when Toni was a little girl. They left a lot of secrets there…and the secrets have been running after them ever since.

4) The family has many crazy members and the dynamics can be mind blowing. You might relate to some of them.

5) Toni has something hidden in a little shed next to her tugboat. She doesn’t want to look at it. She doesn’t want to think about it. But she does.

6) Love. Laughter. Funny stuff. A blue heron, a woman named Daisy, a DEA agent who lives down the dock, a restaurant, a scary man. Pillow making, skinny dipping, too much wine. More laughter.

 

 

 

 

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The Language of Sisters by Cathy Lamb


August 29, 2016 | by Andrea Katz | Great Thoughts | 



 The Language of Sisters by Cathy Lamb (one of my very favorite authors and people) comes out on August 30th.  Like all of Lamb’s books, it is a joy to read.  I daresay this might just be the best of Cathy’s books (which I can’t believe I am saying as I thought What I Remember Most was her best until I read this one!)   I am thrilled to share with you a guest post from Cathy Lamb …..  (I wish I knew Bette Jean!)

My Mother, Her Three Dresses, and A  Love of Books

by Cathy Lamb 

 

When I was a child I didn’t know that my mother had only three dresses.

All I knew was that she was the best. Kind, loving, smiling.

She could make delicious birthday cakes shaped like treasure chests and frothy chocolate milk. She didn’t mind when I came in dirty from head to toe from playing outside or if I had a butterfly or a roly poly in my hand to show her.

Bette Jean loved my dad, my sisters, my brother, and me, and she loved books, that I knew for sure.

When I got the Scholastic book order form at school all I had to do was circle all the books I wanted with a purple crayon and she wrote a check.  The books would come and I would get a whole stack of them.  It was like Christmas morning, every time.

I remember the Beezus and Ramona books. Narnia. The Little Princess. Pippi Longstocking. The Secret Garden. Who could forget, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?

One time my sixth grade teacher took one of my Judy Blume books away and called my mother.  She told my mother I shouldn’t read it. My mother said I could read whatever I wanted and sent me right back up to school to get the book. She was my book champion.

Though I grew up in a fairly strict Catholic household, she did not believe in censoring what her kids read.

My parents were very conservative with money. They had four kids and my mother stayed home with us. Their own parents had lived through the Depression and had given them dire warnings.  They believed that it wasn’t if a financial disaster would strike, it was when, and one should be prepared so one didn’t starve or lose the house.

That’s why my mother only had three dresses when I was very young. The budget was too tight and they were saving for the imminent, looming disaster.

But books? Yes to books.

My mother literally sacrificed dresses so her kids could have more books.

When I was a teenager, my mother became an English teacher at my middle school. I was scared to death the first day she started teaching there. I was sure that she would run screaming from the room, as the kids would surely turn into wild Tazmanian devils and create tornados of disruption. I could hardly breathe.

Nothing of the sort happened.

Everyone loved her. Kids started talking to me who had never talked to me before – an uncool and gawky kid – because they loved my mother.

It was also the end of her limited wardrobe. She bought elegant dresses, tapered slacks, stylish sweaters and high heels that you put in your closet and gaze at in wonder. Gone were the days of only three dresses.  She knew teaching kids was a worthwhile career, and a privilege, and she dressed for it.

First she gave her own kids a love of books, then she passed it on to thousands of kids over her long career as an English teacher.

Through the years we always loved talking about books, and we swapped them back and forth. Mysteries. Historical Fiction. Nonfiction.

Bette Jean was a huge reader and, also, the healthiest person I have ever met. She ate organic foods, she walked all the time, and she was slim. She never smoked a day in her life. She died of lung cancer at sixty, fourteen years ago.

I still miss her. There’s still that raw ache, still that hole in my heart. Sometimes, when I’m reading a book I’ll think, “Mom, you would love this book because…” and I’ll list the reasons, as if she were right there, sitting with me.

In recent years, finally, those thoughts bring me peace instead of tears and grief, and I am glad for that. It is the same with her books. I have so many of her favorites on my shelves, some from her mother, and I treasure each one of them.

Yes, Bette Jean gave me a love of books, from childhood until the day she died.

It has stayed with me for a lifetime.

It’s a gift, it truly is. A loving gift, from mother to daughter.  I’ve passed it down to my daughters, Bette Jean’s granddaughters.

She would be delighted. I know that for sure, too.

 

 

 

 

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Greetings, everyone!

If you need an end of summer novel, my new book is out today.

A short and sweet summary:

1) Toni Koslovsky lives on a yellow tugboat on the Willamette River in Oregon. She needed space to breathe.

2) Toni has two sisters. They can sometimes hear each other in their heads, a message coming through. It’s odd, it’s inexplicable. It’s a gift handed down through the Sabonis family line through their widow’s peaks. Their mother had it, too.

3) The family escaped from Russia when Toni was a little girl. They left a lot of secrets there…and the secrets have been chasing them down ever since.

 

4) The Kozlovsky family has many eccentric and odd members and the dynamics are complicated. You might relate to some of them.

5) Love. Laughter. Funny stuff. A blue heron, a woman named Daisy, a DEA agent who lives down the dock, a family restaurant, a scary man. Pillow making, skinny dipping, too much wine. More laughter.

The first chapter is below.

I so hope you like it.

If you’re in the Portland, Oregon area, I’ll be speaking at Powell’s Books, Cedar Hills, in Beaverton, on Monday, October 3 at 7:00. I would truly love to see you there.

Happy day to you.

Cathy

Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0190HGQR4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#nav-subnav

Powell’s Books http://www.powells.com/book/the-language-of-sisters-9780758295101

Barnes and Nobles http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-language-of-sisters-cathy-lamb/1123105717

 

Chapter One

I was talented at pickpocketing.

I knew how to slip my fingers in, soft and smooth, like moving silk. I was lightning quick, a sleight of hand, a twist of the wrist. I was adept at disappearing, at hiding, at waiting, until it was safe to run, to escape.

I was a whisper, drifting smoke, a breeze.

I was a little girl, in the frigid cold of Moscow, under the looming shadow of the Soviet Union, my coat too small, my shoes too tight, my stomach an empty shell.

I was desperate. We were desperate.

Survival stealing, my sisters and I called it.

Had we not stolen, we might not have survived.

But we did. We survived. My father barely, my mother only through endless grit and determination, but now we are here, in Oregon, a noisy family, who does not talk about what happened back in Russia, twenty-five years ago. It is best to forget, my parents have told us, many times.

“Forget it happened. It another life, no?” my father says. “This here, this our true life. We Americans now. Americans!”

We tried to forget, but in the inky-black silence of night, when Mother Russia intrudes upon our dreams, like a swishing scythe, a crooked claw emerging from the ruins of tragedy, when we remember family members buried under the frozen wasteland of the Soviet Union’s far reaches, we are all haunted, some more than others.

You would never guess by looking at my family what some of us have done and what has been done to us. You would never sense our collective memory, what we share, what we hide.

We are the Kozlovskys.

We like to think we are good people.

And, most of the time, we are. Quite good.

And yet, when cornered, when one of us is threatened, we come up swinging.

But, pfft.

All that. In the past. Best to forget what happened.

As my mother says, in her broken English, wagging her finger, “No use going to Moscow in your head. We are family. We are the Kozlovskys. That all we need to know. The rest, those secrets, let them lie down.”

Yes, do.

Let all the secrets lie.

For as long as they’ll stay down.

They were coming up fast. I could feel it.

 

 

 

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Happily Ever After of USA Today shares an excerpt from The Language of Sisters by Cathy Lamb (no relation!) The Language of Sisters arrives tomorrow (Tuesday).

by Joyce Lamb

original link: http://happyeverafter.usatoday.com/20...

About the book:

Toni Kozlovsky can’t explain how she knows exactly what her sisters are feeling—only that the connection seems to happen out of the blue, just when they need it most. Since Toni, Valerie, and Ellie were little girls growing up in Communist Russia, their parents have insisted it’s simply further proof that the Kozlovskys are special and different.

Now a crime and justice reporter, Toni lives on a yellow tugboat on Oregon’s Willamette River. As far as her parents are concerned, the pain of their old life and their dangerous escape should remain buried in the Moscow they left behind, as should the mysterious past of their adopted brother, Dmitry. But lately, Toni’s talent for putting on a smile isn’t enough to keep memories at bay.

Valerie, a prosecuting attorney, wages constant war against the wrongs she could do nothing about as a child. Youngest sister Ellie is engaged to marry an Italian, breaking her mother’s heart in the process. Toni fears she’s about to lose her home, while the hard edged DEA agent down the dock keeps trying to break through her reserve. Meanwhile, beneath the culture clashes and endearing quirks within her huge, noisy, loving family are deeper secrets that Toni has sworn to keep—even from the one person she longs to help most.

Chapter 1

I was talented at pickpocketing.

I knew how to slip my fingers in, soft and smooth, like moving silk. I was lightning quick, a sleight of hand, a twist of the wrist. I was adept at disappearing, at hiding, at waiting, until it was safe to run, to escape.

I was a whisper, drifting smoke, a breeze.

I was a little girl, in the frigid cold of Moscow, under the looming shadow of the Soviet Union, my coat too small, my shoes too tight, my stomach an empty shell.

I was desperate. We were desperate.

Survival stealing, my sisters and I called it.

Had we not stolen, we might not have survived.

But we did. We survived. My father barely, my mother only through endless grit and determination, but now we are here, in Oregon, a noisy family, who does not talk about what happened back in Russia, twenty-five years ago. It is best to forget, my parents have told us, many times.

“Forget it happened. It another life, no?” my father says. “This here, this our true life. We Americans now. Americans!”

We tried to forget, but in the inky-black silence of night, when Mother Russia intrudes our dreams, like a swishing scythe, a crooked claw emerging from the ruins of tragedy, when we remember family members buried under the frozen wasteland of the Soviet Union’s far reaches, we are all haunted, some more than others.

You would never guess by looking at my family what some of us have done and what has been done to us. You would never sense our collective memory, what we share, what we hide.

We are the Kozlovskys.

We like to think we are good people.

And, most of the time, we are. Quite good.

And yet, when cornered, when one of us is threatened, we come up swinging.

But, pfft.

All that. In the past. Best to forget what happened.

As my mother says, in her broken English, wagging her finger, “No use going to Moscow in your head. We are family. We are the Kozlovskys. That all we need to know. The rest, those secrets, let them lie down.”

Yes, do.

Let all the secrets lie.

For as long as they’ll stay down.

They were coming up fast. I could feel it.

Chapter 2

“A Italian!” my mother, Svetlana, howled, slamming a cast iron pan to her stove. “What is this? My Elvira marrying a Italian? Why not a Russian? What wrong with Russian? I been cursed. Like black magic spell.”

English is my mother’s fourth language. Russian and Ukrainian come first. She is also conversationally fluent in French, which is the language she likes to swear in. Her English is never perfect, but it goes downhill quickly based on how upset she is.

“That sister of yours, Antonia,” – she put her palms up to the ceiling – “Elvira is a…how you say it? I know now the word: rebel. She a rebel. I pray for her, but I knew when she born, your aunt Polina say to me, ‘This one, she will cause your heart to cry!’ And see?” She pointed at her chest. “Tears.”

“Mama. Your heart is not crying. Ellie says she is in love with Gino.”

“Love! Love!” she scoffed. She pushed a strand of her black hair back, the same color as mine, only mine fell down my back in waves and hers was to her shoulders in a bell shape. Our blue eyes were the same shade, too. I looked at her and I knew what I’d look like in twenty-two years. Definitely encouraging.

“I know about love. I have it with your papa. I know about this passion I have for him. He and I, we have the, what you call it?” She lowered her voice, for effect. “The biology in the bedroom.”

“Chemistry. You and Papa have chemistry.” I rolled my eyes and braced myself, then ate one of her chocolate fudge cookies. They are beyond delicious.

“No! Not chemistry. That chemicals. I say we have the biology in the bedroom because biology is body. He cannot stay away from me, from this.” She indicated her body from neck to crotch with one hand, head held high. My mother is statuesque. She curves. She still rocks it, I have to say.

“I cannot stay away from his manly hood, either. I say that in the truth.”

I was going to need many chocolate fudge cookies that afternoon, that was my truth.

“But Antonia, your sister”—her voice pitched again, in accusation, as if I were in charge of Elvira—“she cannot have the biology for a Italian. She has it, it in her blood, for a Russian! A strong Russian man.”

My mother started banging pans around, muttering in Ukrainian. I loved her kitchen. It was huge, bright, and opened up to the family room. There were granite counters, white cabinets, and a backsplash with square tiles in every bold color of the rainbow. My mother loves bright colors. Says it reminds her, “I am no longer living in a gray and black world, fear clogging my throat like a snake.”

She had her favorite blue armoire, used by an old bakery to showcase their pies, built into the design and used it as a pantry. A butcher block counter was attached to a long, old wood table that had previously been used in a train station. Blue pendant lights, three of them, fell above the train station table. The windows were huge, at my mother’s request. She wanted to be able to look out and know immediately that she was in America, not Moscow. “Free,” she said. “And safe.”

This kitchen was where all of her new recipes for my parents’ restaurant, Svetlana’s Kitchen, were tried out. This kitchen was thousands of miles away from the tiny, often non-functioning kitchen of my childhood in Moscow. The one where I once watched her wash blood off her trembling hands—not her blood—in our stained and crumbling sink.

“Elvira should marry Russian man. She will grow to love him, like a sunflower grow. Like a turnip grow.”

“You were in love with Papa when you married him. No one asked you to grow to love your husband like a turnip.”

“Ah yes, that. I in love with your papa when I see him at university. I told my father after the first kissy, you must plan wedding for Alexeiand me right away, right now, because soon I lay naked with him.”

Oh boy. Here we go. I poured myself a cup of coffee. My mother makes coffee strong enough for me to grow chest hairs.

“I make the love with him.” She grabbed a spatula and pointed it at me. “I say that to my father.”

I imagined my mother’s sweet, late father, Anatoly Sabonis, hearing that from her. Poor man. I’m sure he momentarily stopped breathing. “I know, Mama, you told me.”

“It was how I felt. Here.” She put her spatula to her heart. “So in one month I am married to Alexei, but my father not let me be alone with him for one minute before wedding. And still, in the bedroom, your papa and I…”

“I know, Mama. You love Papa. Like Ellie loves Gino.”

“No! Not like that.” She smacked the spatula on the countertop. “Elvira fall in love with non Russian. A nonrusseman.”

“A nonrusseman?”

“Yes. I make that word up myself. It clever.”

“Is it one word?”

“Yes. One word. More efficient. More quickly.”

“Are you done?”

“No, I not done. Never done. That Italian not Russian. Does not have our genes. Our pants, you know? The jeans. Not have our history in his blood.”

“Mama, what’s in our blood is a lot of Russian vodka.”

“Yes, devil drink. Fixes and dixes so many Russians, but we are Russian American. American Russians. We marry other American Russians.”

“Unless we fall in love with Italian Americans, then we marry them. Or we marry Hawaiians, like Valerie did.”

“Kai is my new son.” She adores my sister’s husband. “Not this Gino. No and no. He not enough. I see them together and I no see the love.”

I didn’t see it, either. From Ellie to Gino, at least, but not the other way around. Gino loved Ellie. I decided to keep my mouth shut.

My mother whipped the spatula through the air like a lasso. “But she plans a wedding. Me oh my God bless, Mother Mary help me.”

“I like Italian food.”

“Italian food!” My mother gasped. “Italian food? At the wedding of my Elvira? No. Russian food. We have Russian food. If we not have Russian food, I not come.”

“Ellie wants you to come.”

She crossed her arms over her impressive bosom. “No. Not unless Russian food.”

“It will be Russian and Italian food, I heard. A blend.” I tried not to laugh and aggravate my mama

“That not happening.” Fists to air. She looked to the heavens for divine intervention. So dramatic. “It cannot be. I am good Russian mother. I be good to her and now! A Italian. My Elvira choices it. Where went I wrong?”

“Gino is not an it.”

I watched my mother in the kitchen as she yanked out more pans. Four of them. Her pans, cast iron, from my father, are her favorite possession. She cried when he brought them home many years ago, when I was a teenager, as did my father. It wasn’t about the pans. It was about loss, despair, and a promise kept.

My mother, Svetlana, loves to cook, and when she’s stressed she cooks until the stress is gone. The cooking and baking can last for days.

 

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Need a book with humor for the last days of summer?

My Very Best Friend: Two best friends, one is missing. A Scottish village. A man in a kilt. Lingerie Bike Riding At Midnight. One small bar fight. Truth.

What I Remember Most: Her name is Grenadine Scotch Wild. Collage Artist. Painter. Former foster child. She doesn’t know what happened to her parents on a dark night in the mountains. She’s about to find out.

The Last Time I Was Me: Jeanne Stewart took revenge on her cheating boyfriend with a condom, an exacto knife and a glue gun. She had a nervous breakdown in front of 834 advertising executives and called them schmucks. Then she started her life over.

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This interview came out today in Publisher’s Weekly.  In it we talk about my new book, The Language of Sisters, out September 1.

A short summary of the book? Three sisters. One brother. One huge secret.

Spotlight on Cathy Lamb

The bestselling author’s latest novel is a perfect end-of-summer beach read

Cathy Lamb is no stranger to writing about secrets—the kind that, left buried, can tear lives apart. In her latest novel, The Language of Sisters, Lamb explores the bond between the three Kozlovsky sisters, who grew up in Communist Russia before their family immigrated to America. Sharing an intensely close connection—the women can intuit one another’s words, an ability inherited from their mother—they are all haunted by a past their parents had hoped was left behind in Moscow.

Lamb is the author of 10 novels. She said she started writing The Language of Sisters in March 2015 and found inspiration for the book in a number of places. Like her heroine Toni, Lamb is one of three sisters. And, also like Toni—a crime reporter—Lamb is quite familiar with the newspaper business. She freelanced for the Oregonian for years, writing about everything, including people, events, and interior design.

As it happens, Lamb’s journalistic pedigree was put to good use in the writing of this book, which required Lamb to do substantial research. To sketch out the lives of the Kozlovsky clan—whose experiences behind the Iron Curtain are set in flashbacks throughout the novel—Lamb read about Russian history from the 1890s onward. She read up on every Russian czar and president from 1900 to 2000. She also did a lot of research on the KGB, to which her fictional clan has ties.

Beyond the snapshot of Russian history and the country’s recent past, Lamb believes readers will enjoy the lively, extended, and diverse family she has created. Along with Toni and her two sisters—hard-driving prosecutor Valerie, and Ellie, who is about to break her parents’ heart by marrying an Italian—there are the wild and carefree cousins, Tati and Zoya. And there are the four endearing brothers, former boxers, who barely escaped the Soviet Union.

“I hope that people will be able to laugh with the huge family I’ve constructed,” she said.

Lamb also hopes readers will identify with her three central sisters, women—like many she’s written about—who are struggling and facing difficult problems. “Here’s the thing,” Lamb said, “I don’t write about fake women. I don’t write about women who have everything together in their lives. That would be irritating.” Instead, Lamb is interested in what makes these women fallible and human. “No one is perfect, and often the people who are trying the hardest to appear perfect are the ones closest to cracking like an egg. I write about real women leading real lives, with all the mess and complications that entails.”

The Language of Sisters is ultimately a story about family. “It’s about love and forgiveness,” Lamb explained.

“I think life is filled with tears and laughter. I love when my readers write to me and tell me that they laughed out loud while reading my books, and then they cried, then they laughed again. When my readers finish The Language of Sisters, I want the characters, the issues, and the laughter to stay with them. That’s always the goal: to create a story that the reader doesn’t forget.”

Here’s the “real” link. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...

 

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Let’s pretend that there’s a space alien invasion and we’re all beamed up to beautiful new planets.

Now, most of us would go. We would be INVITED by the space aliens. But, probably not ALL of us. Some of us wouldn’t get an invitation.

Maybe there would be some sort of standard set. Like, mean people couldn’t come. Or people that REALLY irritate you. They would have to stay on Earth.

Anyhow.

My point is this: I wonder how long it would be, if humans were gone, for animals to take over and for the forests and swamps and plants to cover our streets and homes.

In other words, when would civilization disappear in favor of cougars running through the streets like mad men and wild horses galloping through Macy’s looking for the perfect bra?

I ask this because of the two deer in front of my house the other day, that you can see in the photo.

(This is not my house. This is my wonderful neighbor’s house. She is a very smart and kind person and her house looks way better than mine, but one day I aspire to be just like her. It’s just not going to be today, or tomorrow, because my kids are home from school and I am buried in laundry and washing dishes. You know how it is.)

I live in the middle of suburbia. To see deer here is surprising.

These two were walking down the street like they owned it. I do not know what their names are, so don’t ask.

They did seem a tad bit embarrassed. As if they couldn’t BELIEVE they were in the middle of suburbia, and how boring was this, and how did we get so off track, and where the heck is the forest, I’m thirsty and getting cranky, why do you never ask directions? There was a blue jay you could have talked to on the corner, you stubborn mule, and now we’re lost and I’m running out of gas.

Yes, I’m sure that was the conversation they were having.

A few months ago, again in Suburbia Land, a possum the size of a lion walked by my sliding glass door. Well, that’s a lie. It wasn’t the size of a lion, but it was HUGE, I mean, huge.

A walking, slogging white and grey thing that I knew would eat me alive if I scared it. He was not taking any crap, I could tell by the way he walked. He was a woman’s man. No time to talk. (Bee Gees)

Some months before that I had raccoons living under my house. They moved cement blocks and took out a wire screen to get in. I saw them in my backyard. Three of them. They looked straight back at me. They were not scared at all.

They reminded me of three raccoons that came to visit us years ago at our old house. We did not want raccoons in our backyard as our kids were little.

For some reason, Innocent Husband thought that if he let off a firecracker at night, when they were near our deck, this would make the raccoons scramble away in fear.

Oh no. The raccoons LOVED the firework. They were almost clapping they were so happy. They ran closer to the deck, sat back on their bottoms and waited. This was exciting! Their own firework show! Do it again, do it again! Do you guys have popcorn?

We had to call a critter – getter man to come and trap the raccoons and haul them off to the woods. How many did he catch? Six. And there were more. A neighbor later found that the raccoons had built a city under his house. They probably had an unseemly saloon down there. A casino. Boutiques and rib and potato restaurants.

On my walk today I saw a coyote sprinting across the park. I don’t know where he was going but he had to be somewhere quick. Maybe he had a date. Maybe he was in trouble with the Coyote Police.

The Sprinter is not the only coyote in this ole’ neighborhood, either. They howl at night in gangs in the field behind my house, like furry nightmares.

No, if we were all beamed up to new planets it wouldn’t be long before coyotes were running high stakes poker games on our dining room tables, raccoons were taking naps on our beds, and bears were slugging down beer and making fools of themselves at the coyotes’ poker games.

Good thing we’re here to keep everyone in line.

Until the alien invasion I shall continue to enjoy and appreciate these animals living with me in suburbia…from a few steps away.

And no, you may NOT devise a personal list of irritating people who MUST STAY on the planet Earth in the event of an alien invasion. Of COURSE NOT.

(Okay, you each get two people on your “You Have To Stay On Earth” list, but do NOT print their names here, that would be bad.)

Have a lovely day.

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He talked to many voices.

He walked in as I was indulging in my daily drink at Starbucks.

He said, “Can I sit here?”

I said, “Yes, of course,” and he sat down across from me.

His conversation began immediately to the invisible people only he could see and hear. He muttered in a monotone, a quiet voice, as if he was far away.

I listened as I flipped through a book. He chatted with this person, and that, he swore now and then, but not in anger, he laughed, he asked questions, he used hand gestures.

He was very clearly in the midst of a pleasant visit with a group of people who were meeting in his mind.

I was glad, for him, that the voices weren’t causing him pain or anguish or scaring him. That is a heart breaking thing to see.

He seemed like he was happy, engaged, interested, in his imaginary world, at least for that moment in time.

He was fairly clean, leather jacket, boots. I felt no threat from him at all.

But as I listened to him, talking into the air, his brain tragically mis – firing, I thought, “This is someone’s son. He has a mother. He has a father.” I thought about their grief, their incessant worry, their sheer pain raising a son who may well have been “normal” growing up.

He may have played sports, smiled at girls, studied in school and then, something changed.

A flip switched in his mind. A breakdown. A snap.

Then the voices came and lived in this man’s head.

How horrible for him and for his family. How positively terrifying to feel yourself slipping like that, to battle reality vs. what is in your head, who is in your head, taunting you, scaring you, taking YOU away.

Why did it happen? Why him? Why so many people?

Who knows.

But I felt for him, sitting there across from me in Starbucks, I felt for his family. That could have been me. It could have been you. It could have been our kids.

And, maybe it is. Millions of people deal with family members who they love and adore who have a mental illness of some sort. So many people themselves deal with it every single day of their lives.

In a bitter moment, I thought of the billions of dollars we spend on weapons to kill other people, to invade other countries, and I thought of our broken mental health system.

It’s not right.

It isn’t.

We should take good care of each other here in this country and we’re not taking good care of our people with mental illness. Go to any city, any town, anywhere, and you’ll see some of these suffering people, like the man across from me, on the streets.

They do not belong on the streets. They should not be there.

It’s not safe.

Having a mental illness is like having pneumonia in your mind. We treat pneumonia. We need to treat this.

We need to put mental illness at the top of our list. We need to dump more money into research, into medications, into fixing and helping and curing and treating, with inpatient and outpatient care.

And for those who can’t beat it, we need to provide healthy, happy, safe places for them to live so they’re not on the streets, wandering, in danger, prey for criminals.

For the man across from me, talking to people only he could see and hear, a complete cure might not come in time.

But it might.

And that’s what we have to hold onto, hope for, advocate for.

Why?

Because he’s worth it.

He is someone’s son

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As Adventurous Singing Daughter would say, “What kind of fresh hell is this, Mom?”

This fresh hell is my latest manuscript. My eleventh novel. Yes, indeedy, it is.

Please note the scissors. Two pairs! And a stapler. Let me staple my forehead to get my brains back inside and working.

It may look like I’m a madwoman. That I’ve finally lost it. That I have thrown the pages of my manuscript into the air and started chopping them up while cackling.

Now the madwoman part might be true. But what you see here are different scenes that have been sliced and diced.

Why?

Sometimes I get real excited about a story line.

I write the whole story line, all at once. Then another story line, all at once. And another. Then they have to be printed out, cut up and re – organized to form a full plot that is not a total and complete wreck.

For example, with The Language of Sisters, out September 1, I wrote most of the full story line of the family’s escape from the Soviet Union before I moved on.

Another story line I wrote pretty much straight through was the adopted brother’s life and where he came from and why he had nightmares about butterflies and wooden ducks and blood.

A third story line was Toni’s relationship with Le Stud on the dock where she lives in a yellow tugboat.

To be quite honest, though, sometimes I don’t want to write a different story line, which is my excuse for writing straight through.

The story line I SHOULD be working on is too tough and makes me feel like whining.

Or, I am confused and baffled by my own story. Sometimes I am sick of my book and sick of myself. Sometimes I want to go and be a butterfly collector in the Amazon and quit being a writer.

But the pages you see now? That’s the book in progress.

Congratulations to me -I now have a bunch of crap.

Yes, the book is crap at this point. It’s terrible. It is. I’m not being modest. It’s a first draft and I know what yuck is and there it is.

People ask why I edit my books 12 times.

I will tell you this: It is because the book is an embarrassment before then. It’s a tangled mess. It’s sad. The book is sad to be that bad and that makes it mad. (See? I can rhyme!!)

I would not let you read it even if you threatened me with a back lashing by rattlesnake.

If I am taken off by a flying dragon, my family has explicit directions to burn the first through seventh drafts of my book in progress rather than let it see the light of day or your sweet eyes.

So back to work I go on this fresh hell.

I’m writing about a secret keeping grandma, a chef who throws chickens, a cook book, and two little girls. The book is out in September, 2017.

There will be a lot of cackling between scenes.

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Need to light your bra on fire? What about your thong?

Henry’s Sisters is now, for the first time, at this very happy moment, out in mass market paperback for $5.80 (Kindle on sale for $4.99).

Here’s part of the first chapter, written in the voice of Isabelle Bommarito:

I would have to light my bra on fire. And my thong.

It is unfortunate that I feel compelled to do this, because I am particular about my bras and underwear.

I spent most of my childhood in near poverty, wearing scraggly underwear and fraying bras held together with safety pins or paper clips, so now I insist on wearing only the truly elegant stuff.

“Burn, bra, burn,” I whispered, as the golden light of morning illuminated me to myself. “Burn, thong, burn.”

I studied the man sprawled next to me under my white sheets and white comforter, amidst my white pillows. He was muscled, tanned, had a thick head of longish black hair, and needed a shave.

He had been quite kind.

I would use the lighter with the red handle!

I envisioned the flame crawling its way over each cup like a fire – serpent, crinkling my thong and turning the crotch black and crusty.

Lovely.

I stretched, pushed my skinny brown braids out of my face, fumbled under the bed, and found my bottle of Kahlua.

I swigged a few swallows as rain splattered on the windows, then walked naked across the wood floor of my loft to peer out. The other boxy buildings and sleek skyscrapers here in downtown Portland were blurry, wet masses of steel and glass.

I have been told that the people in the corporate buildings across the way can see me when I open my window and lean out, and that this causes a tremendous ruckus when I’m nude, but I can’t bring myself to give a rip. It’s my window, my air, my insanity.

My madness.

Besides, after that pink letter arrived yesterday, I needed to breathe. It made me think of my past, which I wanted to avoid, and it made me think of my future, which I also wanted to avoid.

I opened the window, leaned way out, and closed my eyes as the rain twisted through my braids, trickling in tiny rivulets over the beads at the ends, then my shoulders and boobs.

“Naked I am,” I informed myself. “Naked and partly semi sane.”

I did not want to do what that letter told me to do.

No, it was not possible.

I stretched my arms way out as if I were hugging the rain, the Kahlua bottle dangling, and studied myself. I had an upright rack, a skinny waist, and a belly button ring.

When I was drenched, I smiled and waved with both hands, hoping the busy buzzing boring worker bees in the office buildings were getting their kicks and jollies. They needed kicks and jollies.

“Your minds are dying! Your souls are decaying! Get out of there!” I brought the Kahlua bottle to my mouth, then shouted, “Free yourself! Free yourself!”

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