Tag: TSOT

If globes were square

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I should know better than to write that I will update my blog more regularly.

I returned home from Arizona into a whirlwind of cleaning and rearranging. After the wide open spaces and skies of Arizona, the flow of the living room felt off, cluttered. We moved one of the bookcases up to our bedroom and shifted the furniture of the living room around so that it now feels more airy.

My friend Al and her two boys arrived from Paris, and the older kids attended science camp, while the younger three went to summer camp. This week we have free to explore Chicago and have random kid-generated adventures. It’s good having them here. I miss our lazy sleep-deprived afternoons in Frankfurt from oh-so-many-years ago, and I’m grateful for this time to reconnect.

Then the Fourth of July brought family aplenty at a bbq/family reunion hosted by my parents. Good to have chats with cousins I haven’t seen since the last family shower. Kids and cat survived nightlong fireworks well enough, although I fell asleep in my youngest daughter’s bed with contacts in.

This week brings decisions about the cover and release party for The Silence of Trees, calls and emails to secure special guests and entertainment for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, and preparation for an online class I’ll be teaching it the Fall.

I also plan to start reading my next book to the kids (S.C.). It’s the first that’s age appropriate, and though I tell my children stories randomly on walks, at bedtime, and so on, I am excited to share my written words with them. We’ll see what they think.

Today with a dash of cinnamon

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This weekend I saw a dear friend of mine who had just finished reading my manuscript (Update: The Silence of Trees is with my agent, who is shopping it around to the next round of publishers), and she shared with me an observation that no one has ever brought to my attention:

TSOT has a lot of coffee in it.

This made me laugh, AND take pause. It was certainly not intentional, but once I thought about it, I could see that coffee was often present: the ritual of a morning cup, the luxury of coffee during WWII, the comfort of coffee with a dear friend, and so on.

How very interesting and not altogether surprising.


"After all, coffee is bitter, a flavor from the forbidden and dangerous realm."
— Diane Ackerman

The Gravity of Art

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Back in Fall of 2007, I was living in Germany with my family. While we had been having adventures and traveling internationally, I had grown out of touch with my writing and the larger creative world.

I looked around and found a door to that creative world online: I entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. From that contest, I met a  group of talented, dedicated writers, and with editorial support from several of them, I began the literary magazine Conclave: A Journal of Character.

Through this chain of creative people, I also met several LJ friends, among them Trillian Stars ( ) and her now-husband Kyle Cassidy (). When given the chance to attend their wedding party in Philadelphia last Fall, I went and met a new bunch of fabulous, creative people from around the country. Combine that experience with my work on the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame and the unexpected phenomenon of Twitter, and I cannot believe how many talented writers and artists and musicians I have met and reconnected with over the last 3 years. This is just the beginning!

The Gravity of Art

That’s what Kyle Cassidy called it in his blog, and I loved the phrase (Kyle, I hope that you don’t that I’m using it?) It captures the phenomenon so well–when you are engaged and passionate about creating, you become a force of attraction.

I’m wrapping up Conclave and hope to have it printed later this month. I cannot wait to get back to revising the novel I completed last Fall, and I have some decisions to make about The Silence of Trees. I’m excited about the progress of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, and some other projects that Chicago friends are working on in photography, music, video, and theater. There are other top-secret projects in the works. 2010 has such potential!

The Gravity of Art: it’s a powerful thing, an inspiring thing, an exhilarating thing.

The interior of our home is nearly finished. I want Casa del Lobos to be a nexus, a center for the gravity of art, a place frequented by creative people, a place where my kids will grow up seeing people making art, talking about art, living lives of passion and integrity.

Do you know about the Parisian Salons of the 17th century and 18th century? They were gatherings of artists, writers, philosophers, etc. to amuse and educate. The salons were revived in the 1920s in Paris and London. Some of the greatest writers and artists, readers and thinkers of the time met at those salons. Wouldn’t it be something to recreate that kind of time and space set aside for the discussion of art and literature in its many forms?

Casa del Lobos is just waiting for the chance.