Book Launch for Judith, a novel

The book launch and signing for Judith, a novel by Leslie Moïse is this weekend, Saturday, November 9, 2013, 6-8pm at Shine on East Market behind The Green Building. Come enjoy readings from the book, and tales of Leslie's journey researching, completing the manuscript, and her victorious journey and trials while editing the gallies.

You can buy your eBook and hard copy at http://amzn.com/1597190756

PLEASE SHARE and add to your book club's must read list!  Watch this website for book club handouts.

News of Upcoming Book: Judith

Many know how the story of Judith ends.  Widowed before her 20th birthday, Judith has created a life for herself in the small Jewish town of Bethulia.  She depends on her friend and maidservant, Abra, her wise, elderly friend Naomi, and the women of her household.  The Assyrian army, a terror of the ancient world, led by General Holofernes, places Bethulia under siege.  The town magistrate and elders want to surrender, but Judith with her strong faith, has other ideas.  Like David slaying the giant, Judith protects her people against overwhelming odds and superior strength.  She transforms from a humble woman to a heroine.

This much awaited historical fiction work is already receiving praise, coast to coast, and even across the pond.  It's in its final preparations to be published by Pearlsong Press, a publishing company in Nashville Tennessee.  The book is based on the Apocryphal story of Judith, who slane Holofernes. Unfortunately and irritatingly, the Book of Judith had so little about her, so with the support of the Kentucky Foundation for Women, I researched and wrote the historical novel from the perspective of Judith.   I'm honored to have come to know her in the way I meet and share any character's story.

There is tremendous significance for the painting that will serve as the cover of the book.   The particular painting, and there are many depicting Judith, hangs in Florence Italy's Uffizzi, among the museums of  il Polo Museale della citta di Firenze.  It's by Artemisia Gentilechi, an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation after Caravaggio.  Gentilechi was a rape survivor, and was tortured during her rapist's trial where they tried to get her to confess that she had been her rapist's lover. As a rare female painter of her time, her talent, strength and conviction made acquiring the rights to this particular painting of Judith poignant for the cover of the novel.

Some of my loyal readers may notice that several entries by my sister have been removed.  I have decided to not be defined by my medical condition and status.  For the friends and family who continue to stand by me in my path to recovery after suffering a stroke May 2012, my deepest gratitude.

May 2012 Book Tour - Initial Notes

I'm currently on a book tour promoting Love is the Thread.  The focus of this trip has been on the area where much of the book took place, in New England, particularly around Baltimore Maryland. I have many people to thank for making it possible, but among those include the owners of the locations I've appeared, and my friends and family.

I'm booking other appearances, and if you wish to have me come, read, speak, or present on topics relating to love, friendship, loss, the creative process, you can use my contact page here.  

I must say, the gift of friendship is one that always moves me in how subtly and yet how powerfully it can appear.   The readers I've met  move me, some approaching in tears, some being greeted by the warmest smile I can muster through the glistened tears staining my own face.  It's been an emotional journey, not just the first time in the living, but in the telling as I wrote the book, and now each time I share the stories it contains with someone new. 

Today, I'm at The Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival.  It's not over yet, so if you're reading this and are in the area, be sure to come by.  Information can be found at http://www.sheepandwool.org/.


21st Century Radio Interview:

The Heart of a Character

When the idea for Selkie Song first came to me, more than two decades ago, I saw the myth of the selkie as a powerful metaphor for sexual and romantic abuse:  a man met this enchanted fairy creature, a seal in the sea and a woman on dry land, and stole her seal skin, her deep feminine self from her.

This novel has undergone so many deep changes.  Early on, the main character was neither Ben, the young man who discovers the selkie, or Eloyn, the selkie herself.  A third character took center stage, and the story of Ben and Eloyn filtered through the then protagonist's consciousness.  Thanks to Louise Hawes, I realized I was protecting myself from the full impact of Ben and Eloyn's story.  The whole novel shifted.

Now it is shifting again as I revise, though in a subtler way.  (The earlier change dropped the novel from 250 pages to 90; then it grew again in the new direction.)  Now I feel like Ben's heart and soul are fully revealing his true self to me as I revise; some events later in the novel that never felt like he had earned them now flow in a more unified way.

I am grateful for the process of revision, for my experiences as a writer, and for the way both Ben and his story are coming into deeper alignment.

Book Signings

One of my favorite chapters in Peter Mayle's memoirs about Provence centers on Mayle's experiences as a new author.  Readers leave copies of A Year in Provence in the mail box for him to sign, while others show up on the front step and invite themselves in.  That hasn't happened to me yet, but in the last part of the chapter, Mayle describes what it's like to be an author at a book signing, sitting behind a table while people sneak past and stare in any direction except at the writer's face.

Yes, it can be that way sometimes.  Often enough that I wonder why people seem afraid.  We're readers, and we love books; otherwise, we wouldn't be here in the bookstore on a snowy Saturday.  Yet every once in a while, a book buyer scuttles past as if the author on the other side of the book signing table has cooties or might bite.

That said, I had a lovely time at the signing event today at Half Price Books.  The staff were obliging and friendly; one came over to talk with me about Love is the Thread, so she could be informed when she sent people over to see the book.  Later she told me that it looked like I had had a successful day.

Lovely conversations with people about friendship, mine with Kristine, and some that they shared from their own lives.  The author may seem like a different species there on the other side of the author table, but it was delightful to share with people whether they bought a copy or not.  (And yes, some of them did.)  A successful day, indeed.

New Year, New Inspiration

What inspires you?  Whether your inspiration motivates you to create a new story, or create anew in your life, take a moment to look back on those "Aha!" moments that helped you discover a new beginning.

My inspiration for new story ideas has often arisen from strange places.  Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," I once dreamed a story, the middle readers novel The Forest Witch.  Ironically, that old, old manuscript is the one I'll be seeing afresh sometime in the next month or so.  (I have another I'm revising to submit to a publisher.)

Back when I wrote murder mysteries, a whole chain of plot and character ideas came to me after I watched the first five minutes of a movie on television, then had to hop in the car to drive to an appointment.  The foundation for the book unfolded in my mind as I drove.  (In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron describes the creative inspiration often triggered by being in motion, whether that motion is walking or running outdoors, or being in a car.)

For a while I kept a notebook and pen on the passenger seat in my car.  Ultimately, I decided writing while driving was just too dangerous.

Inspiration for poems tends to flood me only when I'm in love.  As far as inspiration for daily life goes--well, maybe I'll write about that next time!

Revision

I just read the review of a novel that took its author more than twenty years to create.  The book received a wow of a review, which made me feel better since I first had the idea for my novel Selkie Song more than fifteen years ago. 

Selkie has undergone dozens of revisions over the years, some of the deepest innitiated by writers' groups or workshops I've attended.  I am in the process now of editing the novel to send to an independent press.  Inspired by the feedback at the most recent meeting of my current writers' group, Scribbling Women, I am looking at every word, every sentence, every paragraph and chapter through fresh eyes.  

One of my sister writers asked me to contemplate how I would tell the story of sixteen-year-old Ben Corbin and Eloyn, the seal woman he discovers and saves, if I were writing it for the first time now.  Ben is so different already from the character as I originally imagined him, I resisted my group member's suggestion at first.  Now I feel Ben's story opening up in a new way, and I am endlessly grateful.  

Will keep you posted on the journey of Selkie Song as it unfolds.  Wishing all of you a very Happy New Year!

The Gift

This is the season for contemplating gifts.  What we plan to give someone we love, what we hope we'll be given as well.

I once read that the purpose of life is simple--we must discover our gift, hone it, and then give the gift back to life.  We must share what we've been given, whether that's a gift for painting, for parenting, for creating pottery or delicious meals.  My gift is for story, writing and telling them.

As we move toward the New Year of 2012, I hope you spend some time contemplating your innate gifts and new ways you can discover to share.

Christmas Gift!

A friend of mine has a family with an amusing Christmas tradition.  They have a contest every Christmas day to see who can shout "Christmas gift!" before anyone else does.  My friend told me that one Christmas she phoned her sister at 12:01 a.m. and shouted "Christmas gift!" when her sister picked up the phone, sleepy and incoherent.  Yes, it counted as a win.

The tradition has roots in the Civil War, when those who could not afford Christmas gifts would tell the people they wanted to give a present, "Christmas gift!" in lieu of handing them a memento.  (There's a scene in Gone with the Wind when Uncle Peter says,  "Christmas gift, Mr. Rhett!"  Now you know what Peter's saying and why, if you didn't already.)

My friend knows the source of her family's annual joke.  I have my own plans for how I'll participate in the game this year, but I have also been thinking about the

significance of the phrase.  The desire to give to someone we love matters more than the physical gift.  My best Christmas gift arrived this year when my sister sent me a video of my niece Greta Jo "reading" Love is the Thread.  At the close of the snip, Greta Jo says, "love Leslie.  Love Leslie."  (She actually says, "wove Wesee," but I know what she means.)

I'm not feeling the need for physical gifts to unwrap after that.  And oh  by the way:  "CHRISTMAS GIFT!"  

Knitting

It's certainly knitting weather.

I have a summer weight project I worked on occasionally during the hot months of the year, but cold allows me to knit with my favorite extra bulky projects.  Yesterday during the pottery sale and book signing event, I knitted away at my new red shawl.  (A friend recently told me, "Women who were red get what they want," and I've taken it to heat!  Plus my mother gifted me with half a dozen skeins of red yarn.)

Anyway, as I knitting yesterday, one of the sale participants told me I was creating my own cozy blanket as I knitted!  Not quite a blanket, but my knees and legs were beautiully blanketed with red as I knitted between readings and signings.

You know, there are some things I love about winter.

Let's set sail in a Friend Ship

For a long time my oldest niece Greta Jo only wanted to read one book, All My Friends are Dead.  The picture book features outsized type, a subtle ecological message, and enough black humor to keep adults entertained.  One section features two men marooned on a tiny island.  "The only ship we need is a friend ship," says one character, while the second buries his face in his hands.

Yesterday while I read limited excerpts from Love is the Thread to the knitting circle at Friends and Fiber, (limited because so many women protested they wanted to buy the book and read it for themselves!) I thought about that Friend Ship.  The women gathered around the table to listen to my book were nominally in the shop to knit and receive help from Vicki, the owner.

While I read about my friend, Kristine, I listened to the clustered women share recipes for holiday cookies and apple cider, discuss what each was knitting, fondle luscious yarn, and share their own stories.  When I'd been at the table more than an hour, one woman straightened up and laughed.  "I've done two stitches the whole time I've been here," she said.

We were seated around a table, surrounded by a beautiful selection of yarn, nibbling treats and drinking wonderful hot cider.  We were actually in full sail on the Friend Ship.  No wonder she hadn't gotten much knitting done.

The treasure we discovered?  Both on the page and in the room, women's friendship shared.

Partying with Writers!

In How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead, Ariel Gore offers some amusing and useful thoughts on the successful launch party for a book.  Instead of a stuffy event, make the launch a real celebration with food, fun and a friendly atmosphere.  Last night the celebration of the publication of Love is the Thread  included plenty of food and fun to go around, with old friends and new rounding out the crowd.

Pushcart Prize nominated poet Sheri Wright and I played a spirited hand of Rock, Paper, Scissors for the right to be the first to take the stage at the Bard's Town, 1801 Bardstown Road.  While the crowd enjoyed the locally owned eatery's witty menu, clever descriptions and food, I suppose it should come as no surprise that, as writers, Sheri and I both went for "paper" first!  Sheri won the tie breaker and opened the evening with a selection of her insightful, incisive poetry.  (I was happy to leave with a signed copy of one of her books, Contains Scenes of Indigenous Nudity tucked under my arm.)

Writers aren't rock stars, as Sheri herself has said, but I loved sharing excerpts from my newly published book.  The stage lights dazzled me almost as much as the sounds of laughter from the audience during the funny moments in one chapter, and the not-so-muffled sobs during "The Ebony Needles."  Every writer dreams of moving readers.  Thanks to everyone who came out on a chilly December evening to celebrate the launch my first book into the world!

Remembering the season's purpose

What are the most important gifts you've received in your lifetime?

Every Christmas Eve of my childhood, I lulled myself to sleep with memories of all the Christmas mornings I could recall.  I pictured my parents as they urged my sisters and I into our bathrobes and slippers.  My mother stayed with us at the top of the stairs while my father turned on the Christmas tree lights.  At last our parents let us rush downstairs and take down our stockings.  After we discovered the candy canes with their handmade stick horse head covers, my parents made us sit down and take turns opening our presents one by one.  Later I understood this meant we could appreciate each other's gifts and not just focus greedily on our own.

I continued my Christmas Eve ritual well into my teens, until my childhood Christmases blurred together.  Certain exceptional holiday mornings stood out, like the Christmas my sisters and I got a gift that did not fit under the tree:  Freckles, our first pony.  Difficult to gift wrap something with four legs!  (Especially a creature as hard to catch as Freckles turned out to be.)

With Love is the Thread just beginning its second week of publication, you may expect me to feel most grateful for the gift of becoming a published author.  Yes, that gift is very close to the top of my list.  But as the seasons shift toward autumn into winter and the longest night of the year approaches, I'm contemplating gifts I've received that cannot be wrapped any easier than Freckles.  The gift of Kristine's friendship, which inspired me to write Love is the Thread.  The gift of every relationship that brought me to her door in the first place, and all the friends who have grown into my life because of Kristine.

The gift that allows me to string words together, and the thoughts and emotions they represent.  The gift of sharing those words with you.

Eyes, Mind, Heart

This morning an event took place that I have imagined many times during my life.  All right, I always pictured tearing open an envelope as opposed to clicking open an email, but aside from that little detail . . .

I opened the message.  It read:  "I had to force myself to put your book down last night so I could get some sleep."

As a reader, I'm very familiar with the bleary-eyed moment when I close the book I've just finished, blink at the gray light pressed against the windows, and realize that I've read an entire book in a single night.  As a writer, I've spent many nights hunched over the keyboard while my characters whispered or shouted in my ear and I tried to keep pace with what they had to share with me.  But this is the first time my words kept another human being awake because the reader just had to know what happened next.

Last week when I learned that Love is the Thread was already available on Kindle, with the trade paperback soon to follow, I felt thrilled.  At last, years of work had resulted in a book in readers' hands, in their minds.  And on Monday morning when I opened the email, I felt more than thrilled.  I felt the joy that my words had passed through a reader's eyes and mind and into her heart.

Diction

I was the kind of geeky kid who took extra long to finish my spelling homework because I got distracted by words glimpsed on the dictionary page, words that had nothing to do with my assignment.  (I took extra long to complete math homework for other reasons too embarrassing to describe here, but all too easy for you to imagine.)  When I read the first of Terry Pratchett's delightful Tiffany Aching novels, The Wee Free Men, I immediately identified with Tiffany.  She read the whole dictionary from front to back.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, a new computer has entered my life within the last ten days or so.  A couple of things irk me about the new hardware; if there's a simple way to print a single page from the middle of a manuscript I've yet to discover it.  (By simple, I mean a button that reads "print current page."  I can print according to page number, but for reasons I won't go into here that can be a little dicey.)

Today I discovered an unexpected quality in the new 'puter that made me laugh outloud, so loudly I scared Gizmo, my little whippet, clean out of his nap under my chair.  He actually shot out of the room for a minute, then crept back in with all due caution.  My former computer's thesaurus function was easy to use and sophisticated enough in its offerings that a critique partner of mine once forbade me to use it for a week.  "I can tell when you've looked up alternative words," she scolded me.

Occasionally I bewailed the fact that old 'puter had a rather formal stance when it came to language options.  Today I discovered that my slick new machine has no such qualms.  I looked up the word "pricked" on the thesaurus in an attempt to select a more accurate word for what happens when a soldier holds a sword point to someone's throat.  Apparently my computer mistook the word for a noun rather than a verb.  A shockingly long list of slang terms popped up.  (Puns intentional.)

I'm warming up to the new computer.  Gizmo has started to eye it with suspicion. (And yes, I chose the title for this post on purpose.)

Deep in the past

Elsewhere on this site I've described my earlier (false) belief that I would never write a work of nonfiction.  Not false, exactly, just later proven untrue--witness the upcoming publication of my memoir Love is the Thread.  I never thought I would write a work of historical fiction, either.

One of the key members in the first writers group I ever joined wrote historical fiction.  I admired and respected her.  Her books carried me back into the past.  Because of her, I read other historical fiction, from mysteries to the occasional romance novel.  (Without realizing it, I had savored a historical mystery fairly early in my reading career.  Agatha Christie's Death Comes as the End, set in ancient Egypt.  Quite a trend setter, Dame Agatha.)

But I recognized the weight of research needed to underpin that type of story.  Delving into my characters and their feelings, drafting, revision and editing provided me with more than enough work to do.  That was my opinion.

What happened?  I found the women of the Apocrypha fascinating from the first time I discovered they existed, one rainy day when I was nine years old.  Stuck inside the house all afternoon, I tugged an old book out of the shelves built beside the fireplace, and the heating duct my sisters and I always fought over when the weather turned chilly.

As I turned the stiff, oversized pages I had no idea I had just embarked on the research for my first (only?) historical novel, to be written a number of decades later. I only knew these women from long ago, in a time and place I could barely picture, set my imagination alight.

Today I walked beside one of those women as she approached the encampment peopled with her tribe's enemies.  Judith and her friend and maidservant Abra left their village to weave their way past hundreds of Assyrian soldiers.  Would they reach the safety--and graver danger--of the general's pavilion?

Even though I spent a week in a university library earlier this year studying the type of swords, the kind of armor worn by the Assyrians, and even though I am on the seventh or eighth version of the chapter, I trembled along with those two ancient women, and had to squint at the clock in the corner of my computer screen when an incipient headache and rumbling stomach brought me back to the present era.

I don't know why I ever doubted a foray into historical fiction.  I love my character.  And I love traveling with her deep into the past.

Real Magic

This is about writing and magic.  Wait for it.

A good friend and wise teacher of mine recently said someone asked her if she believes in magic.  My friend said, "Of course I do.  Have you ever looked at a baby?  Have you ever noticed how the baby changes from an infant into a baby, into a pre-toddler, into a toddler, into a child?  That's magic.  LIFE is magical."

Our capacity to learn language as children, simply by hearing others speak, is part of that magic.  Today I accompanied my sister, my brother-in-law and my two little nieces to Greta Jo, the two year old's second riding lesson.  Greta Jo very clearly communicated her feelings and needs during our time in the barn and her time in the saddle.  Every new word was a discovery, from "Bridle" to "Bit!" and "Saddle!"  She conveyed he excitement with, "Up?  Pony.  Saddle!" 

On the drive home, Greta Jo's little sister munched on a teething cracker.  Scrunched up next to the girls in their car seats, I grinned into Clara's blue eyes.  "You like your cracker? 

She straightened up a little, looked straight at me.  Thinking before she said, "Cwacker."  She studied me another moment, as if to make sure I understood, and then laughed.  She knew the name of something.  She said the name, and she knew I understood her.  A magical moment in both our lives.

It still awes me that writers receive the divine gift of taking words, putting them on paper, and creating a story.  That's magical, too.

Marketing

I listened to a delightful teleseminar the other night about marketing for authors.  The speakers, a famous author and well-known promoter, described me to a T, even though we've never met.  (Yet, anyway.)  Most authors are introverted and spend most of their time alone with a keyboard and the people who exist inside them, head to soul.  To succeed as an author,the speakers said, a writer needs to tap into the extrovert part of him or herself.

I have always been very close to the mid-line when it comes to introvert/extrovert tendencies.  For several years now, I've recognized that I'm about 51% introvert and 49% extrovert.  Though I've been shaking the trees about Love is the Thread, organizing readings and signings, the teleconference made me consider how my personality relates to the life I am creating for myself AND for my work.

I'll be thinking about this for a long time.  But I'll be acting on it even longer.  It's time for that 51% -- 49% introvert/extrovert proportion of my personality to flip flop.

Stormy Weather

As the weather makes one of its muscular leaps away from summer and into fall, with a drop in the temperatures and the wind whining around the eaves, I've had a writer day that reflects the tempestuous skies.  Lots of backing and forthing as the publisher and I work with the lovely woman who is working on a blurb for the back cover, under an ever tightening deadline.

All that happened before I sat down with the edits for a client's self-help manuscript, took another run through the beginning of Part II of Judith (I'm about a third of the way through the fine tuning) and also did some shamanic journeying work for another client.

Also completed the nineth issue of my zine, Memory Stick, which is appropriately enough about the weather.  Feeling a little storm tossed tonight, but I've always enjoyed a good storm.

Nearsightedness and Nature

Such a splendid, sparkling morning yesterday.  I've been building up the distance I walk a day, and yesterday it was easy to stay outside.  Sunlight glinted on the grass.  The sycamore leaves applauded as Gizmo and I strolled past.  I could watch long coils of wind toss through the trees the entire length of the ten acre farm.

I realized I've spent a good bit of time lately with my nearsighted eyes less than a foot away from the computer screen, or nearly that close to my manuscript or that of a client.  Characters live in one world, and we live in this one.  In my drive to help bring my characters' world to life (ditto for my clients' characters) I've forgotten the need to replenish myself out in the real world beyond the computer.

Today and yesterday have offered ideal opportunities to do that.