“Just finish it!” my ninth grade art instructor said with clenched teeth as he stood behind me breathing down my neck as I worked on a sketch of a chair. If only I had more time, I’d get the perspective right. There was no more time, my teacher was impatient, and a ninth grader is very sensitive. “Just finish it” meant I didn’t have a natural gift to draw and paint. I was already creating stories and poems to entertain my neighborhood with, for writing was a natural inclination and I dreamed of becoming a writer like Jo in Little Women. And that I did through years of rejection and perseverance! But as the years went by, the mere mention of an empty canvas and paint stirred something deep within me.

One of my favorite authors, Willa Cather, said simply, Every artist makes himself born! I knew the hard labor involved in writing, but was I willing to struggle with paint on canvas? No, I wasn’t. I was already engaged in losing and finding myself in the process of novel writing. And still, I dreamed of an empty canvas, colors, and Monet’s shimmering colors and light. The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides ~ Barbara Kingsolver

As an adult, I went to Vermont College to study with authors as mentors. It was there I was introduced to Charlotte Hastings, an installation artist and writer. She became one of my art midwives and I began to play with texture and expression in collage, expressing myself on canvas for the first time since ninth grade. Her favorite poet was Mary Oliver and after Charlotte left this earth much too early, in my estimation, she spoke to me one day as I was flipping through magazines at Barnes & Noble – Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? (The Summer Day, Mary Oliver)

I was already inside that hope Barbara Kingsolver spoke of, and as I ran down hope’s hallways to dig for the truth of the past, resurrecting history and putting flesh on the bones of my characters, I learned my great grandmother, Grace Matilda Stevens, was one of the first women to graduate from Mansfield State College in Pennsylvania. She rode her horse each day in the late 1800s to Mansfield State so she could study art. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? My mentor, Charlotte, was with me, and so was my great-grandmother, cheering me on.

And the next woman to become an art midwife was Alyson Stoddard Thompson from Artist Proof Art Gallery in Hampstead, New Hampshire. Alyson’s extraordinary keen eye, patience, and belief in my ability guided me in creating the paintings exhibited here. No, I do not have the natural gift to draw and paint, but I have colors parading through my head that nature gives me and perhaps, as in my writing, I possess the courage to follow a little talent to the dark places in this hallway of hope, touching the walls on both sides.

A Little Art Exhibit is currently at Beantown Cafe in Hampstead, NH.

I bought a new T-shirt because it’s April after a long, harsh winter and I need color.

On the tag it says, “Nature is imagination itself” William Blake

I often think that someday I’ll take the time to read more fantasy books, but I’m not keen on the genre, except for a few, like the science fiction fantasy, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’engle and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I wonder at my inability to escape into this genre that is so popular. Maybe it’s because so much of my time is spent fleeing to the 19th-century and to the 18th-century to spend time with the dead so I can write historical fiction. If I have a good day of research and writing, it’s difficult to re-orient myself to the present. In a sense, it’s a fantasy to fall down this rabbit-hole into a world that once was and now isn’t.

But mostly, I don’t relish reading fantasy because nature nurtures my imagination and fantasy abounds, or is it not fantasy and very real?  The definition of fantasy is the activity of imagining things, esp. things that are impossible or improbable. I agree with John Muir who said, Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the violet. The squirrel will come and sit upon your knee, the logcock will wake you in the morning. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.

In January, just before my birthday with a big, fat zero O, I was diagnosed with squamous cell cancer. It was sudden and ugly, but treatable, and now I have a little gouge in my thigh after fourteen stitches. I’m grateful, but the timing of it, at first, felt mean-spirited. Hee…hee…how do you like this birthday gift, you vain redheaded creature, you! The day before my scheduled surgery, my husband suggested a walk in the woods on a favorite trail. It had been near zero all winter, but it was a balmy 34 degrees that day. I was reluctant. I just wanted to read all day in bed and not think about this cruel birthday gift. But I relented and just before sunset we went to the woods and the air and light wrapped its arms around me in a loving embrace. I tried to shake it off, Leave me alone. You don’t really mean it. I’m fine. Sometimes our only way to endure is to encase ourselves in our own strength. Who is to say this is wrong and who is to say our strength is not a gift of spirit? But my experience has been that nature, in all its beauty and fury, has a lover’s way with me. I am wooed and eventually surrender.

I volunteered as a bluebird monitor many years ago for the local Audubon Center. I cleaned boxes, recorded findings, but never saw a bluebird. I did this for two or three years. In the past two years, however, bluebirds have visited our backyard and we’ve seen them in the woods. They’re illusive and a bit hoighty toighty, never at the feeder or hanging out with others. Each time we go to the woods, we go with hope to see bluebirds. Mostly, we are surprised by them and our breaths are always taken away. Bluebirds will never lose their magic for me.

Massabesic Audubon Center

Here I was in January trying to throw off nature’s hug around my neck and suddenly I hear the sweet melodies of bluebirds and look up to see flocks of them dancing in the air. At first, I thought it was hopefulness and that I was imagining it. Dozens of bluebirds sang and danced for me and then landed in two trees, becoming silent. I raised my hands and asked if they had come to bring hope and happiness. I went home and suffice it to say, I had given in to another lover’s embrace.

In Native American lore, bluebirds symbolize transformation, creative power, and healing. A passage into the big fat O birthday, signing on with a new publisher, and healing for the surgery scheduled. Happy Birthday to me! Indeed, it was a very noteworthy birthday gift.

And just last week, as I walked on the same special trail, I had a reminder inscribed on a tree:

Real or Fantasy? Does it matter?

Rolling through my Twitter feed one morning, I came upon a tweet by BookViral, a state of the art, sophisticated book review site. I went to their web site and read, At BookViral we focus our energy on discovering authors and illustrators because this is where we excel and we are passionate about the books that shape the minds of readers across the world. Okay. I was interested. I have three published books that need focused energy in the marketplace. As I read further on BookViral, I decided I would submit my novels to this site. And then I became mesmerized by a couple of books they had spotlighted. One was The Prayer by Stephan J. Myers. The cover of the book itself touched my heart and drew me in. It is an evocative illustration of a tattered, young boy with his head bowed over his knees. Has he given up? Is he praying? I had to read this book! An excerpt on the cover reads, Sometimes the children who need things the most, are lost to the night and a pale winter’s ghost… So I downloaded it on my e-reader and escaped into this child’s story to read over a few times to savor the lyrical and melancholy tale that reminded me just how much adults like me love children’s books.

On the inside page, there is an illustration of the boy holding a lantern with his back to the reader. The author writes, All I ask is a promise, that you will never forget the meaning in these words. Not the words themselves, but their meaning. Hmm…And then I was invited to follow the boy with his lantern into his world of sorrow and need.

The illustration of the tattered boy is beautiful. In his grief and poverty, there is a glow and light that surrounds him. It made me immediately think, perhaps due to the title, that he is not alone in his suffering. And if he is not alone, we are not alone. And because I’ve written about famine and hunger through the eyes of a child, I know this child is every child in the world who suffers want and need. And through the eyes of this child, I peek in windows with him where there are warm fires, holiday cheer, and ample food and love. The juxtaposition of the desperate orphan and the epitome of a happy home is powerfully rendered to illicit empathy, but also to question the quality of light – inner light, the light of the unseen as in God or angels, and the light of the lamp that the boy carries as he looks into windows. This lamp flickers and dies, as will the boy, but the light in the boy can never die. The pale winter’s ghost will come for him, but the ghost looks to us as our boat sails through the sky. Is this a challenge to many of us who, through the news, look down from our lofty lives to view the utter atrocities of children suffering deprivation in the world?  We hear and see, but do we really hear and see? Will we always have the poor with us?

This is a Dickensian parable that has clever and musical rhyme. The tale is meditative and wistful; and the illustrations are colorful, vivid, and reveal a light that makes the story bearable and not didactic with moral finger pointing. Because of the texture and symphony of color in the illustrations, it is a book to hold and keep on a bookshelf to read during the holidays. Don’t read this book to your children the night before Christmas! Start the season with this book to create discussion about poverty, humanitarianism, and how to look out our windows and see, but also to open the door to invite in. And the light! Please discuss the light.

http://www.bookviral.com/welcome-to-bookviral/4579818163

I try. Honestly, I try to support local bookstores when I travel and especially where I now live. But it ain’t easy sometimes because I have local bookstore tales to tell from the perspective of an author. Some are just absurd and have tainted my experience and thus I find myself rushing into the Barnes & Noble stores with fervor for that homecoming kind of feeling. Over the last ten years as a published author (independent presses), I’ve sought out local bookstores to do book events. There were two who were gracious and although I brought music, a reading, and even food to share, there was little done to publicize the events. And then there was the bookstore that took my books on commission. They sold all fifteen books, but have never given me my percentage of the sales although I called them and wrote to them numerous times. There are also the local bookstores who tell me that it wouldn’t be worth the effort and cost of having me come to their stores because even the celebrity authors don’t draw a crowd. I understand these are businesses trying to stay afloat and even alive in the Amazon big business world. Of course, there are the local bookstores who invite repeatedly the same coddled, local authors. These are the locally acclaimed and notable authors who should be honored and be asked to speak at the local bookstores, but again and again with no room for any others?

On the contrary, Barnes & Noble stores across the region I live in have repeatedly asked me to participate in book events. I’ve probably participated in over twenty book events over the years. I’ve worked closely with the community relations managers to create talks with music, dance, and art. I’ve been on panel discussions, participated in local author events, and one community relations manager is a friend I now socialize with. How wonderful! While the local bookstores were nay saying and pushing me away, Barnes & Noble stores were welcoming me with open arms. At some events, I would have just two people show up and at other events, there would be fifteen. It varied, but they’ve always supported me although my books weren’t the big sellers sitting on the front tables that are paid for by the big publishers.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been traveling, selling at conferences, and festivals and haven’t been seeking out bookstores for book events, not even my favorite Barnes & Noble stores. A week ago, I was in a local bookstore and bought a few books, it being the second visit in a month and it occurred to me to ask if I could do an event. Alas, I queried late at night and to my chagrin did a copy and paste for publicity I had used for a blog tour I had been on. Oh dear, it included my Amazon page with all the reviews. Here is the response I received back:

Hello Cynthia,
Thank you for your email. Our events calendar is at capacity now through May (we book several months ahead of time and require 6+ weeks to effectively publicize an event).
Before we consider an event for a bookstore we like to know a few things:

As an editorial note, may I advise that you not suggest an independent bookstore order stock from their largest and most aggressive industry competitor (Amazon.com).

I wrote back apologizing profusely for my politically incorrect Amazon copy and paste and asked why they hadn’t finished telling me what they wanted to know to consider whether I was book event material for their store. Here is what the events coordinator said:

Before we consider an event for a bookstore we like to know a few things:
Does your publisher offer co-op or marketing support? Do you have a publicist?
For local authors, we find that author participation in the publicity process is key to getting a large crowd for an event. Are you willing to become an active partner in publicizing and marketing the event?
We often like to see if a book has a natural audience in our store before we contemplate an event. Do you have friends and family in the area that you might be able to steer here to buy the book? If so, would they come to an event?
What audience do you imagine for your event and books? What groups or organizations do you think should be reached out to for publicity?

By this time, I was missing my Barnes & Noble community relations’ managers and thinking that although I don’t get a stipend to speak at their stores, they oftentimes make me feel like a celebrity (free coffee, publicity, and so forth). I thought about the above events coordinator and with all the experiences I’ve had over the years with local bookstores and decided that it was akin to a dysfunctional relationship. You know – you give, ask, care, want friendship, but it isn’t reciprocal and the love is spurned. No more! I respect myself now as an author enough not to beg and display fawning behavior just to be selling me books in a local bookstore. But I just had to write the response to this events coordinator the way I’d like to have written it, and perhaps to all the local bookstores who have treated me like shite.

Dear Ms. Events Coordinator:

My God, how difficult you are making it for a local author to come to your grand store in Podunk_________! You’re not McNally Jackson or the Strand in Manhattan. You’re not the Coop or the Harvard Bookstore in Boston. I might expect this snobbish attitude with them, but oh no, you’re little with a new add on. So you think you can be persnickety just because you serve espresso. In response to your questions: No, I do not have friends and family in ________ (thank the Lord God Almighty!) but I have shopped at the high end boutique___________ for many years and could invite the earth-smelling, eat-local, yoga pampered employee ladies I’ve gotten to know over the years. Also, I’m really good at going out on the street corners and urging customers into stores and there are so many men who might find me utterly fascinating because of my red hair, although it’s fading. These are all those long gray beards I see in __________ wearing L.L. Bean clothes, a bit disheveled, as are their beards, but I know they probably do a lot of reading, especially on how to survive winters in a yurt in the White Mountains. And then, of course, I’m a pro at convincing the homeless derelicts sitting on the street corner across from the gleaming globe of the state house flashing the dream of gold into their eyes to come into a bookstore to hear me speak about how over a million people died while food was shipped out before their starving eyes. I really think they’d relate to my book talk about the Famine. There would be something for everyone, i.e. the boutique shop ladies would feel empathy and buy books because I donate to hunger organizations and the gray beards would buy books because they’d get it that I am smart and know about this period in Irish history, and then, of course, we’d all feel good abut the poor coming in off the streets to partake of my delicious Norah’s Dream Scones.

Wow, it felt good to write this and even better that now I publish it on my blog. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’ll never stop visiting the local bookstores and probably this one again, but Barnes & Noble is looking pretty good right about now and I’ll support them, as well.

Hemingway posed for beer ads, Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass and wrote his own reviews under a pseudonym; In 1887, Guy de Maupassant sent up a hot-air balloon over the Seine with the name of his latest short story.

It never ends, this rabid self-promotion and the writer oftentimes feels like a cross between a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesperson and a Jehovah’s Witness. The act of creating can be an act as dark, dirty, and cold as a nascent flower bulb in March. But when the work emerges and you nourish it to full growth, you can’t help but want it to be seen and appreciated.

I struggle with balancing artful solitude and the noisy marketplace, and I swear I must be a descendant of an Irish apple woman hawking her rares in New York in the 19th-Century. Luc Sante writes in Low Life, “Irishwomen ( popularly identified as smoking pipes) sold apples, George Washington pie, St.-John’s bread, and flat-gingerbread cakes called bolivars.” You can imagine the Irish woman’s loud, boisterous voice over the noisy and raucous vendors on the streets. I can do it. I can entice a passer-by with my homemade scones and stories. But I prefer to be behind the scenes, sketching out characters in secret.

Pavlova in a Hat Box is a different kind of book, unlike my historical fiction novels. And rather than seek out a traditional publisher as I have done with my historical fiction novels, I am going to self-publish with a self-publishing company I respect here in New England. Pavlova is a book full of dessert recipes (I could easily hawk them on the streets and have no shame), art work, and essays. And it is a special tribute to my eighty-six year old mother. Here is just one luscious dessert to entice you -

lemon-lavender madeleines

Kickstarter fundraising failed and now I’m doing GoFund: http://www.gofundme.com/68rmyo

It’s a new year and I have a new publisher for Norah: The Making of an Irish-American Woman in 19th-Century New York. My previous publisher, Lucky Press, went out of business and for months after, I couldn’t query publishers. I had liked working with Lucky Press to prepare Norah for publication. And my book launch at Searles Castle was a once in a lifetime magical event. But there was no time for wallowing in self-pity and discouragement. I had to be about my art. Norah hadn’t reached a necessary flying altitude after the launch and never went on the trip that had been planned for her. However, she hadn’t crashed! It was only a delay for her journey and it had nothing to do with me. I had book talks and events planned and went ahead with them. And I had plenty of copies I had ordered from the publisher. I didn’t speak of not having a publisher, I tried not to compare myself to other writers, and I didn’t query for a long time. There was a certain liberation to trust my journey as a writer and I wasn’t going to beg to find a new publisher. Sure, I had moments of feeling sorry for myself, but only moments. I was busy listening to the next story Norah was telling me and I had two young adult books and other writing projects. Could I plaster the walls of my house (and not just my office walls) with rejection letters? Yes. But I could also plaster a room or two of my house with letters of praise from students who have read my young adult books and adults who have read Norah and other writings and given me affirmation. I will not make a big display of rejection or praise because both can detour me being about my art. Every life has disappointment and triumph, but who we really are as individuals shouldn’t be defined by either. It’s similar for this writing life. I have to be about my art. I have to listen to this call, this song only I can sing, and to do what the late artist, Annie Truitt, said, “Artists have no choice but to express their lives.”

When I was ready, I queried again. And when a couple of publishers said “it’s not right for us,” I countered the disappointment with a few more queries. And that’s how Fireship Press found Norah. Their niche is historical fiction and I’m thrilled. They have arranged a virtual book tour and I’ve been writing blog posts and doing interviews. I started getting anxious again about failing, but then I made a decision to just let Norah travel this journey and if there’s another delay, so be it. I’ve been true to her and to me. And that’s why I have printed in the front of the book, “I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing.” (Rabbi Hillel).

http://www.fireshippress.com/fireship_authors/cynthia-neale.html

Read an interview, comment, and enter into the giveaway – http://www.bibliophilicbookblog.com/2014/01/book-feature-giveaway-norah-by-cynthia.html

Why have I written this book? http://thelittlereaderlibrary.blogspot.com/

Hemingway posed for beer ads, Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass and wrote his own reviews under a pseudonym; In 1887, Guy de Maupassant sent up a hot-air balloon over the Seine with the name of his latest short story.

It never ends, this rapid self-promotion and the writer oftentimes feels like a cross between a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesperson and a Jehovah’s Witness. The act of creating can be an act as dark, dirty, and cold as a nascent flower bulb in March. But when the work emerges and you nourish it to full growth, you can’t help but want it to be seen and appreciated.

I struggle with balancing artful solitude and the noisy marketplace, and I swear I must be a descendant of an Irish apple woman hawking her rares in New York in the 19th-Century. Luc Sante writes in Low Life, “Irishwomen ( popularly identified as smoking pipes) sold apples, George Washington pie, St.-John’s bread, and flat-gingerbread cakes called bolivars.” You can imagine the Irish woman’s loud, boisterous voice over the noisy and raucous vendors on the streets. I can do it. I can entice a passer-by with my homemade scones and stories. But I prefer to be behind the scenes, sketching out characters in secret.

Pavlova in a Hat Box is a different kind of book, unlike my historical fiction novels. And rather than seek out a traditional publisher as I have done with my historical fiction novels, I am going to self-publish with a self-publishing company I respect here in New England. Pavlova is a book full of dessert recipes (I could easily hawk them on the streets and have no shame), art work, and essays. And it is a special tribute to my eighty-six year old mother. Here is just one luscious dessert to entice you -

lemon-lavender madeleines

I’ve decided to do a Kickstarter project to obtain funding to self-publish this book and hope you will take the time to view it and perhaps back it. Please take a look: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/359179069/pavlova-in-a-hat-box-memories-and-sweet-recipes here.

And perhaps if this works, I’ll try the hot-air balloons next!

I desire silence. I want to be free from the noise that humans make. I fear I will never be free from this noise. I’m often in the woods and I still hear a car that is miles away or a plane flying overhead. And even my own sighing and thoughts can become too noisy. The sounds of nature, however, rarely irritate me, even the Carolina Wren’s repeated tea-kettle, tea-kettle and the chipmunk’s repeated chirping at my cat sitting on the porch window sill. But what about the voices of the past? What about listening to ghosts?

A friend mentioned he requires transitional time from working all day as an emergency room nurse. I responded that I didn’t know how to transition from working with dead people all day. Writing historical fiction requires listening to the voices and noise of the past. Perhaps this is why I’m sensitive to the noise of the present, except for the birds and creatures outside who lull me into the past like planxty, the strange music said to come from the fairy world. Of course, writing historical fiction requires much more than silence and romantic notions! The immense labor in research and study makes me think digging the Erie Canal with picks and axes would have been easier (not really).

I’m currently researching and writing a fourth novel set in New York City during the Civil War. But mostly, I’ve been traveling to promote, speak, and sell books, and this is so unlike listening to ghosts and is so rooted in the present that the otherworldly sounds fade. Then I feel I’m listening to the incessant, loud, but yes, remarkable, five songs of the Northern Mockingbird, into the dark of night. These songs are repeated again and again. I’m afraid I once thought (as a very young person) I’d write a good book, get it published, and it would take care of itself. And then I’d go to my attic and write the next one. Ha! I’m intrigued by the Northern Mockingbird and welcome him to my backyard. I hope to intrigue my listeners at my book events with my repeated five songs, as well. But I can’t wait to get back to silence and listening to ghosts and hope that my Northern Mockingbird, who is usually a permanent year-round resident, will go south for the winter.

I recently was in Chicago at IBAM (Irish Books, Art, and Music) and sat on a panel titled, New Perspectives on the Irish Famine. It was an honor to sit with esteemed academics and historians. I was the only woman and the only person without an Irish accent. At first, I was so rooted in the present fear of speaking that all I could hear was the sound of my heartbeat. Even the five repeated songs of the Mockingbird disappeared. But after I gave my ten minute speech, I listened to the other members of the panel. And it was then I listened to ghosts. New ones, perhaps, but they came from the same family of ghosts I had listened to long ago. And suddenly, there was a new song or two added to the repertoire of the Mockingbird. Listening doesn’t only happen in the attic. It can happen, and perhaps, must happen, everywhere else, as well.

Amongst these panelists, there was talk of genocide and Tim Pat Coogan, author of many books and Ireland’s well known historian, spoke at length about The Great Hunger of 1845 to 1850. I sat and listened and heard the ghosts, and perhaps I saw them rise again. Mr. Coogan writes in his recent book, The Famine Plot, that Britain was in large part responsible for the extent of the national tragedy, and in fact engineered the food shortage in one of the earliest cases of ethnic cleansing. So strong was anti-Irish sentiment in the mainland that the English parliament referred to the famine as “God’s lesson.”

“All of us are asleep,” a Jewish saying goes, “By telling stories, we are awakened.”

I wrote The Irish Dresser, A Story of Hope during The Great Hunger (An Gorta Mor, 1845-1850), published in 2004. I’ve written subsequent novels with the same protagonist, Norah McCabe. I thought after the first book and donating a percentage from the sales of my book to Oxfam, I’d be pretty much done with the Famine. I’d go on to listening to other ghosts.

John Waters, in his article, Confronting the Ghosts of our Past, wrote, “Surveys, I’m told, indicate that Irish people do not want to hear about the Famine. It doesn’t surprise me in the least. But is also precisely why the subject must be talked about until we remember the things we never knew.”

In 2003, I nearly gave up looking for a publisher for The Irish Dresser until I received a book titled, Surplus People, by Jim Rees. It gives an account of the entire estate of 6,000 farmers in County Wicklow who were sent packing by the landlord to N. America. In the index of the book, there are names of some of these families and one family is listed as the Neale family, my last name, and one of the girls was the same age as my protagonist. The name of the ship they traveled on was called The Star, the same name of the ship I had chosen; unbeknownst to me there was a ship of that name. My ancestors were whispering in my ears to tell their story. After the second book was published, I learned there was a real Norah McCabe come from Ireland to NYC in 1847.

I tell this same story over the years like the Northern Mockingbird with five songs. But after being on the panel with Tim Pat Coogan and the other panelists, I heard the planxty and saw new ghosts rise before me. There has to be more songs and from what I’ve learned about the mockingbird, there can be up to eighteen.

I’ve come home from traveling renewed, humbled, but inspired to continue to listen to ghosts, but to not limit where and when they speak. I’ve come home knowing I only have so much time in this life and I’d better scale back and change some things. And I came home knowing I will always speak about the Famine, for the Famine victims, and do what I can about hunger issues of today, no matter what other books I write that have nothing to do with the Famine.

“When you wear a hat, you become the dream that started when the hat was conceived. The original energy that was put into the hat doesn’t die; it only changes forms and owners. The dream doesn’t die; it is passed on, sometimes from generation to generation” ~ unknown

I started collecting vintage hats years ago when I was looking for tea cups for my new tea catering business, Miss Havisham’s Victorian Teas. It wasn’t intentional. I’d be caressing a bone china tea cup painted with delicate violets and suddenly see an old hat or two perched whimsically on a shelf or antique hat tree. I don’t know why I didn’t imagine the lips of the women and men who sipped out of the tea cups I bought, but somehow I could imagine the women who wore the hats I bought. I found most of my hats at antique stores or yard sales and they’re from the 1940s and 1950s, but there might be a couple of 1930s and 1960s hats. No Victorian hats, but I have a replicated one I bought for the book launch for my novel, Norah. I have about fifty hats that I keep displayed on nails in the dance/music room of our antique house. When I look at some of them, I can envision plump, red-cheeked grandmothers wearing their Sunday-go-to church hats; young romantic women donning cheerful hats to dispel the dreariness of rationing during WWII times; I imagine Myrna Loy wearing some of my hats, a woman who it was said feared no hat and Joan Crawford strutting in sexy suits and turbans with diamonds. I can imagine Jackie O mimics wearing the pillbox hats; and I can especially picture the femme fatale and sultry woman sipping a real martini with an olive or lemon twist wearing my red hat with black netting. In my mind, I watch her remove her gloves at the bar, cross her legs that have hosiery with sexy black lines going down the back of them, and take a puff of a cigarette encased in a long, elegant cigarette holder. She is wearing bright red lipstick and a black beauty mark on her upper cheek. Ultra glam, sophisticated, and waiting for her man!

My vintage hats have been worn at teas I hosted for wedding showers, fundraiser events, birthday parties, at our ceilis (Irish dance gatherings), and New Year’s Eve parties. They’ve been borrowed by friends and have always been returned to me. I’ve worn them for speaking engagements and taken them to classrooms to inspire students to learn about history – Who do you think wore this hat? What kind of woman was she? What was happening in the world when she wore this hat? And then there are times I become frivolous and carefree and go into the dance room, put on a hat, turn on some music, and dance.

Norah McCabe, the protagonist in my novel, Norah: The Making of an Irish-American Woman in 19th-Century New York opens up a used clothing store called A Bee In Your Bonnet in Five Points, New York in the 1850s. And in the novel I’m currently writing about Norah that has the working title, The Irish Milliner, she designs hats and A Bee In Your Bonnet is her label. And soon my book, Pavlova in a Hat Box, Memories and Sweet Recipes, will be published. It’s a collection of essays and dessert recipes, and a hat box is used to carry Pavlova and many desserts to parties. Hats! I never intended to have a life themed with hats. Really! Could it be that I am part of a dream – “The dream doesn’t die; it is passed on, sometimes from generation to generation”

Hats are magic! Hats are anti-depressants. Hats enhance our beauty. Hats alter our moods. Hats make us giggle. Hats turn us into little girls with dreams. Hats comfort and warm us. Hats make us sexy. Hats tell the truth that there is no such thing as an ordinary day or an ordinary woman!

And a very special web site dedicated to all things hats and to my new friend, Patricia Orfao of Hat Tales, Inc, thank you for believing in my writing and hat dreams! ` http://www.hattales.com/view/hat-gallery/cynthis-neales-vintage-hat-collection/#17

I never intended to write four novels about Norah McCabe (see my web site: http://www.cynthianeale.com for more information). Three historical novels about her life has taken a good deal out of my life. As a writer, I don’t study the marketplace to decipher what genre is most popular, nor have I counted the cost beforehand. If I had done so, I probably wouldn’t have stayed the course with years of research, writing, and rejection. Two publishers, three novels, and one publisher who closed her business after my third novel had just been launched. I like to write! I record nature sightings in a nature journal. I’ve written screenplays, short stories, poems, and essays. But when ideas for stories of the past come to me in dreams, epiphanies, while dancing, reading, walking, and talking, my spirit balloons with vigor and excitement, sometimes so much that I feel as if my human body can’t contain it all. And then there are affirming incidents that border on the paranormal, such as waking up with a kernel of corn in my bed after falling asleep reading about the Native American belief of the Three Sisters (corn, bean, and squash). I don’t share these experiences with everyone, but because I am a success of sorts…no, I won’t say of sorts (the journey itself with dreams and words has been a success even if I haven’t won awards and sold millions), I want to give a big dollop of hope to others who are deciding to jump into a deep place, a hearty dream, and a new path without counting the cost. I’m so damn impractical and idealistic! I want my soul to be a candle that burns away the veil so that the glorious duties of light are mine. I want my written words to do for the heart what the sun does to a field. These ideas/words are paraphrased from St. John of the Cross while he was imprisoned for his beliefs and living in a small cell in his own excrement. Who am I to complain? Count the cost? I don’t dare.

One day, I want to organize a foundation called Hunger No More that will address issues of hunger, poverty, and women’s rights, using my books as the foundation for hope.  And dare I say that I dream of a film that will be made titled, The Irish Dresser, based on Norah McCabe’s story? An immigration story, a story of hope, and a story of the triumph of spirit. Yes, there have been some movie makers interested, but you know how these things go.  I’m not writing in a genre that is popular. But then again, maybe I am, but it’s under the guise of historical fiction. It’s not the horror or fantasy genre that nearly every writer I meet is now writing. But then again, it has horror elements that are vivid and real, i.e. skeletons with little flesh on them walking the earth and fantasy elements that are recorded in history, i.e. so many fish jumping out of the ocean and into a ship of dying immigrants that they are relieved of hunger! Who the hell needs to make up horror and fantasy! But I also need real light in these stories, too, and not just the excrement in the dark cells of this world. Like St. John of the Cross had, like Metchild of Magdeburg, like Gabriela Mistral, and on and on with many who have gone before us and have shown us the way if we’d only listen to them.

So now I’m researching and writing another book about Norah McCabe. My working title is, An Irish Milliner, and again, I’m feeling the out of body moments of inspiration, as well as the feeling of meandering through the stinking sludge of history to find precious truths. I also have the constant companion of fear who helps burn away the veil because I am required to learn about myself in the process of creating other lives. And perhaps in learning, I will burn away the veil and live out some duties of light.

From The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime;

therefore, we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense

in any immediate context of history;

therefore, we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;

therefore we are saved by love.

Dancing in any moon beam will do, but twirling in a beam of a super moon during summer solstice is otherworldly and magical, perhaps a once or twice lifetime experience. I’ve jigged and waltzed under many a full moon, but never under the gaze of a super moon and the spell of the summer solstice. Ray Sette, psychic astrologer says for the June 23^rd full moon:

 Our impending Full Moon is in the sign Capricorn; the sign of the Antarctic Ocean and blue-violet, of chiropractors and old churches. The 10th sign of the Zodiac governs our greatest endeavors and highest aspirations, our career and long-term goals.

 I can’t say I believe the messages of psychic astrologers, for I have trouble with believing in just astrologists, but I am a Capricorn born on January 7^th and blue-violet is the color I’ve recently surmised must be added to an oil painting I’m nearly finished with. I’m also receiving cranial sacral therapy, a chiropractor kind of thing, and if I’m not all about living with a great endeavor and aspiring to my highest career goals at this age of my life, woe is me.

 Ray Sette also mentions the government being influenced by this special full moon. Ha! I won’t comment because I’m weary of NSA, drones, and Taliban wooing. I’ve come to feel like a voodoo doll stuck with the pins of too much information about perversity, greed, oppression, violence, and destruction. I read the news and get stuck with pins that I can’t pull out. I also get stuck with pins when a friend tells me she is gravely ill. I get stuck with pins when a development is going into our historic neighborhood that is solely based on greed. I get stuck with the pins of children dying or being abused at the hands of monsters. I even get stuck with the pins of jealous women. A voodoo web site says, The Voodoo straight pin, or thorn, is actually used  to attach something to the doll to make he doll represent, or even become, the person to whom it is targeted.

 When I was at my most prickly, I thought of the acupuncture treatments I’ve received that were used to stimulate certain meridian points in the body to generate healing. The acupuncture needles can be uncomfortable, even painful at times, but there is a healing response. Likewise, how can I receive the pricks of pain in my world that can generate healing but do not stay stuck in me to the point, a sharp point, to cause me to feel like a voodoo doll resembling sorrow and even hopelessness? I think also of the cross and the symbolic taking of all the pain and sorrow of the world upon Christ’s body.

It’s not simple, but to respond is our own, is it not? I am reminded of this saying,

To laugh often and much. To win the respect of intelligent people; And the affection of children. To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. ~ Harry Emnerson Fosdick.

 A Native American saying is thus, If we are wounded, we go to our mother and seek to lay the wounded part against her, to be healed. So I took my voodoo self out last night to my backyard and got unstuck by dancing in a super moon beam full of dream dust with fireflies as my partners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AMdcgpUTVY

I was lying on a table in a morgue and there was golden light all around me. The table was an electromotion conserve autopsy, electric corpse dissection morgue table, but it wasn’t cold or uncomfortable. One of my good friends stood next to me smiling, glowing, her shining blonde California hair bouncing as she spoke.
“Everyone will know you have excellent taste in clothing. I’ll put your beautiful shoes on you and make sure you look exquisite.”
I smiled back at her, basking in her care and love, unworried and at peace in a sort of resigning way. A presence was nearby, a male presence, but I didn’t see his face. He was the doctor, the minister, the mortician, the father, authoritative but kindly; a guide, of sorts, but not a guru. His presence was assuring, I suppose. And then suddenly I was walking in a small city garden restive and lovely.
I spoke aloud, “Can I buried be here?” A voice answered, “There’s no room here.”
Then I was quickly back on the comfy morgue table being given a shot of morphine by the male presence. My friend was gone and I went to sleep for a long time. When I woke up, I got off the dissecting corpse table and looked into a mirror very closely and saw myself changed. I was me, but someone else, too.
“Am I going to live?” I asked the presence.
“It could be,” he said casually.
“A miracle, then?
“Perhaps.”
I woke from the dream and it has clung to me for days. It comes at a time when my favorite pair of shoes has worn out and I need to give up on re-soling. But it’s re-souling that’s happening, this dissecting knife cutting away wounds from long ago, ones that I had bandaged up tightly so there would be no exposure. I kept them hidden from sight, like the scars I have on my stomach that I have made sure no-one would ever see. I’ve never had a dream like this, but I have been on this dissecting table before. Something within dies, something like joy, peace, or confidence…you name it, it happens to all of us. And if we don’t get on the table from time to time, there is no breaking through the winter soil of ourselves. I peeked at the daffodil shoots standing straight and green and thought I heard them say, “Whew, we made it!”
It is the season for rising, for transformation, for waking up and coming home to ourselves yet again. May there be many Easters in our lives!

You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you ~ Isadora Duncan

I dreamed last night that I was walking through a pub naked. In the dream, friends and I decided that we would discard our granny panties and be at ease with our bodies in the buff. As it goes with the strangeness of dreams, it ended with me prancing through the pub alone. My friends high-tailed it, I guess. It was the oddest thing, for I wasn’t …em…bare…assed in the least. I’ve had a few naked dreams over the years, but always I would feel horrified and then enormously relieved to wake and know it was only a dream.

I recently danced at a pub (with my clothes on) to live Irish music with a group of friends I’ve set danced with for many years. I was bewitched by the music and as we danced together, I tapped, leapt, and danced so enthusiastically, I drew inordinate attention to myself. I wasn’t tripping anyone or myself up, but I was singularly vivacious and energetic. There were goodhearted (I hope) teasing comments and laughter, but I wasn’t embarrassed in the least. Sure, there have been other times when I went crazy with my dancing, but oftentimes I’d not only have a sore hip, but sore feelings because my fellow dancers didn’t go along with me.

I’ve wondered of late how I will keep dancing. I have gathered pain in my joints from repetition of movement. And I have also gathered pain in my soul from repetition of living. “Let it go!” the guru masters tell us. And don’t you just love this one, “Let go and let God!” And then, of course, there’s this one, “Just breathe!”

I’m not hostile to letting go, letting God, and breathing, but honestly, who really lets go and lets God and who doesn’t breathe? If I let go, I won’t dance. If I let go, I won’t feel compassion and empathy that propels me to action. If I let go and let God, I am separating myself from God because then it’s either me or Him or Her. It sort of implies that I am off the hook, but it makes me feel very lonely waiting for Him or Her. I’ve been there and I know the lingo. I do believe we are in this together and I am not alone in this dance with life.

I’m going to learn some new steps then…new moves and take deeper breaths. I’ve been in my skin for so long now that in some ways it’s stretched enough to give me freedom of movement. Like a well worn treasured garment, I’ll not toss myself away. And if my friends don’t wish to frolic or boogie as I do, they’ll still be there laughing me on.

I’m like a tumbleweed and just mature enough to pull away from old roots that keep me confined. I’ll roll along, gather some new material, and scatter myself in the wind, dancing wildly.

I randomly picked up a magazine from the pile of reading material I haven’t had time to catch up with. The January/February issue of Sierra Magazine has a large, bold title, POLARIZED, Levity and Gravity at the Ends of the Earth. Oh yeah, I thought, this is how it feels and hurts right now in my country, but hasn’t it felt this way for a few years now? Honestly, hasn’t it been this way from the beginning? Perhaps it would look like this throughout our relatively short history as a country: POLARIZED…POLARIZED…POLARIZED…POLARIZED…POLARIZED…POLARIZED…POLARIZED…POLARIZED…POLARIZED…

This issue of Sierra, however, isn’t about taking extreme sides in politics, but about climate change from the top of the world to the bottom of the world. Nevertheless, I am aware that even the discussion of glaciers melting and climate crises can indeed create polarization amongst the citizens of America, home of the free and the brave.

We all have been grieving over the loss of life, not only in Connecticut, but the loss of children’s lives destroyed by land mines in Afghanistan. And then my sorrow deepened by the vitriolic and raging debate over gun control that arrives like salt rubbed into a wound. I learn that some of my friends hold views that I didn’t know they had (or perhaps I didn’t want to know) and I’m disappointed. And I read that a few people with their rights in tact walked into a Walmart store and other public places displaying their weapons…a day or two after the heartbreaking atrocity in Connecticut.

Are we a nation unable to grieve right? Are we awkward in expressing lamentations for more than a week? As individuals, we go into the cocoon of our sorrow and rub our hearts raw with grief, perhaps eating too much, drinking too much, abusing our bodies because we need to numb our pain and stop the shaking in our souls. We need the prayer vigils and funerals where we are given time to wear our mourning clothes, light candles, and hold one another, but mostly it happens just for a brief time and we maintain our stiff, upper lipped dignity through it all, swiping at the tears quickly before others see. And if there is loud wailing in these places for grief and memory, we view it as unrefined and graceless, and we feel embarrassed for those who lose control. And for ourselves if we lose control.

But why is it that we are very much at ease in losing control with our anger all over the page and air waves? After 9/11, the ban on purchasing assault weapons was lifted and we went to war. Our grief was too much and the only way to deal with it was to be enraged. There is righteous anger, indeed, and there is a time for it, but it is my belief that if it is right and good anger, this anger will result in healing and change. I remember after a few painful incidents with an alcoholic step-father when I was in my early teens, I was so angry that I considered sneaking into bars to light them on fire. I wanted to get rid of my pain and the problem of alcoholism.

I’m uncertain how to go about grieving and having righteous anger in a healthy way. I know it isn’t wearing a gun in public to prove I have rights or burning down places I consider hell holes. I also know that although a time will come to remove my mourning clothes, I will not relinquish all of them. I have lived long and I have learned the names of sorrow, so I will wear some of this grieving to honor those gone before me, to be vigilant for righteous change, to be humble, and to wait for mourning to turn to dancing, for I know I will always dance again.

I mindlessly flipped through the Sierra magazine to the last page, the title, Last Words, and exhaled some of the sorrow I was holding tightly in my chest. I know without a doubt that nature teaches us, heals us, and can bring us together:

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/201301/last-words-river-turtle-yasuni-national-park-equador-312.aspx

And so for my friends who disagree with me about gun control, this is my last word here to you. And to all of us responding to the tragedies and loss of our times, we can, through the best of our humanity, sip the tears of the sorrowing and be changed.

Most of the deciduous trees in New England are disrobed and stripped of color when November’s end comes rolling in. Gardens should have already been put to bed properly so they can get a good winter’s sleep and be ready to flourish in the spring and summer. There have been a few years when my flowers hung their heads in dismay and eventually laid down on pillows of snow because of my negligence. I’m always amazed that come spring, in spite of my heedless care, these plants bloom and thrive yet again. It gives me hope, for albeit I’ve blundered as a parent, friend, daughter, writer, there is some kind of intrinsic wizardry and numinous love that prevails on this earth and in my life. In spite of me, in spite of you, and in spite of nature’s backhand striking us hard with hurricanes, nor’easters, and earthquakes, resplendent color comes again into our pallid earth and lives. I know it. I’ve lived over fifty years and this truth is threaded throughout my life’s experiences, in spite of tangled and knotted stitches.

Delores Whelan writes in her book, Ever Ancient Ever New, Celtic Spirituality in the 21st Century:

The journey from Samhain to the winter solstice is a path of continual sinking and letting go, of deep surrender. The days shorten; the nights get longer; the earth draws its energy deep within; death and darkness surround us. We reside in the womb or cauldron of the Goddess where gestation and transformation happen. We are deep within the giamos period, where the experience of linear time is minimized, willpower is muted, and contemplation of the ever-present form or ground of being, from which everything arises, is encouraged. Here the mode of being that is required is rest, passive attentiveness to the unconscious influences of the otherworld, together with openness to growth that is slow and unforced. This is the dream time, where the seeds of new life, new ideas, and new projects are nurtured.

Winter has arrived and my miniature yellow roses haven’t lost their heads over it, so why should I? I haven’t tended to my flowers properly, but they will adapt and will probably bloom come spring. And if they don’t survive, they will be missed and not have lived in vain. The earth and I have benefited by their beautiful presence.

But sometimes fear rises up within me in winter like no other time and I wonder if this thread of love will break and I’ll fall apart, perhaps like the flowers that do not survive winter, properly cared for or not. Roofs collapse under the weight of snow. Am I strong enough? Or is this thread strong enough? I was wondering about these things after I had lunch with a writer friend. She gets my writing, for real. She encourages me to screw up my courage to let words grow slow and unforced onto the wintery empty pages. I am fortunate to have her and a few other writers in my life who cheer me on into springtime. I said goodbye to her and was so deep in thought that when I got onto Interstate 93 going north and drove for a few miles, I suddenly thought I was going south. I was headed to Boston! So I got off the next exit to go north back to New Hampshire and after driving for a few miles, I realized I was actually going south. I had been driving in the right direction from the beginning. I had been going north like I was supposed to, but I got off and went south thinking I was going north when I was going south. Did you get that? That glass of wine at lunch had definitely worn off and it wasn’t the culprit. It was winter and I was deep in thought about my new novel and bringing to life what had been buried long ago. I ended up driving up 93 in rush hour and it took me nearly three hours to get home. It should have only taken me 40 minutes. I cranked up my music and tried to relax (and pay attention). And then there was golden warmth that spread over my hands on the steering wheel and crept up my entire being. For the drive home, the sun put on a brilliant show. It was one of those sunsets that momentarily make you feel that “God’s in his heaven-All’s right with the world.” (Browning).

So I messed up. I didn’t put my flowers to bed and rake the leaves. I went the right way thinking I was going the wrong way and then went the wrong way thinking I was going the right way. I’m in wintertime, but there are sunrises and sunsets that assure me that no matter which way I go and whatever happens, there is love. And I’m nearly certain that my roses, which are still yellow, are a very good omen.

I spent over two hours writing a blog and then hit “Post a Photo” and lost my blog. I am pissed! I can’t retrieve the Muse to write the blog again. What is wrong with Word Press??

However, I will post my new poster for my book campaign: “Real Men Read Norah!”

I spent over two hours writing a blog and then hit “Post a Photo” and lost my blog. I am pissed at losing all this work and I’m thinking of taking my blog elsewhere!

Cynthia neale

Little Apron, Little Loaf, and a Little Thong

When my daughter, Hannah, was very young, she stood on a chair next to my mother, her grandmother, Doris, and learned how to make homemade oatmeal bread. I bought little loaf tins that held the bread dough that Hannah’s long fingered and delicate hands would mix, form, and after rising once, punch down. Our Cape Cod kitchen was the size of a play house kitchen (really, I’m not exaggerating) and Hannah felt it was her toy kitchen. It was in this kitchen where her invisible friends played with her and it was there, standing by her grandmother, where she learned about love through listening, touching, smelling, and tasting. This being next to her grandmother had actually begun shortly after Hannah was born because I had complications and stayed in the hospital for three weeks. Hannah came home and my mother would nestle her next to her on the piano bench and play for her. So it was natural for Hannah to stand next to her grandmother and learn the magic of the kitchen through the art of bread-making.
We have a special Cuban friend, Enes, whom Hannah calls, ‘Aunt T.’ Enes didn’t have much of an education, but she had many talents that we partook of, including teaching us how to dance the Mambo, decorating our home with lace (she even sewed lace on one of my husband, Tim’s, ties, that he never wore), and creating her own patterns for clothing. Hannah was six years old when Aunt T sewed a Victorian dress for her to wear for my tea catering business, as well as mother and daughter matching aprons. When my mother, Doris, and Hannah stood next to one another in the kitchen making and baking bread, they wore these matching aprons. It is twenty some years later and I still have the matching aprons. Little loaf and little apron and very large love.

And now my mother is eighty-five and it would take a very large book to write about her colorful and unique life. I don’t know if I ever will do it. Just an essay here and there over the years because I’m positioned too close to her heart to be able to stand back and see clearly enough to write her story. Recently, she traveled from New York to visit us in New Hampshire, and in my journal I’ve recorded our trip to the sea, to a friend’s house to play her grand piano, to the museum to see a real Monet painting, the many lunches with her gentleman friend, Lester, and when she made us her famous homemade oatmeal bread yet again. Perhaps it was her last time, she had said, but she’s said that before. But she is eighty-five and it just might be that it was her last time for making bread and visiting us. During this visit, my mother made her oatmeal bread without realizing how much I needed old-fashioned nurturance and assurance that rises in my heart like her bread that rises for our sustenance. My grown-up Hannah had just come to visit and say goodbye, for she was leaving the east coast to go to Kansas with her love! I felt the fragility of old age, middle age, and young age all at once. And so my mother’s homemade oatmeal bread came to my kitchen once again at the right time. It gave me that safe, cozy, and all’s right with the world feeling. Timing is everything, they say…and I know. I needed this bread, this memory of a little loaf, a little apron, and the reminder that the little things my mother has given me are actually quite large in meaning. And after Hannah left for her journey and we had eaten my mother’s bread, I was doing the simple task of taking laundry out of the dryer, already missing my daughter and preparing to say goodbye to my mother who was returning to New York. From the dryer, I pulled out two pairs of underwear, one my mother’s and the other, my daughter’s. One pair was black granny panties, and the other, was a little black thong. I laid them side by side on top of the dryer and stared at them, my heart full and sad at the same time. Little loaf, little apron, and a little thong.

I was doing my morning chores of social media networking and read an article in Forbes by David Vinjamuri titled, Publishing Is Broken, We’re Drowning In Indie Books – And That’s a Good Thing. I immediately felt a bitch blip coming on in response.

“Great success is not possible without a certain degree of shamelessness, and even of out-and-out charlatanism” ~ Stendhal.

I have often felt like a greasy saleswoman involved in rabid self-promotion, and that I’m carrying around a medicine tent I set up to woo and wow the crowds. Fairy dust, scones, and dream quotes offered with purchase of a book! Once I was asked to be the feature speaker at a senior luncheon in a church basement. I set up my table with posters and books, but before I was scheduled to speak, in walked a tall, gloomy, man with bushy eyebrows, who said to me that he was the featured magician (his real job – lawyer). “After you…” he said, as he swept his arm towards me as if he was giving me some of his magic. Consequently, he stole my magic that day. The oldies were more amused with his take on Jack the Ripper than stories about The Great Hunger, an immigrant woman, and my take on writing and hope. Not surprisingly, the seniors devoured my scones, but they hated the fairy dust, and didn’t buy many books. Although there was an agreed upon stipend, I never was paid. However, when I sell at Irish festivals, I usually reel in the customers who spill Guiness on my books and tell me about their great American novel they’re writing. By the end of the day, I am drenched in sweat clutching lots of money. I also conduct school visits dressed as an immigrant in a long, cumbersome, dress carrying a cage with a live clucking hen who once laid an egg. Ha! There was my magic, alright.

I would not self-publish for many reasons and ended up with one small (unknown) traditional publisher and one independent publisher who recently closed her business (a year after my third book came out). So…an agent says I have to have a rip roaring success with my next novel (that might take years to finish) in order for the novel I labored over and was initially doing well with can rise and take flight. Although I’m not a Sue Grafton reader, I somewhat agree with the above-named article that quoted her:

To me, it seems disrespectful…that a ‘wannabe’ assumes it’s all so easy s/he can put out a ‘published novel’ without bothering to read, study, or do the research. … Self-publishing is a short cut and I don’t believe in short cuts when it comes to the arts. I compare self-publishing to a student managing to conquer Five Easy Pieces on the piano and then wondering if s/he’s ready to be booked into Carnegie Hall.

I’ve sat at many local book events with self-published authors whose books have had very little copy editing. I want to support them and buy their books, but am mostly disappointed.

I’ve been a speaker at writer events and cringe when wanna be writers ask me how he or she can get published (and now) or tell me they are paying to have their book published after only working on it for a few months.  It does take blood, sweat, and tears.  And I’m not saying my books are superior because it took me that route, and I’m also not saying that some self-published books aren’t worthy ones, for we know of certain self-published authors, such as Amanda Hocking, who became a rip-roaring success. But as Steven Pressfield says, “The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.” But not all is so hellish, for in between those times he writes of, there are the many seniors to read to, magicians to ward off, hens that lay golden eggs, and the invitations to hawk books while Whiskey in a Jar, the Irish tune, turned techno, plays in the background.

“I quit!” is a liberating pronouncement often followed by walking away, slamming a door, hanging up the phone, packing a suitcase, writing a letter, driving away, or signing a document. Just after this utterance, one can almost hear the clanking of chains falling to the floor while rubbing wrists for relief as the wings of possibility begin to grow and lift you far from where you’ve been. It’s only when you’re a few feet from where you’ve been for such a long time that you can’t remember anything else, that you weaken and collapse to the floor. Quitting feels good only briefly and then the reality sets in and you realize that if you do indeed quit, you might have to reinvent and reinvest yourself. You might have to start all over. It’s true that you can continue to quit time and again your entire life and never come around to yourself and real freedom. But it’s my belief that each time we quit, we turn the corner and bump into ourselves going the other way. Whether we say, “excuse me” and keep going or say, “oh, hell, let’s go out for coffee (or something stronger),” will determine the outcome of quitting. I personally think quitting is good, even when I’ve gone around the corner and punched myself in the stomach and then kept going. In a sense, I wanted to leave myself behind, climb out of my skin, and be unshackled by the present. And even if I kept going without some of myself, it was only temporary, for after the punch in the gut, I realized I wanted self-preservation. That is, I wanted to be all of me and live with flourish and abundance. Quitting is good for getting out of unhealthy situations and also for getting out of healthy situations. We all know why we should do one, but why the other? I don’t know for sure, just that sometimes it has to be. Perhaps it’s a season, a chance, to face the fear of failure, to wrestle with ancestral traits, to pause long enough to catch up with success, to get at the hub or the still point, as well as the bullshit and arrogance. To stop and see if we can distill the essence of what we’re quitting and learn whether it’s worth going back to.

Yesterday, I quit. And the punch in the stomach made me keel over. It felt like hell. It was a fast walk around that corner away from myself and onto a trail in the woods. The wind was playing some kind of song that made nature dance with grace and lightness. Queen Anne’s lace, monarchs, tiger swallowtails, a Cooper’s hawk soaring, and the leaves of beech, aspen, maple, and birch shimmered and fluttered before me in harmonic unison that beckoned me to watch and listen.. It’s not working, I declared silently, feeling the emptiness of quitting and the pain of the punch. Was this a performance just for me? Soon, I realized that it certainly was for the me that quit and the me I bumped into and hit in the stomach after quitting. But it wasn’t only for me or for the me coming around the corner. It was for the other, the spirit, the creator, whomever, the one who is on the inside and outside of the insular and sometimes selfish, trapped me. The one who picks me up and puts all of me back together so I can pick up my instrument, my feet, my pen, and be a part of the performance again. “It’s not only about me!”

I’m writing this blog trying to keep away the disharmony of whining that can occur so readily with soul searching. I want to write candidly, but keep private, my life, as well as offer something of worth to whomever reads this. As I was writing, I thought of a poem I’ve always treasured, but find a little fault with in regards to the “Him.” I forgive the author, for he has captured the essence of that mysterious One that I do believe in, both the “Him” and the “Her.” So here is the first stanza of this very long poem, but please read the rest of it if it touches a chord:

The Hound of Heaven
~ Francis Thompson  (1859 – 1907)

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;

And shot, precipitated, down Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat_and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet_

‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’

Why did I name my tea catering business, Miss Havisham’s Victorian Tea Caterers? It was a capricious and lighthearted decision, based on my simple delight in the novel, Great Expectations.  Although there is not much to like about Miss Havisham, I feel her pain, for she is the epitome of every woman who has been bruised and embittered by romantic love.  Nearly every woman has stopped her clock at least once in her life.  When love disappears, she leaves dirty dishes in the sink, refuses to bathe, and sleeps in her clothes. These are not women who were merely stood up for a dinner date, but women who have felt Shakespeare’s passionate words,  “I love you more than words can wield the matter, Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty.”  Poor Miss Havisham! Perhaps if she had married her Compeyson, in ten years she might have made her clocks go faster, for women in Victorian times, even wealthy ones, were not always content.

How many of us have dark mourning rooms locked inside our lives? Perhaps not from lost love, nor anything too severe, but even a tiny closet full of cobwebbed tangles of unresolved memories can create intermittent paroxysms, getting us in touch with our Miss Havisham feminine sides.  Certainly there are unreasonable bursts of “You go, girl!” to a friend who is contemplating revenge on someone who did her wrong.  Misery loves company and we hardly recognize Miss Havisham when she visits for tea in her tattered wedding dress, enticing us to pamper and powder our wounds and sharpen our claws.  How easy it is to love a chat with Miss Havisham, for surely she was wronged, and surely there have been injustices wrought against us.  The illustrious Charles Dickens writes of Miss Havisham,

“But that, in shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more; that, in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker.”

We know that in the novel, the vengeful Miss Havisham finds redemption for her soul when she begs for Pip to forgive her, although her physical end is imminent. I like happy endings and although she perishes in a fire, the large room of her heart has been cleansed and the curtains have been opened to allow for the light of love in.  It is no news that we, too, will die in the end, but let not the casket of bitterness and hurt also be interred with us.

I once had a tea business called Miss Havisham’s Victorian Teas and my purpose was to create a sensory experience with celebratory food, flowers, china, poetry, and music.  With an eclectic arrangement of china cups and plates, antique hats, and special recipes, I created teas for every occasion, i.e. birthday, anniversary, and wedding.  Sometimes, a tea was created for women to come together for no reason at all, except to affirm and encourage one another, and to clean out the forgotten rooms in our lives.  I wanted my tea business to possess the spirit of Miss Havisham’s redemption, which was the forgiveness that was birthed within her before her death.  I will entice you with one recipe from my tea business that is best served with the laughter and honesty of women friends. It’s Spring and time to air the closed rooms of our hearts to make room for new love, wildness, and healing. Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes in Women Who Run With the Wolves, “If there is to be change, we are it. We carry La Que Sabe, the One Who Knows. If there is to be inner change, individual women must do it. If there is to be world change, we women have our own way of helping to achieve it. Wild Woman whispers the words and the ways to us, and we follow.” Gather together in beauty and share this luscious, and perhaps magical, recipe in the forgiving spirit of Miss Havisham.