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A dear soul from a Colorado bookstore sent me this image yesterday—a gift of many proportions and a reminder that today The Heart is Not a Size is officially launched on the market.
Those who know far more than me—about how to share word of a book in a bookstore, about how to throw a book party, about how to create a Facebook fan page, about how to design a blog tour—are helping me in countless ways with this release, and I'll be forever grateful. Heart is my eleventh book. My second was the memoir, Into the Tangle of Friendship. Were I to return to Tangle after all these years, you better believe I'd be making room for a few new chapters.
Today the cover story for Heart is posted over at Melissa Walker's blog. Today Anna Lefler, that wild and crazy, smart one over at Life Just Keeps Getting Weirder informs us (which also means me) that there will be a Heart contest in her neck of the woods. Today I learn that there's a badge for Heart Facebook fans and a big blog tour planned. Last night I learned that Elizabeth Mosier has not just planned a Children's Book World party (in the Haverford book store, April 20, 7 PM), but like a party party. With watermelon juice and a pinata and salsa and Mexican chili-chocolate cookies (did you know there was such a thing?) and even a Beth Kephart trivia quiz as designed by her two brilliant actor/singer/writer daughters. (I hope I know at least two of the answers.)
Like I said, and I mean this:
I need to write a long addendum to Into the Tangle of Friendship. For now, this blog will have to serve as its proxy.
The news from Juarez grows ever-harder to bear. This week, three U.S. Consulate Workers were murdered. Two were Americans, a couple shot down while returning from a child's birthday party. Their brutal murder left their own child orphaned in the back of their car.
Why?
I am eager to talk about this place, Juarez. Eager for The Heart is Not a Size to be released on March 30th. Eager to raise more awareness about what is happening, south of the El Paso border, where every life means something, where every life should be safeguarded.
I am grateful, therefore, to Maureen Montecchio, the community relations manager at Barnes & Noble Devon, who invited me to join her wonderful group of educators and librarians at her store on April 13th, at 3:30 PM. If you can, I'd love for you to be there.
I am grateful, too, to writer and teacher (and mom extraordinaire) Elizabeth Mosier, who reached out and said, We should have a party. She'd been saying that for months, but I'd been deflecting. Finally, she went ahead, she talked to folks, she circled back. We're having the party on April 21st in Haverford, at the beloved Children's Book World, 7 PM. We are going to have cake, because we love cake. We are going to talk about Juarez, because it matters, and about teens, like the two in my book, who hide dangerous secrets from each other. We hope that you will find time to be there with us.
Sometimes things just hit you—obvious aspects of yourself, known territories, that suddenly swoon large in your own self-opinion. Last night, watching the crowd gather at the bookstore, watching that community of authors engender and inspire that community of listeners, I was smacked about inside my head with this commonplace observation: I really am an outsider. I really do live on margins. The center of things eludes me.
Genetics? Circumstance? I do not know. I know only that my life as a writer is fueled almost entirely by correspondence (the essential literary back and forth with Jay Kirk, Buzz Bissinger, Reiko Rizzuto, Ivy Goodman, Kate Moses, Anna Lefler, Alyson Hagy) and the very rare phone call, not by gathering. That I write my books alone, extraordinarily so. That I miss the trends because I haven't been out among those trading news about them. That the few times that I have been out in person doing book-related things over these past many years is primarily because of one person, Elizabeth Mosier, who made it possible for me to join Patricia Hampl (one of my favorite memoirists) for dinner one evening, who drove me to Swarthmore to see Elizabeth Strout (another heroine), and who was the reason I ventured out last night to see writers who were very much worth the effort.
I have squeezed this writing life into the dark. I have made certain that it didn't interfere with the family dinner hour or the client expectation. I have gone off writing these books in my head without stopping to consider: Will they sell? Are they of the now? Will they find their readers? I have bludgeoned out this path for books, but it's a small path—whacked away and narrow.
Is that the way? Is this the way? Last night I had my doubts.
Tonight a bookstore hosting six writers at once brought out an aisle-busting, chair-exhausting fervency of fans. There were revelations throughout the evening—of voice, of diction, of storytelling purpose. There were stories, snatches and fragments, that I'll be thinking on for a long time now—the lyric Sri Lanka of Ru Freeman; the caretaking of Lise Funderberg; the terrible and lovely grab at connection in a Josh Weil novella; the searching for Christ in a Jim Zervanos church; the disconnections of Rachel Pastan's wearied women; the high suspense of Elizabeth Mosier. But what I suspect will remain longest with me is the resounding and wonderful crowdedness of this suburban bookstore on a Tuesday night at the height of vacation season—the idea (simple, complicated) that writers did this, writers were show, entertainment, stars.
We hear too much about the death of things—of books, of readers, of intellectual life. Tonight was tonic and proof that those who love books still rally on behalf of books, and that those who can write very much do.
These two things happened yesterday: First, Elizabeth Mosier, a writer and friend, called. That in itself was lovely enough, but a few minutes into the conversation I understood that she had called to talk with me about Nothing but Ghosts—that she'd read the book, turned down the corner on pages, followed the symbols, understood what had been in my heart, celebrated that finch. It's not unlike Libby to do something like this, but what does it say about her, really, that she had taken that time—to read, to think, and, mostly, to acknowledge? She's finishing her own book, reading the manuscripts of many others, celebrating the books that her countless other friends have published this summer, preparing to teach at Bryn Mawr in the fall—and still. She took the time.
So that happened. And then, much later, when day had become night and (to be honest) early morn, I discovered these words on Laurie Beth Schneider's book site, Doughnuts 'n Things. I quote them not to elevate myself, somehow, but because her phrasing here touches me so deeply—because her phrasing is poetry itself: Beth Kephart is a master of capturing the eternal that exists within the ephemeral, using the shiftiest of mediums: words. Ghosts is a beautiful story of a girl, but it is also a meditation on the nature of what lasts, whether it's beauty, love, or regret.
Postscript: And just this moment, I discover this, from Word Lily. I think I need to go sit somewhere quiet and send up words of thanks.
Elizabeth Strout in person is just as interesting, complex, and ultimately original as her own Olive Kitteridge. I liked her at once, and very much.
She read from "Security." She spoke of the ways that writing involves one's whole heart, also one's liver. She said that every sentence counts, and also: There is no room for sogginess. You put down your coffee cup when you write, she said. You step past and through.
Oh, Libby, I said to my friend afterward. She makes me want to write an entirely different kind of book. Makes me want to write. Again.
I should have had my fill of books by now. I should have. I have not.
A dear soul from a Colorado bookstore sent me this image yesterday—a gift of many proportions and a reminder that today The Heart is Not a Size is officially launched on the market.
I'm so pleased that I'm the first to offer my congraulations on this special day. I've been saving my copy to start reading today...I can't wait :)
Eleven books - what a gift for us!
I'm so excited that the launch date is finally here! I can't wait to read The Heart is not a Size!
Congrats on the release. And eleven books- what a gift! Reading Slant of Sun right now, as a matter of fact.
Congratulations Beth - wish you many, many more successes to come :)
Congratulations on this wonderful day! I'm excited! And I love the picture with Heart and red dancing shoes side by side.
Congratulations--that is wonderful!
Congratulations! I adored The Heart Is Not a Size, and I'm really looking forward to reading more of your books@
Congrats. I know this book will bring more understanding to a topic so many people know so little about.
Lisa
Happy Release Day! Your books are a gift to all of us. :)
Congrats on Heart's release! I'm sure this book will be a big hit.
Great day!!! Looking forward to reading your new book - the cover is beautiful and looks so nice on display. I didn't have a camera with me on this rainy NJ day, but the bookstore was crowded and I told a few people, "Hey, I hear The Heart is Not a Size is a great book!" :)
Congratulations!
Yay! I am so happy for HEART!
Congratulations on the launch of the new book! I am looking forward to reading it :-) Mexican chili chocolate chip cookies sound delicioso.
HAPPY RELEASE DAY BETH! Mom and I were thinking of you all day. :) XO
HUGE CONGRATS! :) Wishing you much, much success with HEART. It's really amazing and deserves all the incredible support and acclaim it has received and will continue to earn.