Saturday, August 29, 2015

Grier Cooper - Authors in August


Grier began ballet lessons at age five and left home at fourteen to study at the School of American Ballet in New York. She has performed on three out of seven continents with companies such as San Francisco Ballet, Miami City Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet, totaling more than thirty years of experience as a dancer, teacher and performer.

She writes and blogs about dance in the San Francisco Bay Area and has interviewed and photographed a diverse collection of dancers and performers including Clive Owen, Nicole Kidman, Glen Allen Sims and Jessica Sutta. She is the author of WISH, a ballet fiction novel for young adults.



Links:




I wipe sweat from my face and neck while we take a quick break to switch into our pointe shoes for Variations at the end of class. I tie my ribbons slowly and carefully. My tired brain feels foggy; plus it keeps replaying little vignettes of Jesse.
“Are you still inhabiting this planet or are you visiting Swoon Lake again?” Monique whispers furtively. She widens her eyes, jerking her head toward the windows. I look over to find Miss Roberta staring at me intently.
If she notices my lack of focus I will never hear the end of it.
Miss Roberta claps sharply. “All right, girls. We will repeat the variation we learned last week, from the top.” Oh man. Not that one again. “Indigo will demonstrate.”
I take my place in the center of the room. The music starts and I’m already moving, my mind several seconds ahead of the music. I have to anticipate what comes next so I stay in time with the melody. Arabesque and hoooold. It feels like an eternity. I come out of the arabesque too early again. My tired body won’t cooperate; my limbs feel like they’re stuck in honey.
 “Pull up, Indigo! Hold the arabesque!”
I move back across the floor, hit the arabesque again.
“Pull in the midsection! Breathe in!!” Miss Roberta is rabid.
My back muscles are screaming, legs all rubbery, the obvious and fatal signs of fatigue.
The music ends abruptly.  “Indigo, this has got to stop. What is with you today? This is just sloppy and unacceptable. It won’t cut it – here or anywhere else.”
I stand crouched with hands braced on bent knees, catching my breath as her words rain down on my bowed head. I can’t meet Miss Roberta’s eyes. I know she’s right. I place my hands on my thighs and bend over to catch my breath before responding.
“Marlene. Please come forward and show it from the top.”
Marlene walks past me with her nose in the air. She takes her place in the center of the floor and the others back away to give her space. When our eyes meet in the mirror, she raises an eyebrow at me and smirks.
She performs the variation flawlessly.
Class ends and I scurry to the dressing room with my head still down. I throw my clothes on and root through my bag in search of my socks.
There’s a loud thonk to my left as someone slams their dance bag on the chair next to me. I don’t have to look at it to know it’s metallic purple with a blingy heart charm.
“How does it feel?” Marlene leans in close to speak in a low tone.
 “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I don’t look at her.
“Simple. You take something from me, I take something from you.”
“Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t think I don’t see what you’re up to. Jesse is mine,” she snarls.
I look up at her and feel my eyes go buggy. “Are you kidding? People are not property. What is wrong with you?” She snorts. “Today proves everything’s right with me. Maybe you should be asking yourself what’s wrong with you.” She leans in so our faces are inches apart. “Back off while you still can or I’ll take it all.”

-- excerpt taken from "Wish"

When I wrote WISH I wanted to give readers an insider’s perspective of ballet. Dance has been one of the few constants in my life–it's really shaped who I am in the world today. Readers have said the ballet scenes are one of the things they've most enjoyed about the book so this excerpt seemed like the obvious choice.  Most people don’t get to experience the ballet world firsthand and they're curious about what it's like. 

This piece also highlights some of the main character's struggles. Indigo finds it increasingly difficult to keep her life balanced and must ultimately make some tough choices about what's important and the actions she must take to make her dreams real. I remember going through these same struggles during my teens. There were lots of competing pressures and I didn't feel empowered or in charge of my life. The teen years are such a transitional time–a time of figuring out who you are, who you want to be, and finding your voice. I think it's common to feel isolated and alone, particularly when you're going through challenging times. It's easy to feel like you're the only one having a hard time. But that's not true. I think it's comforting know there are others going through the same stuff... and there are ways to get through it all gracefully.

Grier Cooper
August 2015

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Domenic Priore - Authors in August





Domenic Priore is the author of Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock 'n' Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood (revised edition out in September 2015), Pacific Ocean Park: The Rise and Fall of Los Angeles' Space Age Nautical Pleasure Pier (with Christopher Merritt), Beatsville (with Martin McIntosh), Pop Surf Culture: Music, Design, Film and Fashion From the Bohemian Surf Boom (with Brian Chidester) and Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece.  This fall will see the release of Priore's tenth book, a collaboration with '60s girl group and Shindig! singer Donna Loren on the Rare Bird Lit imprint.  He wrote the booklet notes for The Beach Boys: Smile Sessions box set (Capitol) as well as the DVD booklet for The Decline of Western Civilization Collection (Shout! Factory).  Priore was the primary writer for the two-part AMC documentary series Hollywood Rocks The Movies, hosted by Ringo Starr and David Bowie.



Beyond the scope of these center-of-attention structures was Sunset Boulevard itself, which winds romantically through the Hollywood Hills in a manner where curves seem to bend with the texture of the architecture.  After passing the majestic Ciro’s on a modest, regal incline, subtle things began to consume one’s sensory awareness, such as the left curve at the (Modernist) Trousdale Apartments, sweeping downhill through the area where the Sea Witch, Dino’s Lodge, Fred C. Dobbs’ coffeehouse, the Playboy Club, the Trip and Ben Frank’s melded into the ’20s colonial structures of the Sunset Plaza.  The panorama from the corner of Sunset and La Cienega faces Southwest over the incline, creating a mystical turn of the wheel as it overlooks the most angular vista in the region.   

What spread out before you were endless streams of twinkling lights, from Richard Neutra and Pierre Koenig homes in the hills above, to the far-reaching residential horizon below.  This hiway veranda funneled into neon club marquees ahead, with the ocean peeking through in the distance.  Sky-reaching movie-premiere klieg lights (somewhere in the distance) often accentuated the view.  These combined with the houselights to flesh out a dazzling array like pixie dust from Tinkerbell’s wand.

Much like the club in The Jetsons, Sunset Strip of the mid-’60s truly felt as if one could be floating in outer space, while still having a foot on the ground in a “city of the stars.”  The whole Space Age motif had been set up and was in place.  To step out onto the street in this atmosphere, buzzing from an intimate performance by the Byrds, Them, Love, the Velvet Underground or any of the bands playing regularly on the Strip, and to be surrounded by foot traffic hipping you to an equally compelling show witnessed just down the street was shared euphoria.

L.S.D.-25 was available and legal until October 6, 1966…Lysergic Acid Diethylamide accompanied many a trip to these cubes, bubbles and aeronautically designed take-off pads.  The musicians inside provided wide-angle delivery of navigational planes.  Though acid was around, unprecedented surrealism existed in the allied arts prevalent on Sunset Strip, precluding that L.S.D. wasn’t necessary to feel sky high.

Mid-’60s Sunset Strip represented a most successful application of the Space Age Pop motif grafted onto urban Modernism, Art Deco and 20th Century curvilinear street layout.  The survey, engineering and roadway alignment itself dramatically complements the contour of the hills and their scenic merit.  Like the panoramic sound in the middle break of the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” the Futurama utopia aspect reached a pinnacle with its jangling fusion of Space Age design and a full culmination of Dada, Surrealism, Cubism, Bauhaus and Modernism in the early stages of the proto-Psychedelic movement.  These diverse elements at work in the sound, art and architecture of ’60s L.A. encompassed all the loose ends of science and physics like Einstein’s unified field theory.

Pop art made the future seem present.  The ethereal, otherworldly outer space experiences on the Strip made real the dreams first presented at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.  That vision of the future, which seemed all-important during the depression, had come to life… the future concept was now, in operation and Pop in the setting of ’50s and ’60s Los Angeles.

A drive to the Strip’s central plexus at La Cienega brought about a singular vision that you couldn’t drive past and not notice, coming or going: Dino’s Lodge.  It sat smack-dab in the middle of the Sea Witch, Fred C. Dobbs’, the Playboy Club, the Trip and Ben Frank’s.  Nothing made you feel that you were in the center of the dream known as Hollywood more than witnessing Dean Martin’s lackadaisical mug flashing in alternating red and white neon, emblazoned over the most crowded area of Sunset Strip.

A person became suspended in that futuristic dream at its animated zenith.  It was as if some elusive, illicit thrill was upon you.  If anyplace was swingin’, this was it.  The exterior of Dino’s Lodge had been foretold as the Holy Grail since its use in 77 Sunset Strip, a destination where one could explode in rapture upon arrival.  Such was the imagery and effect of the signage at Dino’s Lodge, a precipice of forbidden ecstasy that incredible live music in the surrounding area intensified.

Early Crawdaddy! journalist Sandy Pearlman understood the draw of this beacon; “If you’re a human being, a real human being, not a punkoid or a subhuman, the first place you’d head for upon hitting the Strip would be Dino’s, better known as 77 Sunset Strip.  Better known as Great.  Your roots are there.  My roots are there.”

The energy of dancing and nightlife could not be contained after a wild show, as Eve Babitz explained:  “When L.S.D. was the rage, everyone would leave the Strip at 2:00 a.m. when the clubs closed and go to Canter’s en masse so blasted out of their heads that if you asked someone what time it was they backed away, wide-eyed, as though you’d presented them with a philosophical impossibility.”

--from "Riot on Sunset Strip - Rock 'n' Roll's Last Stand on Hollywood"




"I selected this text for several reasons, and one of them very ironic and current.  If you were to drive down Sunset Boulevard right this minute you'll see the entire two blocks I'm describing completely torn down, and new high-rise structures going up in their place.  I guess it had to go away, after all, the Dino's Lodge building had been stucco'd over and a floor had built on top of the original building frame.  Sea Witch, you could see where the original entrance stairs were but nothing remained... the club closed in 1967, Dino's closing in the '70s.  A lot of my work, such as the 2014 book with Christopher Merritt Pacific Ocean Park: The Rise and Fall of Los Angeles' Space Age Nautical Pleasure Pier has a preservationist feeling to it, while giving off the full colorful history and fun of it all.  With my own Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock 'n' Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood, there's also that thing of the sociological movement young people were getting involved in, the political, and protest aspects.  Kids are doing this in a media center where things can be heard.  This part of the book is the section that talks about how the animation industry in Hollywood during the '60s took a lot of cues from that movement, and popular culture itself was manufacturing social consciousness as a product."

"Later, of course, that whole trip was illuminated at end of the Mad Men television series.  But this exposure to a new way doesn't come out of nothing, the appropriation actually came out of some magic, laced with a bit of science.  I did try to capture a feeling that I had the very first time I drove down Sunset Strip on a Saturday night in 1966 (with my uncle, mom and brother) and saw all those kids on the street, and heard all that music coming out of the walls of those clubs.  Socially conscious Byrds, Zappa & the Mothers, Doors, Buffalo Springfield, Love,  Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, Chambers Brothers, Brenton Wood, Mamas & Papas, Stone Poneys, Sonny & Cher, Standells, Seeds, Music Machine,  Bobby Fuller Four, Thee Midniters, Electric Prunes, Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band-type music.  That's what was really shaking up the town. You had all that in L.A. clubs during 1965 and 1966."

Domenic Priore
August 2015







Saturday, August 15, 2015

Karen Finlay - Authors in August



Karen Finlay (not to be mistaken with the “other” Karen Finley) has her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, and was the recipient of the Ardella Mills Scholarship and The Marion Boess Haworth Award.  Her work can be seen on karennfinlay.com, Muni Diaries, and Facebook status updates.  She has been honored to read her work at Litquake, Beast Crawl, Tilde, The Art Beat Foundation, Carried-Away Productions, The Mixing Bowl Reading Series, The Rebel Reading Series, and The Mission Creek Festival.  She is working on a Young Adult novel and a collection of personal essays about teen angst, a subject in which she is very well versed.  She likes pina coladas but hates getting caught in the rain.



I stayed home and read a lot, and watched a lot of TV.  Holden Caulfield and James Dean became my idols—glorious misfits who didn’t worry about sweaters.  I wanted to hang out with them, not the stupid kids at my stupid school.  I couldn’t wait until junior high was over, and I would finally be in high school.  There I would blossom!  There I would be terrific!  There I would be with hundreds of new kids who didn’t know anything about me!  There I would blend into the crowd and everyone would forget how ugly I was, and there nobody would be mean to me anymore. It didn’t quite happen that way, because I discovered the Go-Go’s.

One day in eighth grade, my mother and I went to Sun Valley Mall, a few weeks before Christmas.  After separating from her while she went to buy “new towels” (Christmas presents), I went into Musicland to see if they had the new Journey album, Escape.  It had not one but two hit songs.  I was an avid KFRC top 40 listener, and I saved up my allowance to buy new singles that I had heard.  We didn’t have a built in tape player in our stereo, so I would sit quietly next to the stereo speaker in the family room with my tape recorder, taping songs off the radio.  Inevitably my dog would come in and bark or the phone would ring or my mother would start vacuuming, so all of my tapes were pretty much useless, and I needed to buy the records in order to hear my favorite songs.  I didn’t have a big collection, unless you counted Little Golden Records Presents the Story of The Waterbabies and Disney’s Country Bear Jamboree.  I really liked listening to my sister’s old Beatles and Monkees records but they were really old fashioned, and I wanted something new.  I’d heard Journey’s latest hits “Don’t Stop Believin’” and “Open Arms” on KFRC, and I was all set to buy the whole album.  I didn’t even like Journey very much, but everyone was talking about it, so I needed it.  It was played the weekend before at the winter dance, where I had sat with the rest of my friends on the sidelines in folding chairs, eating sugar cookies and pretending that we didn’t care that we weren’t asked to dance.  I hadn’t really expected to be, even though I had worn Love’s Baby Soft cologne and my Fair Isle sweater and corduroy knickers that I had saved especially for the occasion.  The last song of the night was “Open Arms,” and we all watched wistfully as couples swayed in the dark gym, the girls sticking their hands in the boys’ rear pockets, while we gathered our coats and left early to wait outside for our parents to pick us up.

 I wanted the record so that I could listen to those songs and lay on my bed and daydream about slow dancing with a boy someday.  Besides, I wanted a new record to play on the new stereo I was sure I would be getting for Christmas in a few weeks.  I had dropped enough hints and driven my parents crazy about it, so I was pretty positive I was going to be able to kiss my Mickey Mouse record player goodbye and have the real thing.  I had also seen the box when I was “looking for some change” in their closet one day when they weren’t home, and unless it was for someone else, I was going to be the proud owner of a stereo with a built in tape deck.  I couldn’t wait, and kept myself busy practicing my surprised reaction.

On my way to the “J” section, something caught my eye, and I stopped short at the “G’s”.  There was an album by a group that I had never heard of before, that had not reached KFRC yet. That wasn’t surprising – KFRC wasn’t exactly cutting edge, constantly playing “Arthur’s Theme” and “Endless Love” and a lot of Air Supply which all sounded the same to me—and there was a lot of music out there that I had no idea existed.  I wasn’t terribly adventurous or wealthy enough with my paltry allowance that I got for feeding the dog and other odd chores to buy records by groups I’d never heard on the radio.  But something about this one intrigued me.  The cover was blue, with five girls in towels and facemasks on the cover.  Hmmm.  “The Go-Go’s” it said, Beauty and the Beat.  I flipped it over.  The back cover was speckled pink and blue, with pictures of the five Go-Go’s in bathtubs doing glamorous activities; pouring champagne, reading a racy romance novel and eating chocolates, talking on the phone, smelling a rose, wielding drumsticks.  And best of all, they didn’t look like anyone I knew.  They didn’t have big hair like Stevie Nicks or the soft focused looks of Olivia Newton-John.  They looked more like the “Don’t” in my Teen magazines.  These girls had on lots of fun jewelry and makeup, even surrounded by bubbles.  And the song titles – “Skidmarks on My Heart”, “Our Lips Are Sealed”, “We Got the Beat”?  Forgetting Journey, I marched right up to the counter with it.

 Once home, I took the record downstairs to the basement to listen to it uninterrupted.  I opened it up, put it on, and looked at the record sleeve.  There they were again in different photos, in their short haired, funky glory.  The record label itself looked like confetti.  And the first song sounded like confetti—a joyous, jangly melody with guitars and tambourines and “hey hey heys” that made me want to spin and bounce wildly.  I had fallen in love with records before, but this was different.  When Donna Summer sang about “Bad Girls” and Hall & Oates sang about “Private Eyes,” I didn’t really have much of a clue as to what they were talking about.  But the Go-Go’s --  “Our Lips are Sealed” spoke to me – me!  “Pay no mind to what they say/ It doesn’t matter anyway”.  Hey hey hey!  Thank you, Go-Go’s!  That was exactly what I needed to hear.  I didn’t know these girls, but they were sharing my dilemma with me, something my “real” friends didn’t do.  That night, Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, Gina Schock, Kathy Valentine, and Charlotte Caffey became my new best friends.  The beat was so happy, so infectious, that my head started bobbing and my shoulders and feet followed.  In the dim light of our basement, I danced with them.  I didn’t need a partner to stick my hands into butt pockets with like at school dances, or had to do some interpretive crap like what Ms.Scoma made us do in my despised PE class.  I really danced around, jumping up and down unself- consciously, not caring about anything but the music.  If anyone had appeared in the basement and seen me, I wouldn’t have even noticed. 

When I got too tired of dancing, I studied their pictures on the record sleeve.  “Belinda Carlisle—lead vocals” had a big bow and giant earrings, and “Gina Schock—drums & percussion” was blowing a big kiss.  None of them had stupid feathered hair.   They all looked so cool and happy, so sure of themselves.  “I bet they don’t care what anyone thinks of them,” I thought.  Each time the record ended, I flipped it over and played it again and again, until the beginning crackled when the needle hit it and my mother told me to turn it off and go to bed.  I even missed “Dynasty”; I was so busy getting the beat.  I couldn’t wait until after school the next day to go home and play it again.

          I felt as though I had discovered something.  There were other people out there in the world that were just as weird as I was, but they were doing something about it.  They were wearing offbeat clothes that obviously didn’t come from Macy’s and makeup that wasn’t like a Teen Magazine makeover, and playing in bands and writing music that expressed the way they felt instead of sappy love songs or getting “Physical” that I couldn’t relate to at all.  And I liked it!  I studied the album cover and memorized all the lyrics.  I felt as though the Go-Go’s were mine somehow – they hadn’t been played on the radio yet, and I had never heard anybody at school talk about them.  For the first time I liked being set apart.  I felt special, like I was part of something bigger than I had ever known before.  “I just got the new Go-Go’s album last night,” I remarked airily to everyone at school the next day. “Who?”  Poor, unworldly souls.  They had no clue.

Of course within a few months, The Go-Go’s were on every radio station and everyone had the album.  But since I had it first, I was cool!  I had found it all on my own with no one else telling me I needed it, even before it was reviewed in Teen Magazine’s “Hot Picks”.  I had finally been first at something, instead of being in the middle or nearer to the last like in choosing teams for softball.  It made me feel more okay that I was an outsider – it gave me a freedom that I hadn’t had since sixth grade.  I started not caring so much about what the popular kids were wearing and what they were saying or doing, deeming all of that as trendy and very uninteresting.  The Go-Go’s didn’t care about Izod shirts or who showed up with a hickey at school Monday morning; so neither did I.

I started scouring magazines, searching for anything I could find about The Go-Go’s, or pictures of people who looked like them.  I took down my baby harp seal and unicorn posters I had hanging in my room, and replaced them with carefully clipped out photos from magazines of kids with rainbow hair-dos and clothes I coveted and of bands who I thought looked neat, even if I hadn’t heard them before.  On my closet door I hung a life-size poster of James Dean from “East of Eden”.  My old, babyish Nancy Drew books went in a box the closet and copies of The Catcher in the Rye and The Outsiders were stuck on the shelves instead.  Once my room was more grown-up and cool, it was time to do something with my “look”…

-- excerpt from "Strange Girl, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Got the Beat"

"Though I can be a harsh self-critic, I can say that one of the things I really like about my writing is that every time I read, someone comes up to me and says, "YES!" and tells me their own personal story and how much they can relate.  (Thanks to one of my pieces, I have heard many, many women's stories of their first periods.)  To me, that is an enormous compliment, that my writing opens up other people's memories and experiences."

"I chose this piece for sentimental reasons -- it's part of a longer piece I wrote in grad school which opened the floodgates of many more subsequent coming-of-age stories, my favorite (and totally self-indulgent) topic to write about.  This is what I think of as my "anchor" piece, the one that ties all my essays together.  The experience in itself is my anchor, when my self-identity really came to be even if I wasn't fully aware of it when I was 13.  But it was so pivotal and important because it taught me how to survive outside of a world of "normal" or "beautiful" expectations, and taught me that it's okay to not fit in and to be a little weird. (And to not have big, permed hair in the 1980s.)  Thank God for The Go-Go's and New Wave for saving my life AND for giving me an outlet and for a lot of fodder to write about...  And thank you, Julie Green, for including me in Authors in August!"

Karen Finlay
August 2015



Saturday, August 8, 2015

Frank Portman - Authors in August



Frank Portman, a.k.a. Dr. Frank, is the singer/songwriter/frontman of the Bay Area punk rock band The Mr. T Experience and has written three novels, King Dork, Andromeda Klein, and King Dork Approximately.



"I only mention it because I have this, a dream, really, that part of what it would mean is that the boyfriend is in this little club with the girlfriend where when one is hurt or troubled or being assailed by the cruelties of the world, the other decides not to be on the side of the world, but to join forces with the other member of the club against the world, even if it's frowned upon, even if it's a doomed scenario, even if the world's definitely gonna win.  Like you're allies.  The last remnant of your people.  A Sex Alliance Against Society.  But maybe I have it all wrong.  It does sound like a quaint, far-fetched idea, now that I've put it into words.  And also overly dramatic, if something can be o. and d. and q. at the same time.”

--from King Dork


Chosen because it’s the most highlighted section in the kindle edition of the book, because it’s often requested at readings, and because I know of at least one person who has had the bulk of it tattooed on her body.

Frank Portman 
August 2015





Saturday, August 1, 2015

Lynn Peril - Authors in August



Lynn Peril is the author of three books, most recently Swimming in the Steno Pool: A Retro Guide to Making it in the Office, a history of women office professionals. Her column, The Museum of Femoribilia, appears in Bust magazine, and she is a regular contributor to HiLobrow.com. Her writing has also appeared in London’s Guardian newspaper, The New York Times, and on NPR’s “All Things Considered." She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and three cats.



From the moment she’s wrapped in a pink blanket, long past the traumatic birthday when she realizes her age is greater than her bust measurement, the human female is bombarded with advice on how to wield [her] feminine wiles. This advice ranges from rather vague proscriptions along the lines of “nice girls don’t chew gum/swear/wear pants/fill-in-the-blank,” to obsessively elaborate instructions for daily living. How many women’s lives, for example, were enriched by former Miss America Jacque Mercer’s positively baroque description of the proper way to put on a bathing suit, as it appeared in her guide, How to Win A Beauty Contest (1960)?

[F]irst, roll it as you would a girdle. Pull the suit over the hips to the waist, then, holding the top away from your body, bend over from the waist. Ease the suit up to the bustline and with one hand, lift one breast up and in and ease the suit bra over it. Repeat on the other side. Stand up and fasten the straps.

Instructions like these made me bristle. I formed an early aversion to all things pink and girly. It didn’t take me long to figure out that many things young girls were supposed to enjoy, not to mention ways they were supposed to behave, left me feeling funny—as if I was expected to pound my square peg self into the round hole of designated girliness. I didn’t know it at the time, but the butterflies in my tummy meant I had crested the first of many hills on the roller coaster ride of femininity—or as I soon referred to it, the other F-word. Before I knew what was happening, I was hurtling down its track, seemingly out of control, and screaming at the top of my lungs.

--from Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons (2002)




I am proud of all three of my books and could have chosen a selection from any of them. In the end, though, I chose the above from the introduction to Pink Think. If you’re unfamiliar with my work, this excerpt pretty much encapsulates my obsession with prescriptive literature, pop culture, and the dictates of “femininity.” But on a personal note, they also bring back a memory of the unfettered excitement I felt while writing that first draft of my first book. So much has changed in the publishing industry, let alone my life, since I wrote those paragraphs back in 1999. I wonder if I’ll ever feel that free again sitting at the keyboard.

Lynn Peril

August 2015