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Musings & Meanderings: A lesson in advice from famous authors, writer’s block, Ann Putnam on her novel I WILL LEAVE YOU NEVER, writing and anthropology, Renee Gladman, Gabrielle Bates and visual narrative, stock images, more

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By Leslie Lindsay

A curated newsletter on the literary life, featuring ‘4 questions,’ reading & listening recommendations, where to submit, more

Leslie Lindsay|Always with a Book

~MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS~

Happy May, y’all!

Can I give you a little advice?

Writing Tips From Famous Fiction Authors:


“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

—Neil Gaiman

“The first draft of everything is shit.”

—Ernest Hemingway

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

—Jack London


“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time—or the tools—to write. Simple as that.”

—Stephen King

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

—George Orwell

“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.”

—Ernest Hemingway


“Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.”

—David Ogilvy

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

—Dorothy Parker

“Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that-but you are the only you.”

Question:

Which quotes resonate with you? What might you add? Are there any here you disagree with?

Respond here in a comment, or find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

xx,

~Leslie : )

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

This issue of Musings & Meanderings is jam-packed with some really great stuff to get your [writing and reading] year off on the right foot. Coaching, book recommendations, journals to submit to, reading recommendations, author interviews, recently published prose, and a quick 4 questions insights interview with Ann Putnam on her novel, I WILL LEAVE YOU NEVER (SWP, May 9 2023)

By the way, I do not get any ‘kick-backs’ or other kind of payment (in-kind, or otherwise) for mentioning these classes/workshops/books/individuals. Sharing because if helps me, maybe it’ll speak to you, too.

Some Writerly Things:

New! Featured Author|Insights

Ann Putnam

I WILL LEAVE YOU NEVER

“Ominous and original, Ann Putnam’s novel is characteristically lyrical and precise. It is at its heart a love story, where characters facing loss uncover the generative quality of love.”


–Beth Kalikoff, author of Dying for a Blue Plate Special

Leslie Lindsay:

Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say I WILL LEAVE YOU NEVER (May 9) is about?

Ann Putnam:

How to live in joy, not fear, when the sky is falling.

Leslie Lindsay:

Where did you write I WILL LEAVE YOU NEVER? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?

Ann Putnam:

I began it in the car, on the drive home from Glacier National Park, where we’d taken the children, not knowing a grizzly bear had just killed 3 people. That experience wound up as a short story, called “Zoe’s Bear,” but the novel that came out of it had no bear in it at all. It became one story, then another, then another, my constant companion over the miles and years. Still, it had mortality in it in various forms, both strange and familiar. I wrote it at my desk at home, on planes, in emergency rooms, doctor’s offices, PTA meetings, gymnastic and track meets, traffic lights.

Leslie Lindsay:

Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?

Ann Putnam:

Don’t we always want to know how a work came into the world? What’s the magic trick?  Maybe with some incense, chants, a candle lit, a shaman or two?  Nah. I pretty much always begin unceremoniously, with a little notebook or a spiral set of 3×5 cards where I write words and phrases up and down, and all around. Anything too linear and I frighten myself to death. Little whirls and spins of words and phrases scattered over a little piece of paper and I’m braver than I ever thought I could be. Then I do a cluster. I put a trigger word in the center of a circle and draw spokes of words coming from them and then other words coming from other spokes, not knowing how any of it fits together. But it’s the only way I can start without terrifying myself. The idea of starting a novel, holy moly! I couldn’t do that. I can only write these little snippets of images/words here and there.  But when I find myself writing a phrase or word on my wrist, or my car registration or cereal box or in the margins of a book I’m reading because I can’t find paper fast enough, I know I’ve plunged headfirst into the stream.

And then comes the music. At first a mood—then a theme for each character, drawing mainly upon movie soundtracks. Sweeping, dark, poignant music floating in my head and heart completely divested of the movie from which it came, is my muse.  The English Patient, The Ghost Writer, Million Dollar Baby, The Hours, E.T. to name a few.  And that sends me spinning into free-writing, which often begins with: “I have no idea what I’m doing” until, suddenly, I do, and find I’m not free-writing anymore, but I’m in story, and then in a working rough draft. It’s that draft I spend months, maybe years revising: cutting, polishing, deepening.

Only once have I ever outlined a work and that’s in the current project. I have a whiteboard in my office, where I’ve outlined the first working draft to see where I’m going, where I’ve been. But I haven’t touched it since. Still, it’s a comfort to see all those words lined up so nice and tidy, and behaving themselves. All this is to say that the dance I do every time is with fear and trembling when writing is supposed to be hang gliding over the Grand Canyon. Absolutely fearless. Yet this is my writing life, for better or worse, and the way I have lived it.

“Ann Putnam’s I Will Leave You Never is a heartbreaking, gracefully rendered story of the quiet moments between and around the devastating ones and of the beautiful inner workings of the heart and minds battling their way along life’s toughest roads.”


–Laurie Frankel, New York Times best-selling author of This is How It Always Is and One Two Three

Leslie Lindsay:

If you weren’t writing, you would be…

Ann Putnam:

If I weren’t writing, I’d be sad, bereft, and things would not be right with the world, or with me.  But let’s imagine I’m not writing, but sitting at a Paris café, maybe, Les Deux Magot, where Hemingway wrote, and drinking a cappuccino as I watch folks go by and I’m thinking how nice it is to just sit here as long as I want. Then my mind gets busy, and I begin thinking of Hemingway and what book I’ll choose for my next class at the maximum-security women’s prison where I sometimes teach. I’m thinking of the coiled razor wire they’ve recently installed and wondering if I’ll have my claustrophobia at bay in time. I stretch my arms to the sky and feel as lucky as can be to be here under this azure, Paris sky. And I know I must write about this and can’t wait another second to begin. But for the grace of God, as the saying goes. For Whom the Bell Tolls. That’ what I’ll teach.

“Never [seek] to know for whom the bell tolls.  It tolls for thee.”

Leslie Lindsay:

What book did you recently read that you can’t stop thinking about?

Ann Putnam:

Descent by Tim Johnston. A family goes on holiday at the foot of the Colorado Rockies.  The son and daughter go up a trail jogging and biking and only the son comes back.  The book is so exquisitely written, so full of human drama and tragedy and finally a joy that comes at great cost. It’s probably too long, but I’ve read it three times just for the gorgeous language. Things like this really do happen to people. And Tim Johnston caught what happens to a family when they do.

Professional Portraits / Headshots with Jeannine Pound Photography
Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ann Putnam is an internationally known Hemingway scholar who has made more than six trips to Cuba as part of the Ernest Hemingway International Colloquium. Her forthcoming novel, Cuban Quartermoon (June 2022), came, in part, from those trips, as well as a residency at Hedgebrook Writer’s Colony. She has published the memoir Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter’s Last Goodbye (University of Iowa Press) and short stories in Nine by Three: Stories (Collins Press), among others. She holds a PhD from the University of Washington and has taught creative writing, gender studies, and American literature for many years. She has bred Alaskan Malamutes, which appear prominently in I Will Leave You Never. She currently lives in Gig Harbor, Washington.

For more information, to purchase a copy of I WILL LEAVE YOU NEVER

You can connect on Instagram HERE.

Browse my Bookshop.org see what I’m reading in 2023, and other titles featured on Insights|Musings & Meanderings …and more!

Some Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:

  • This piece, MODEL HOME: A Study Under Compression, in On the Seawall, is something I am so proud of. It was conceived in a craft store when I wandered down the model train aisle. At home, I already had the moss and tiny house and vials. I wanted to depict something with words and photography that would spotlight my family falling into disarray…my mother’s mental illness, the ‘perfect’ home, the family divided. This was my answer. It’s my first text + image publication. Here’s a sampling:
  • I am bowled over by the reception my poem, CREVASSE, received by Luke Johnson in the Spring 2023 issue of Ballast. Check out our dialogue about one another’s work HERE. Also, that landing page! Swooning.
  • You can find some of my other poetry at Empyrean Literary Journal. This piece was conceived in a workshop at StoryStudio Chicago in which the prompt was to combine two totally different things with one’s childhood street. I chose my grandfather’s profession as stained-glass artist and the year 1989. The resulting piece is COLLAPSE.
  • Thrilled to have this byline in LitHub! Here, I chat with 82-year-old poet Pattiann Rogers about her new collection, THE FLICKERING (Penguin Poets, April 2023).
  • Y’all, I am super-excited about this illustrated review in DIAGRAM, which has sorta been like a dream place of mine to get work published. It’s a beautiful melding of all things that bring me joy: fonts, words, ideas, art, books, and the human body. I mean…the only obsessions missing for me is architecture, travel, nature, and basset hounds. Check it out and the book, YOUR HEARTS, YOUR SCARS: Essays by the late Adina Talve-Goodman (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023), which happens to be a Powell’s pick for January.
My illustrated review of YOUR HEARTS YOUR SCARS (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023) as it appears in DIAGRAM 22.6
  • Kathryn Gahl in conversation with me about her poetic memoir, THE YELLOW TOOTHBRUSH (Two Shrews Press, September 2022), about her incarcerated daughter, perinatal mood disorder, more in MER, November 28, 2022.
  • Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s HALFWAY FROM HOME (Split/Lip Press, Nov 8) in Hippocampus Magazine, about her working-class unconventional childhood in California, moving across the country to pursue writing, home, displacement, and so much more November 13, 2022.
  • Prose in SEPIA Journal Oct/Nov 2022 issue. Interiors is about an Appalachian family, black bottom pie, trains, and ear aches. It was inspired by my own family lore, and also: this journal is STUNNING!
Image retrived from SEPIA website

There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.

Photo by Jess Bailey Designs on Pexels.com

What’s Obsessing Me:

  • Jane Friedman recently brought this search engine to my attention and I am obsessed–ddmm is all about stock images for whatever your heart desires. You can filter to show results for creative commons only. I searched up ‘floor plans,’ and was instantly drooling.
  • Along those lines, I have started thinking about a playlist for my WIP. Many writers do this to get in the writing mood/mindset, and while that might work for you, I’m using it as an accompaniment for the book itself, sort of a multi-sensory read. Check out the Natural Language Playlist, which is an AI-generated mixtape concept you can download right to your Spotify account. Pretty slick!
  • I love, love this (newish-to-me) concept of visual narrative. For someone who loves art as much as a words, it’s perfect. Check out this visual review from Gabrielle Bates.
  • Kinda digging this poetry chapbook, GALAXY by Rachel Thompson from Anvil Press. It’s an oldie (2011), but goody! Check out that cover…swooning.

You are reading Musings & Meanderings, a consistently inconsistent weekly newsletter about the literary life from Leslie Lindsay, and home of an archive of bestselling and debut author interviews. I’m also on twitter and instagram. I try to answer comments as best I can. Feel free to find my book suggestions on bookshop.org, and also check out the authors I’ve hosted in in-depth interviews HERE.

In the meantime, catch me on:

Reviewing books and talking about them with others on-line and in-person is one small way to engage with & support the literary community.

Thank you for letting me guide you on your bookish journey.

Photo by Alena Koval on Pexels.com

Let’s walk this bookish path together.

THANK YOU!!

Some of you have been reading my reviews, interviews, and meanderings for more than a decade now. That’s huge and I am so humbled. Thanks for being here.

More than 2,800 folks read Musings & Meanderings.

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Wishing you much renewal & sunshine

Photo by Leslie Lindsay

Created by Leslie Lindsay. I’m a proud book nerd. Connect with me on Instagram, and Twitter. See what I’m reading on Bookshop.org. Find my reviews on GoodReads. I’m also a Zibby Books Ambassador.

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One last thing: I love Between the Covers podcast with David Naimon. Not listening yet? If you’re a serious reader and writer, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS: How (horseback) riding & writing are similar, according to Courtney Maum, author of THE YEAR OF THE HORSES, plus Beth Ann Mathews on her memoir, DEEP WATERS; books on motherhood; playlists, ruins, ending your story, where to submit, and more

Published by

By Leslie Lindsay

A curated newsletter on the literary life, featuring ‘4 questions,’ reading & listening recommendations, where to submit, more

Leslie Lindsay|Always with a Book

~MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS~

Hello, Spring!

I don’t have an MFA. I’m not really a writer.

Guess what? Same. I didn’t study English or literary interpretation at college. Neither did Courtney Maum, author (most recently) of the memoir, THE YEAR OF THE HORSES (Tin House Books, October 2022, now available in paperback). I had the opportunity to attend a talk hosted by StoryStudio Chicago in which Courtney was in conversation with Megan Stielestra, whom I’ve also interviewed.

I didn’t interview Courtney Maum, but listened to her on David Naimon’s podcast Between the Covers while driving along the Oregon coast to attend a Corporeal Writing workshop with Lidia Yuknavitch. If you don’t know, David is based in Portland. Courtney was talking about her memoir, The Year of the Horses, the craft–and business–of writing, all while I was conjuring the confidence to break out of my I’m-never-going-to-write-again-rainy season.

It all felt kind of kismet.

In case you’re wondering…I’m back…er…on the saddle, writing-wise.

Courtney was warm and genuine, maybe even a little frazzled with plans to meet up with her family in Mexico the very next day, plus it was the evening of elections and all of that ‘stuff’ in NYC.

She spoke to our cozy wine & cheese group about the cross-over between writing and riding. I’ll attempt to paraphrase here:

Have a Writing/Riding Financial Plan:

Neither pursuit is exactly ‘cheap.’ Decide on your most productive hours. Budget time. Budget money. Saddles and riding gear add up, so do lessons, food, and more…you’ll need to take classes, attend conferences, subscribe to lit journals, buy the books, pay the submission fees. If you’re not working because you’re writing, how will you manage? Do you have another income stream?

You’re Going to Fall Off:

In horseback riding, there’s some kind of ratio to how many times a rider falls and how many times she doesn’t. Mostly, she falls. At least at first. For writers/creatives, wanting to quit is part of the game. Aim for failure. Art-making brings constant rejection. Plan for that. Develop friends and a support network across genres.

You Don’t Know Until You Know:

You’re going to make some faux pas, in the riding barn and in the writing workshop. You might not realize you need to build relationships with booksellers, but you do. You may not think sending a thank you card is important, but it is. Do it.

You Are Not in Control.

Yep. The idea is to trick yourself (and your horse/editor/audience) that you are. There’s a powerful pivot from private life to public. As a writer, we’re often alone with our words, and in charge of them…until we’re not…and they are in the public’s reach. Writer’s cannot control who buys their book, if readers like their book, and not everyday is going to be a writing/riding day. Sometimes, you just can’t because life happens or you don’t ‘feel’ the mojo.

Image designed and photographed by L.Lindsay

You Don’t Have to Write/Ride Everyday:

When that happens, no biggie. You can still blurb, read, teach, watch a movie. Be an active reader, think like a writer. How did the plot progress, how did you feel while watching/reading? Go out into the world. Doing so will enrich your writing/riding life.

You Gotta Get Shit on Your Hands:

Owning and riding a horse is dirty work. You’re going to have to pick shit out of a hoof. In writing, you’re going to have to read the books, the journals, take the low (or no-) paying jobs, go to camps/conferences/retreats. Be a good literary citizen. Go to the signings. Buy from indies. Support the people you want to buy your work when the time comes. All writers/riders works so hard to get where they are. Put out good karma.

Others Will Be Better Than You:

This is a fact of life. That’s okay. There might be competition and envy. Accept that; admire it.

It’s Okay to do Something You Love Even if You’re not Amazing:

Be there. Be obsessed. Find the joy. Keep going. Do it because you love it. It’s about investing in yourself.

[Leslie’s note: As much as I love singing, I’m never going to attempt it professionally!]

Writing/Riding is Scary as Hell, & That’s Okay:

As a writer, we must revisit really tough material. We must. It’s about editing and revision. It’s about making it better. So we writers overthink and dwell and ruminate. It’s akin to the nasty loop of depression. But if we didn’t do this important part of our work, no books would get written. In riding, one must react quickly, be in the moment. It’s similar to writing, but different. It’s about getting out of one’s head.

The Moment of Writing/Riding is a Privilege:

Writing and riding is a process, and can often be spiritual. It’s a privilege to be able to find the time to write/ride not accessible to all. It might be about survival or contentment, but the bottom line is: it’s a gift.

Question:

In what ways do you find writing adjacent to another pursuit? For me, sometimes it’s exercise or specifically–yoga. Breath, sequences, how things build on one another. Someone else recently said the act of writing is a lot like falling in love. The spark, the enamored feelings…the rough patches…getting through them. Do you agree? Maybe you have another idea.

Respond here in a comment, or find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

xx,

~Leslie : )

P.S. I also picked up Courtney’s other book, BEFORE & AFTER THE BOOK DEAL(Catapult, January 2022), which I am reading now and absolutely loving. Practical and actionable suggestions for sustaining a writing career. And also, Megan Stielstra’s ONCE I WAS COOL: Personal Essays (NUP, August 2021 re-issue).

Check out my Bookshop.org list of other memoirs/personal essays you might be interested in reading.

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

This issue of Musings & Meanderings is jam-packed with some really great stuff to get your [writing and reading] year off on the right foot. Coaching, book recommendations, journals to submit to, reading recommendations, author interviews, recently published prose, and a quick 4 questions insights interview with poet Beth Ann Mathews on her memoir, DEEP WATERS. I have new poetry up at Ballast and Empyrean, and a photo-essay featuring miniatures in On the Seawall.

There’s more to this newsletter. Keep Scrolling.

By the way, I do not get any ‘kick-backs’ or other kind of payment (in-kind, or otherwise) for mentioning these classes/workshops/books/individuals. Sharing because if helps me, maybe it’ll speak to you, too.

Some Writerly Things:

  • Bellevue Literary Review (BLR) is looking for exceptional work on health, healing, illness, and medicine for their 2023 prize. Polish up your fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and submit by July 1. There is a $20 reading fee. Click HERE for more details.
  • Struggling with how to END your story? Whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, a novel, or something else, we writers are often looking to subvert, resonate, disturb, or illuminate a reader experience. It’s an art, right? And sometimes it’s satisfying, but more times than not, we want the tingle of the last page to stay with the reader (that means it’s not always satisfying). This LitHub craft essay delves into lots of endings and how their authors did it–from Cormac McCarthy to Toni Morrison and Tobias Wolff to  Carmen Maria Machado, you’ll find terrific examples to try on your own.
  • I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading that is somehow related to motherhood…maybe it’s that time of year (Mother’s Day is just right around the corner), or maybe it’s just a theme that drives me. This piece, in The Cut, an excerpt from poet Maggie Smith’s memoir, YOU COULD MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL (Atria Books, April 11 2023 ) really resonated.
  • Kelly Link on writing after 2pm, being purposeful, and why she loves to write, but hates to write, and more in this quick interview.
  • Poets & Writers has an online workshop they are calling “Mapping the Maze” in which they provide guidelines & support for poets and fiction writers and the complex steps to publication. Learn more and register HERE.

Some Readerly Things:

  • Other motherhood-themed books I’ve loved lately, if you’re so inclined: THE BABIES by Sabrina Orah Mark (Saturnalia Press, ), THE LONG DEVOTION: Poets Writing Motherhood, edited by Emily Perez and Nancy Reddy (UGA Press, April 1, 2022)–this one also contains writing prompts!–THE NURSERY by Szilvia Molnar (Pantheon, March 21 2023), and a few summer domestic thrillers: Shari Lapena’s EVERYONE HERE IS LYING (Pamela Dorman Books, July 25, 2023–look for an ‘Author Insights’ interview here in July) and THE WHISPERS by Ashley Audrain (Pamela Dorman Books, June 6, 2023).

New! Featured Author|Insights

Beth Ann Mathews

DEEP WATERS: A Memoir of Loss, Alaska Adventure, & Love Rekindled

“…an incisive, smartly informative memoir that celebrates the power of the cohesive family unit—its outcome will offer positivity and hope to those facing similar challenges.”

—KIRKUS REVIEWS

Deep Waters is a gripping, intimate story of relationship resilience, set against the backdrop of Alaska’s dramatic marine wilderness.

Leslie Lindsay:

Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say DEEP WATERS is about?

Beth Ann Mathews:  

Relationship resilience.

Almost losing a loved one can push you to overcome insecurities and fear and live more fully.

Not letting work, even work you love, absorb you so much you don’t take time to stay connected with your partner and family.

The value of spending time in nature to stay centered and whole.

Applying advances in the study of brain plasticity can improve the chances for some people to regain more mobility and function after a stroke.

Leslie Lindsay:

Where did you write DEEP WATERS? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?

Beth Ann Mathews:

I started writing stand-alone stories and attending my first critique group in La Paz while we were living and traveling on our sailboat in Mexico. At the time, I couldn’t imagine that those stories might one day become scenes in a book. Most writing and revising for Deep Waters began two years later in Santa Rosa, California where we moved after cruising for three years. Participating in two memoir writing groups motivated me to polish a scene to read and have critiqued every week.

My routine is to get up ahead of everyone else around six, say hello to our schipperke, make coffee, do a dozen pushups while microwaving a dash of milk in my mug, and go to my desk with coffee in hand. I try to avoid looking at email and instead open Scriviner to the current project. To get back into a productive frame of mind, a ritual that helps me is to respond to feedback from a critique partner. Midday, I’m more distractible. If I check email, two hours can swoosh by before I realize I’m way off track. To counter this tendency, before noon, I often head to a favorite café where I focus best. But I don’t write every day, and I schedule afternoons away from the computer to spend time outdoors and to do my share of keeping our household and lives on track. 

The morning part of my ritual is fairly consistent, except when my husband and I are living on the boat for days or weeks where I don’t have a dedicated office. I get up early and start out working at the galley table. After an hour or two, I take him coffee. Once he’s up, I move to the aft cabin to work while he cooks breakfast—a wonderful gift to a morning writer. If there’s a big project on the boat, and he doesn’t need my help, I’ll walk to a café with laptop in my backpack, and hunker down at a small table. I wrote a lot of Deep Waters in cafés.

“If books were birds, this one would be an arctic tern–powerful and graceful, beset by storms and learning to survive and more: to thrive. The writing is feather-light, yet strong.”

—KIM HEACOX, author of Jimmy Bluefeather and The Only Kayak: A Journey into the Heart of Alaska

Leslie Lindsay:

If you weren’t writing, you would be…

Beth Ann Mathews:

If I weren’t writing, I’d be outdoors more, hiking, or exploring a cove on our pedalboard, observing birds and photographing wildlife. I might take up sewing again and learn how to quilt. I’d draw, sketch, and read more. And I’d spend more time with my husband, who sometimes feels abandoned when I’m engrossed in a project. But I’d miss how writing helps me be more self-aware. Like the sentence I wrote about my husband. That came out with no planning–like a confession. Which it is, and I need to do something about it.

Leslie Lindsay:

What book did you recently read that you can’t stop thinking about?

Beth Ann Mathews:

I’ve recently read Dani Shapiro’s Signal Fires, a novel about how a series of fleeting decisions by members of a family result in a tragic event, which ripples into the future, with major consequences for each person. I was pulled in by Shapiro’s characters and her expertise in writing—without baffling the read–from the points of view of seven people, from a nine-year-old genius obsessed with astronomy to the inner machinations of a mother from her coherent years to her stream of consciousness, late-stage Alzeimer’s dementia.

I can’t stop thinking about the main character, the father. He’s a quietly heroic doctor whose family is torn apart by the secret he, his wife, their daughter and son bury to protect the family. Instead, by not talking to each other, or seeking counseling about what happened, the secret grows like a cancer, damaging each of them.

Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay
Author image credit: Star Dewar

For more information, to purchase a copy of DEEP WATERS, or to connect with the author via social media, please visit her website.

About the Author:

Beth Ann Mathews grew up in the Midwest. She earned her undergraduate degree at Purdue University, worked in the bird department at the Tulsa Zoo for three years, and  earned her master’s degree in marine biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. As a professor at the University of Alaska Southeast, she taught courses in biology, behavioral ecology, and marine mammalogy and led research on harbor seals, Steller sea lions, and harbor porpoises. She has also studied humpback, gray, and sperm whales and—briefly—sleeper sharks, and led undergraduate research programs on board tall ships in the Gulf of Maine and from field camps in Hawaii and Alaska. She’s published numerous scientific papers, and a chapter from Deep Waters placed second in the 2018 Redwood Writers Memoir Contest. Deep Waters is Mathews’s first book. Beth and her husband lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington.

Browse my Bookshop.org for more memoir, what I’m reading in 2023, and …and more!

Some Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:

  • This piece, MODEL HOME: A Study Under Compression, in On the Seawall, is something I am so proud of. It was conceived in a craft store when I wandered down the model train aisle. At home, I already had the moss and tiny house and vials. I wanted to depict something with words and photography that would spotlight my family falling into disarray…my mother’s mental illness, the ‘perfect’ home, the family divided. This was my answer. It’s my first text + image publication. Here’s a sampling:
  • I am bowled over by the reception my poem, CREVASSE, received by Luke Johnson in the Spring 2023 issue of Ballast. Check out our dialogue about one another’s work HERE. Also, that landing page! Swooning.
  • You can find some of my other poetry at Empyrean Literary Journal. This piece was conceived in a workshop at StoryStudio Chicago in which the prompt was to combine two totally different things with one’s childhood street. I chose my grandfather’s profession as stained-glass artist and the year 1989. The resulting piece is COLLAPSE.
  • Super-excited about this illustrated review in DIAGRAM, which has sorta been like a dream place of mine to get work published. It’s a beautiful melding of all things that bring me joy: fonts, words, ideas, art, books, and the human body. I mean…the only obsessions missing for me is architecture, travel, nature, and basset hounds. Check it out and the book, YOUR HEARTS, YOUR SCARS: Essays by the late Adina Talve-Goodman (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023), which happens to be a Powell’s pick for January.
My illustrated review of YOUR HEARTS YOUR SCARS (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023) as it appears in DIAGRAM 22.6
  • Kathryn Gahl in conversation with me about her poetic memoir, THE YELLOW TOOTHBRUSH (Two Shrews Press, September 2022), about her incarcerated daughter, perinatal mood disorder, more in MER, November 28, 2022.
  • Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s HALFWAY FROM HOME (Split/Lip Press, Nov 8) in Hippocampus Magazine, about her working-class unconventional childhood in California, moving across the country to pursue writing, home, displacement, and so much more November 13, 2022.
  • Prose in SEPIA Journal Oct/Nov 2022 issue. Interiors is about an Appalachian family, black bottom pie, trains, and ear aches. It was inspired by my own family lore, and also: this journal is STUNNING!

There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.

Photo by Leslie Lindsay

What’s Obsessing Me:

  • Jane Friedman recently brought this search engine to my attention and I am obsessed–ddmm is all about stock images for whatever your heart desires. You can filter to show results for creative commons only. I searched up ‘floor plans,’ and was instantly drooling.
  • Along those lines, I have started thinking about a playlist for my WIP. Many writers do this to get in the writing mood/mindset, and while that might work for you, I’m using it as an accompaniment for the book itself, sort of a multi-sensory read. Check out the Natural Language Playlist, which is an AI-generated mixtape concept you can download right to your Spotify account. Pretty slick!
  • Ruins, architecture, sending my oldest daughter off to college, and how there’s this robin who has returned to the same spot at my house to nest…and there’s an essay in all of that, I am convinced.

You are reading Musings & Meanderings, a consistently inconsistent weekly newsletter about the literary life from Leslie Lindsay, and home of an archive of bestselling and debut author interviews. I’m also on twitter and instagram. I try to answer comments as best I can. Feel free to find my book suggestions on bookshop.org, and also check out the authors I’ve hosted in in-depth interviews HERE.

In the meantime, catch me on:

Reviewing books and talking about them with others on-line and in-person is one small way to engage with & support the literary community.

Thank you for letting me guide you on your bookish journey.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

Let’s walk this bookish path together.

THANK YOU!!

Some of you have been reading my reviews, interviews, and meanderings for more than a decade now. That’s huge and I am so humbled. Thanks for being here.

More than 2,800 folks read Musings & Meanderings.

Browse the Archives | Donate

Wishing you much comfort and joy in the New Year!

Photo by Alissa Nabiullina on Pexels.com

Created by Leslie Lindsay. I’m a proud book nerd. Connect with me on Instagram, and Twitter. See what I’m reading on Bookshop.org. Find my reviews on GoodReads. I’m also a Zibby Books Ambassador.

Learn more HERE.

Are you following us on Instagram?

That’s where you’ll catch bookreels, cover reveals, & bookmail : )

Sending you all warm spring vibes!

I support writing organizations, authors, publishers, and more. Occasionally, you’ll get a peak behind-the-scenes, too.

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Get occasional bookish news delivered to your inbox.

One last thing: I love Between the Covers podcast with David Naimon. Not listening yet? If you’re a serious reader and writer, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Musings & Meanderings: It must be cathartic, writing this memoir, and other untruths about writing through trauma. Tuni Deignan on her lyrical memoir, UNDERWATER DAUGHTER, blending motherhood with writing, Mushroom School through Corporeal Writing, and more

Published by

By Leslie Lindsay

A curated newsletter on the literary life, featuring ‘4 questions,’ reading & listening recommendations, where to submit, more

Leslie Lindsay|Always with a Book

~MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS~

It must be cathartic, writing this memoir.

Have you heard this statement? Perhaps you, with good intention, uttered this phrase to a writer?

It sounds like the thing to say when you want to support someone in the depths of writing about a traumatic experience.

In reality, there are so many layers to writing a memoir, that this comment feels kind of…pat.

Memoir is a process of excavation, intuition, organization, assembly, drafting, revising, more revising, problem-solving, often all at the same time!

There are myriad ways of approaching this–but mostly it’s about digging into memories (some false, mis-remembered, and…some traumatic). But in addition to all of that, one must also employ all the other bones of writing: the balance of action/exposition, front story/backstory, character, voice, setting, tone, dialogue, structure, imagery…so much. In fact, sometimes it feels like one writing a memoir ought to have a therapist on speed-dial!

Memoir is not autobiography.

You can think of memoir as a story across a certain aspect of the author’s life. A memoir is really about arrival.

“The memoir, at its core, is an act of resurrection.”

–Carmen Maria Machado

In my case, I am resurrecting (literally), my mother. But I am also resurrecting myself as a person I did not know until I wrote what I wrote. In that sense, I you could say it’s cathartic.

Exhumation allows the author to lose/gain/survive/grieve/understand all over again. It might be therapeutic, but really, it’s jarring. It’s like scraping at a scab. Sometimes it’s bleeds all over again. Sometimes it scars.

Ultimately, a memoir ought to enchant your reader. It should place them in your position, have them cheering for you, and sighing with relief when you finally…arrive.

That’s really what memoir is, an act of arrival.

Question:

What might you say to someone writing a memoir instead of…’it must be therapeutic?’ I’m not sure I really have any answers…except maybe…

I’m cheering you on!

Respond here in a comment, or find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

xx,

~Leslie : )

Speaking of re-set and receiving feedback, I’ve got an Insights Interview (keep scrolling) with Tuni Deignan on her new memoir, UNDERWATER DAUGHTER which is so lush, but so dark centering on childhood sexual abuse, dancing, motherhood, and ….arrival (SheWrites Press, May 2 2023),

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

This issue of Musings & Meanderings is jam-packed with some really great stuff to get your writing and reading off on the right foot. Classes and workshops, bookstore events, book recommendations, journals to submit to, reading recommendations, author interviews, recently published prose, and a quick 4 questions insights interview with Tuni Deignan, author of UNDERWATER DAUGHTER

By the way, I do not get any ‘kick-backs’ or other kind of payment (in-kind, or otherwise) for mentioning these classes/workshops/books/individuals. Sharing because if helps me, maybe it’ll speak to you, too.

Some Writerly Things:

  • Do you identify as a mom? Maybe you’re a step-mom, a bonus/honorary mom, adoptive mom, or in some other capacity, mothering. Check out this April 23 Corporeal offering about blending motherhood with writing. I wish I could attend, but it’s actually my daughter’s 18th birthday weekend…
  • Personal narrative sounds easy in concept (you already know the story), but in reality, it’s a totally different beast. Check out this offering from Writing Workshops, The Personal Reported Essay, a 4-week Zoom class.”
  • We’ve all gotten feedback on something we wrote and thought…’now what?!’ How to determine if the feedback you received is actually…helpful? How to shrug it off and move forward, more. This is a one-time session with Julia Fine, author of several novels, and offered through StoryStudioChicago.
  • Back to Corporeal Writing…they have this super-cool ‘Mushroom School,’ a virtual classroom and workshop and community for 2024…So much goodness on re-storying story, new forms, shapes, formats, plus guest speakers (Renee Gladman!), and more. Check out all the delicious details HERE.
  • Hedgebrook has some lovely retreats still to come in 2023…dreaming of Tuscany? What makes a story ‘work?’ What is that quality that takes your breath away? Application deadline is in July. Check out their Radical Craft Retreat.
  • This piece, and this statement:

“You must never give up on your writing, but you might have to give up WHAT you’re writing.”

kind of rang true. You?

From LitHub essay by Clare Pooley, refer to link above
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

New! Featured Author|Insights

Tuni Deignan

UNDERWATER DAUGHTER

“Written in rich, insightful prose, Underwater Daughter showcases hard-won self-knowledge and wisdom, while inviting readers to feel Deignan’s wounds and joys. Though bitingly descriptive of the traumas that Deignan endured, the story also movingly recounts Deignan’s rebirth…” 

–Publisher’s Weekly BookLife – Editor’s Pick

Tuni’s father began sexually abusing her when she was just four years old. Her mother, though aware of the abuse, was a silent witness–one either incapable or unwilling to intervene–and the abuse continued until Tuni was eleven. 

Leslie Lindsay:

Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say UNDERWATER DAUGHTER is about?

Antonia Deignan:

Childhood trauma, life reckoning, dance as passion, muse, life raft, forgiveness, love.

Leslie Lindsay:

Where did you write UNDERWATER DAUGHTER? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?

Antonia Deignan:

My kitchen, my son’s bedroom, my back porch, my bedroom, the barn, on airplanes, back of cars, the basement, the coffee shop, in hotel rooms. I always meditate before I write, unless my dreams need to be written down which means I’ll meditate after that. I have something to drink (water/spindrift) a lit candle somewhere nearby and I am at my best I when write in the morning.

For the most part my rituals remain constant. I will occasionally mix in however, reading poetry before I write, (gets my head below the layers) and every so often I’ll put noise canceling headphones on and pipe in some music to write by.

Leslie Lindsay:

If you weren’t writing, you would be…

Antonia Deignan:

I’d be a professional cellist (#dream) or I’d be on a hike (#doable) or I’d be a dog (#inmynextlife).

Leslie Lindsay:

What book did you recently read that you can’t stop thinking about?

Antonia Deignan:

Currently reading DEEP SURVIVAL by Laurence Gonzales, which is a heavy duty psychological and neurological factoid bible mixed with passion and risk taking adventure telling – applicable to all of life’s journeys, including a writer’s.

Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

 Antonia Deignan is a mother of five children by choice, a dancer by calling, and a writer by necessity. She was born on the East Coast but spent most of her life in the Midwest, where she danced with multiple dance companies and raised her children. She opened her own dance studio and directed a pre-professional dance company before a bike accident wish-boned her path, and her identity. Her work has been published in print magazines and online. Now retired, she resides in a beloved island home in Martha’s Vineyard, where she continues to be inspired and write. This is her first book. 

Antoniadeignan.com

Browse my Bookshop.org for more books featured on Musings & Meanderings, what I’m reading in 2023, and some of my favorite books mental health/illness...and memoir.

You can purchase Underwater Daughter HERE.

Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:

  • A conversation with Tanya Frank about her new memoir, ZIG-ZAG BOY: A Memoir of Motherhood & Madness, about her son’s devolve into psychosis at nineteen, how she coped, advocated, and more. It’s a very moving read and interview.
  • Gayle Brandeis and I sat down for a conversation about her breath-taking essay collection, DRAWING BREATH: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Grief in Hippocampus Magazine. The book is available now from Overcup Books.
  • It was such a dream to connect with Nicole McCarthy on her equally dreamy and sublime A SUMMONING (Heavy Feather Press, 2022) and be featured in CRAFT Literary for their hybrid contest (now over), but you can still read the interview HERE.
  • This piece, ANSWERS TO QUERIES, was recently published in the final issue of Scissors & Spackle, part of the ELJ Editions family. Who doesn’t like a family history mystery? Check it out.
  • THE HOUSE, a love letter of sorts to my late grandfather and our newlywed home, recently released from Heimat Review, which is all about ‘your reflections and nostalgia, your narratives of familiarity and strangeness, the things that draw you back to where you are – and where you hope to be.’ C’mon in.
  • Y’all, I am super-excited about this illustrated review in DIAGRAM, which has sorta been like a dream place of mine to get work published. It’s a beautiful melding of all things that bring me joy: fonts, words, ideas, art, books, and the human body. I mean…the only obsessions missing for me is architecture, travel, nature, and basset hounds. Check it out and the book, YOUR HEARTS, YOUR SCARS: Essays by the late Adina Talve-Goodman (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023), which happened to be a Powell’s pick for January.
Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay
My illustrated review of YOUR HEARTS YOUR SCARS (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023) as it appears in DIAGRAM 22.6
  • Kathryn Gahl in conversation with me about her poetic memoir, THE YELLOW TOOTHBRUSH (Two Shrews Press, September 2022), about her incarcerated daughter, perinatal mood disorder, more in MER, November 28, 2022.
  • Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s HALFWAY FROM HOME (Split/Lip Press, Nov 8) in Hippocampus Magazine, about her working-class unconventional childhood in California, moving across the country to pursue writing, home, displacement, and so much more November 13, 2022.
  • A conversation-in-review with the EIC of Salon, Erin Keane, about her memoir, RUNAWAY: Notes on the Myths that Made Me (Belt Publishing, September, 2022), in Autofocus Literary, November 12, 2022.
  • A conversation with Sheila O’Connor about elegantly exploring the nonlinear, (a total obsession of mine), in her EVIDENCE OF V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, Fictions (Rose Metal Press, 2019), in Fractured Literary, October 25, 2022
  • A review-in-dialogue with Su Cho about her debut book of poetry, THE SYMMETRY OF FISH (Penguin Poets, October 2022) in The Cincinnati Review, November 1 2022.
  • Prose in SEPIA Journal Oct/Nov 2022 issue. Interiors is about an Appalachian family, black bottom pie, trains, and ear aches. It was inspired by my own family lore, and also: this journal is STUNNING!
Image retrived from SEPIA website

There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.

Photo by Leslie Lindsay

What’s Obsessing Me:

  • Do you feel like our reading lives have evolved? Maybe we don’t read like we did (newspapers, long fiction). Perhaps we prefer to consume more multimedia type work (i.e., a blend of more than just letters on a page)? Maybe we crave interactive and blended works? A collaboration between reader and writer and artist?
  • Check out this article by the folks at PRH on graphic narrative, YA graphic work, even memoirs.
  • This Aeon article about architecture and poetics, featuring Gaston Bachelard, but others, and some really evocative pull quotes.
  • I’m digging this new site, Same Energy, in which you can search for all kinds of visual art. Give a try HERE.
  • Fonts! I’ve always been a sucker for font, layout, design, all of that adjacent bookish stuff. Ever wonder which font pairs best with one another…for various things? Books, yes, but also business cards, websites, etc.? Check THIS out.
  • Finally, I am in awe and cheering on this guy, Anthong Chin-Quee, a retired surgeon who is a medical advisor to TV show Grey’s Anatomy, and just recently published a memoir, I CAN’T SAVE YOU (April 4 Riverhead) about being a black man in medicine, but also his family history of depression.

You are reading Musings & Meanderings, a consistently inconsistent weekly newsletter about the literary life from Leslie Lindsay, and home of an archive of bestselling and debut author interviews. I’m also on twitter and instagram. I try to answer comments as best I can. Feel free to find my book suggestions on bookshop.org, and also check out the authors I’ve hosted in in-depth interviews HERE.

In the meantime, catch me on:

Reviewing books and talking about them with others on-line and in-person is one small way to engage with & support the literary community.

Thank you for letting me guide you on your bookish journey.

Photo by L.Lindsay @leslielindsay1

Let’s walk this bookish path together.

THANK YOU!!

Some of you have been reading my reviews, interviews, and meanderings for more than a decade now. That’s huge and I am so humbled. Thanks for being here.

More than 2,800 folks read Musings & Meanderings.

Browse the Archives | Donate

Sending spring vibes your way!

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

Created by Leslie Lindsay. I’m a proud book nerd. Connect with me on Instagram, and Twitter. See what I’m reading on Bookshop.org. Find my reviews on GoodReads. I’m also a Zibby Books Ambassador.

Learn more HERE.

Are you following us on Instagram?

That’s where you’ll catch bookreels, cover reveals, & bookmail : )

I support writing organizations, authors, publishers, and more. Occasionally, you’ll get a peak behind-the-scenes, too.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is logo-preview.png





Get occasional bookish news delivered to your inbox.

One last thing: I love Between the Covers podcast with David Naimon. Not listening yet? If you’re a serious reader and writer, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Musings & Meanderings: A spring re-set for writers, designing interiors of tiny homes–Julie Carrick Dalton on her new book, THE LAST BEEKEEPER, found family, going home; poetry prize judged by Maggie Smith, Corporeal Writing’s Tree Retreat, Courtney Maum, fragments & more

Published by

By Leslie Lindsay

A curated newsletter on the literary life, featuring ‘4 questions,’ reading & listening recommendations, where to submit, more

Leslie Lindsay|Always with a Book

~MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS~

Hello March!

Only Your Writer Friends Understand

I’m thick into the memoir-writing-process and it’s been sort of a re-set.

But before we get into all of that, welcome, new folks! I’m glad you’re here. If you’re a reader and writer, you’re in the right place. Thirsty for more details? The long and short of it is this is a newsletter about the craft of writing/process, reading recommendations, author interviews (some long form, others shorter). ‘Musings & Meanderings’ comes out about twice a month. I live in the Chicago suburbs. Creating and making things beautiful is my jam. Yoga, cardio…rinse, repeat.

So, a reset.

It’s March. We’re ripe for a change. Once, an intuitive person [psychic!]–told me I needed a getaway every quarter…it didn’t have to be ‘big,’ just a night or two, maybe near water. She wasn’t wrong! Water feeds me. Getting away is always a treat and helps me put things into perspective.

With the memoir, I am doing something different. Collage, photos, notes, psychiatric records [my late mom’s], and it’s wildly…fun? Like going to the dentist, maybe. Part of the process, but tedious. Therapeutic? Nope. Not ‘fun,’ either.

It just IS. If I had to liken it to anything, it might be delving into a mystery or putting together a jigsaw puzzle. It’s an obsession, but sometimes it’s overwhelming and stupid and I can’t see the road. Or the forest. I just know I gotta keep driving.

Reading shorter books, poetry, graphic narrative. 

I decided to read books I could consume in a day or two. I want to experience a variety of voices and styles and contemplate the writing challenges the authors had set for themselves.

Post-Read ‘Homework.‘

If there’s something in the book–something I want to learn more about, for example, maybe a technique I want to try, or something I really relate to, I do some ‘homework’ right away. Another example of this kind is I read the acknowledgements section first. Weird, I know! Sometimes I’ll find a literary journal who might like something I have to submit, a retreat or conference I’d like to attend…an agent I may query. That kind of stuff is my ‘post-read homework.’

Limiting Time on Social Media and Email.

I used to be super-conscientious about reading and responding (so very thoughtfully) to emails. It’s not that I am being a jerk, but I am much more efficient while still being kind. Also? IG messages, FB Messenger, Twitter, Text, plus email…it REALLY adds up (see my previous posts about writerly time management). I’m trying to send less email unless really necessary, while also curbing my social media time so I can do more of what truly brings joy and gets me closer to my goal (a finished manuscript, art and photography).

Taking care of my health. 

Going to bed early, waking up early are key for me. My husband says I have two speeds: Fast and off. He’s right! I’m a good 12-hour kind of gal. I push really hard that ENTIRE time, and then…OFF, done.

I’m trying to get better at going for walks, drinking lots of water, eating some dang fruit. Right now, I aim for clementines and apples, but I’m more of a veggie person.

Also? I seek out and talk with supportive people who ‘get’ and appreciate me and my art. Again, check out the last post on writing friends. But they don’t have to be writers, either! I have several yogi friends who just ‘get’ me…and a friend who cuts hair and another mom-friend. Or two. You get get the idea!

Question:

What are you doing for your spring re-set? Do any of these ideas appeal? What am I missing?

Respond here in a comment, or find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

xx,

~Leslie : )

Speaking of re-set, I’ve got an Insights Interview (keep scrolling) with Julie Carrick Dalton on her new novel, THE LAST BEEKEEPER (Forge Books, March 7), about a woman returning to childhood home with one goal in mind…

Photo by Min An on Pexels.com

This issue of Musings & Meanderings is jam-packed with some really great stuff to get your writing and reading off on the right foot. Classes and workshops, bookstore events, book recommendations, journals to submit to, reading recommendations, author interviews, recently published prose, and a quick 4 questions insights interview with Julie Carrick Dalton, author of THE LAST BEEKEEPER. Keep scrolling!

By the way, I do not get any ‘kick-backs’ or other kind of payment (in-kind, or otherwise) for mentioning these classes/workshops/books/individuals. Sharing because if helps me, maybe it’ll speak to you, too.

Some Writerly Things:

  • Palette Poetry is hosting it’s Rising Poet Prize now through April 16 judged by Maggie Smith, who just happens to have a memoir publishing soon [must read]. The submission fee is $20 but you could win up to $3,000! Details HERE.
  • Nimrod International Journal is looking for submissions for their spring contest, now through April 1. There is a submission fee for this. Check out the details HERE.
  • It’s always hard to know where to submit your work, who’s looking for what, the nitty-gritty of what this all means…right? Host Publications talks about this in their podcast, The Host Dispatch.
  • Have you ever attended a workshop, class, or retreat with Lidia Yuknavitch or Corporeal Writing? I did back in the fall of 2022 and loved it. The trees! The ferns! The ocean! It was a nourishing and dare I say–healing–experience. If you’re so inclined, take a peek at their Spring 2022 offering at the lovely Salishan Coastal Lodge.
  • Want to know why your flash fiction is getting rejected? Check out THIS helpful tip sheet from Flash Fiction Magazine.
  • Looking for a manuscript consultation? Wait, what even IS that? You know you’re ready for this if you’re beginning the process of querying agents, have incorporated beta-reader suggestions, workshopped your ms with an instructor/other students, and revised/polished your ms. Cynthia Swanson, author of THE GLASS FOREST and THE BOOKSELLER, and editor of DENVER NOIR might be just what you’re looking for. Learn more about her manuscript consultation HERE.

“Not all narratives are best-suited to double-spaced, left-to-right, top-to-bottom text, but how does one start experimenting with form? We’ll review published examples of hybrid forms, and together we will deconstruct and reinvent traditional texts to explore exciting ways of marrying form with content. We’ll explore the flexibility of language and discuss ways of drawing on other art forms for inspiration.

Image retrieved from Story Studio website 1.25.23

New!

Musings & Meanderings | Insights

Julie Carrick Dalton

THE LAST BEEKEEPER

A Novel

“Julie Carrick Dalton weaves an intricate story of friendships carefully made and tended when mere survival would seem to make such bonds impossible. The Last Beekeeper is ingeniously plotted, both clever and tender on every page. I couldn’t put it down.” 

―Rebecca Scherm, author of A House Between Earth and the Moon

Image designed and photographed by L.Lindsay

Perfect for fans of Migrations and Station Eleven, THE LAST BEEKEEPER is a tale of truth versus power, hope in the face of despair, and a reminder to appreciate the little things.

Leslie Lindsay:

Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say THE LAST BEEKEEPER is about?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Found family, speaking truth to power, secrets, and redemption. My love of nature, fascination with honey bees, and climate anxiety. A tender, but fractured father-daughter relationship. Budding love under difficult circumstances. And hope. So much hope.

Leslie Lindsay:

Where did you write THE LAST BEEKEEPER? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

I’m a fickle writer. I go through phases when I only want to write at my kitchen table. For weeks, I sit in the same spot and it works well. Until it doesn’t. Then I move to new a new location. I spend a lot of time in The Boston Athenaeum, a historic library in downtown Boston filled with old books, historic paintings, and sculptures, as well as contemporary art and books. It’s pin-drop quiet and it smells like old books! I don’t have an office space in my apartment, but there’s a built vanity table in my closet, and I often write there. I mean, who needs a vanity table? I need a desk! It sounds dreary, to write in a closet, but the closet actually has two large windows and lots of light. I’ve turned the space into a makeshift writing room. It’s quite cozy. We also spend a lot of time at a family place in New Hampshire, which is my favorite place to write. There’s something about the quiet, the mountain air, and the flowers outside the window that inspire me. I wrote bits of The Last Beekeeper in all of the places. I don’t really have any rituals, but I write best when I have the taste of peppermint in my mouth. I go through a ridiculous amount of peppermint Tic-Tacs, especially when I’m drafting new material. I’ve considered asking if they would be my corporate sponsor. ‘Writing powered by Tic-tac!’ If anyone wants to buy me a gift, a case of peppermint Tic-Tacs would make me swoon.

Leslie Lindsay:

If you weren’t writing, you would be…

Julie Carrick Dalton:

I would love to design the interiors of tiny homes or RVs. I’m obsessed with the ingenious use of space in tiny homes. Dining room tables that convert into beds. Staircases that are also drawers. Tables that fold flat. During the pandemic, my husband and I salvaged wood from a nearby barn that was torn down. We used the wood to construct a one-room cabin which I now use as a writing office in the summer. A ladder leads to a tiny napping loft. The cabin doesn’t have plumbing, but we installed a dry sink and composting toilet. I have plans for a tiny dining table that folds out of the counter and two seats that slide together to create a coffee table when the dining table is folded down. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m absolutely in love with this tiny cabin. It’s where I finished writing The Last Beekeeper and where I intend to finish my third novel this summer.

Leslie Lindsay:

What book did you recently read that you can’t stop thinking about?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. I first heard Dolen read at a writers’ conference last summer. I immediately bought a copy of Take my Hand and I devoured it. Sometimes when I read a novel, I disappear into the writing and the story. With other books, I’m very aware of the writer’s craft, language, and character development. When I read Take My Hand I was swept away by the story, but at the same, I time found myself turning some of her sentences over and over in my mind, savoring them, wondering how she managed to do so much with so few words. Both the story and the writing stuck with me and continue inspire me.

Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay
Photo Sharona Jacobs

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

 Julie Carrick Dalton is the author of The Last Beekeeper (Forge Books) and Waiting for the Night Song, which was a CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, and Parade Most Anticipated 2021 title. With a background in farming and beekeeping, she is a frequent speaker on the topic of fiction in the age of climate crisis at universities, museums, book festivals, and literary conferences. A Tin House, Bread Loaf, and Novel Incubator alum, she holds a Master’s in Creative Writing and Literature. Her writing has appeared in Orion, The Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, The Hollywood Reporter, Chicago Review of Books, and other publications. Mother to four humans and two dogs, she loves kayaking, skiing, hiking, and gardening. You can follow her on Twitter @juliecardalt; on IG @juliecdalton; on FB @juliecarrickdalton.

Browse my Bookshop.org for more books featured on Musings & Meanderings, what I’m reading in 2023, and some of my favorite books on houses...and more!

Some Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:

  • A conversation with Tanya Frank about her new memoir, ZIG-ZAG BOY: A Memoir of Motherhood & Madness, about her son’s devolve into psychosis at nineteen, how she coped, advocated, and more. It’s a very moving read and interview.
  • Gayle Brandeis and I sat down for a conversation about her breath-taking essay collection, DRAWING BREATH: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Grief in Hippocampus Magazine. The book is available now from Overcup Books.
  • It was such a dream to connect with Nicole McCarthy on her equally dreamy and sublime A SUMMONING (Heavy Feather Press, 2022) and be featured in CRAFT Literary for their hybrid contest (now over), but you can still read the interview HERE.
  • This piece, ANSWERS TO QUERIES, was recently published in the final issue of Scissors & Spackle, part of the ELJ Editions family. Who doesn’t like a family history mystery? Check it out.
  • THE HOUSE, a love letter of sorts to my late grandfather and our newlywed home, recently released from Heimat Review, which is all about ‘your reflections and nostalgia, your narratives of familiarity and strangeness, the things that draw you back to where you are – and where you hope to be.’ C’mon in.
  • Y’all, I am super-excited about this illustrated review in DIAGRAM, which has sorta been like a dream place of mine to get work published. It’s a beautiful melding of all things that bring me joy: fonts, words, ideas, art, books, and the human body. I mean…the only obsessions missing for me is architecture, travel, nature, and basset hounds. Check it out and the book, YOUR HEARTS, YOUR SCARS: Essays by the late Adina Talve-Goodman (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023), which happened to be a Powell’s pick for January.
Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay
My illustrated review of YOUR HEARTS YOUR SCARS (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023) as it appears in DIAGRAM 22.6
  • Kathryn Gahl in conversation with me about her poetic memoir, THE YELLOW TOOTHBRUSH (Two Shrews Press, September 2022), about her incarcerated daughter, perinatal mood disorder, more in MER, November 28, 2022.
  • Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s HALFWAY FROM HOME (Split/Lip Press, Nov 8) in Hippocampus Magazine, about her working-class unconventional childhood in California, moving across the country to pursue writing, home, displacement, and so much more November 13, 2022.
  • A conversation-in-review with the EIC of Salon, Erin Keane, about her memoir, RUNAWAY: Notes on the Myths that Made Me (Belt Publishing, September, 2022), in Autofocus Literary, November 12, 2022.
  • A conversation with Sheila O’Connor about elegantly exploring the nonlinear, (a total obsession of mine), in her EVIDENCE OF V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, Fictions (Rose Metal Press, 2019), in Fractured Literary, October 25, 2022
  • A review-in-dialogue with Su Cho about her debut book of poetry, THE SYMMETRY OF FISH (Penguin Poets, October 2022) in The Cincinnati Review, November 1 2022.
  • Prose in SEPIA Journal Oct/Nov 2022 issue. Interiors is about an Appalachian family, black bottom pie, trains, and ear aches. It was inspired by my own family lore, and also: this journal is STUNNING!
Image retrived from SEPIA website

There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.

Photo by Leslie Lindsay

What’s Obsessing Me:

  • This interview in The Normal School with Marinaomi about their collage memoir, I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME, the tedious process of collecting materials from journals, photo albums, letters, more. *It’s not just available, but pre-order if you’re so inclined.
  • Visual writing. Graphic narrative. Hybrid work. You know…there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
  • The intersection of seeing and knowing.
  • This companion website archive from NIH supporting a library exhibit on mental health: care & custody. As a former psych R.N., this is right in my lane.
  • Planning my daughter’s 18th?!! Birthday.
  • Graduation announcements
  • Bernice McFadden wrote on IG about ripping up and deconstructing a manuscript and I TOTALLY relate. You?
  • This memoir by Priscilla Gilman, THE CRITIC’S DAUGHTER (W.W. Norton, Feb 7 2023), about growing up the daughter of Yale School of Drama professor and literary critic Richard Gilman and high-profiled literary agent Lynn Nesbit. Although our stories differ, I resonate in many ways on an emotional level.

You are reading Musings & Meanderings, a consistently inconsistent weekly newsletter about the literary life from Leslie Lindsay, and home of an archive of bestselling and debut author interviews. I’m also on twitter and instagram. I try to answer comments as best I can. Feel free to find my book suggestions on bookshop.org, and also check out the authors I’ve hosted in in-depth interviews HERE.

In the meantime, catch me on:

Reviewing books and talking about them with others on-line and in-person is one small way to engage with & support the literary community.

Thank you for letting me guide you on your bookish journey.

Photo by L.Lindsay @leslielindsay1

Let’s walk this bookish path together.

THANK YOU!!

Some of you have been reading my reviews, interviews, and meanderings for more than a decade now. That’s huge and I am so humbled. Thanks for being here.

More than 2,800 folks read Musings & Meanderings.

Browse the Archives | Donate

Sending spring vibes your way!

Photo by Carlos Montelara on Pexels.com

Created by Leslie Lindsay. I’m a proud book nerd. Connect with me on Instagram, and Twitter. See what I’m reading on Bookshop.org. Find my reviews on GoodReads. I’m also a Zibby Books Ambassador.

Learn more HERE.

Are you following us on Instagram?

That’s where you’ll catch bookreels, cover reveals, & bookmail : )

I support writing organizations, authors, publishers, and more. Occasionally, you’ll get a peak behind-the-scenes, too.

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Get occasional bookish news delivered to your inbox.

One last thing: I love Between the Covers podcast with David Naimon. Not listening yet? If you’re a serious reader and writer, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Musings & Meanderings: Only your writing friends understand, finding your peeps, DISPATCHES FROM PUERTO NOWHERE, keeping track of your writing/creative time part 2, retreats & workshops

Published by

By Leslie Lindsay

A curated newsletter on the literary life, featuring ‘4 questions,’ reading & listening recommendations, where to submit, more

Leslie Lindsay|Always with a Book

~MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS~

Hello March!

Only Your Writer Friends Understand

Occasionally I get asked, “Are you still writing?” or, “How’s the writing going?” Sometimes there’s variation: “Have you anything published recently?”

Maybe you’re not a ‘real’ writer if you have nothing to show for it.

But here’s the thing: writing requires long hours – a long process – to create.  

Few people understand what it takes specifically for writers to create.

For example, I’ll bet there are several among your group who don’t get it. (I call them “non-writers,” original right?) They don’t understand that when you’re staring out a window for half an hour, you’re at work. Maybe you’re at work as you’re driving, unloading the dishwasher, even reading something else non-related to what you’re writing (you’re deconstructing how that author did her work). You might very well be staring out that window for half-an-hour or running the vacuum, or walking but perhaps you’re trying to work out a problem in the narrative, how to increase tension or pace. Maybe there’s a passage niggling at you to fix.

These folks have no idea how wounding it is when they say something like, “Are you still writing that book?” They mean well, of course; they love you. They simply don’t get it.

But you know who does get it? Your writer friends. They understand what goes into the work. They know about the time you’ve spent mulling over options, word choices, passages, and more. They know when you love your work and when it think it’s the stupidest thing on the planet Earth, ever. They know about the rejections, the celebrated acceptances, all of it. They know it because they are there with you.

Do you have a network of writer friends? I hope so! It’s not always easy to find, them, but once you do, cherish them. They are with you in spirit on every step of your journey to create. They really do get it.

Some suggestions for finding writer friends:

Retreats/Residencies

I’ve been to a couple and have found likeminded people every time. Get their contact information. Reach out. Maintain that friendship.

Same could be said for…

Workshops/Conferences/Classes/Festivals

Check local places first–a college or writing institute or online communities.

Library Writing Groups

Not all local libraries have these, but some do! Maybe a local bookstore hosts a regular writing group. Check into it.

Online Groups

You might find a Facebook Group for your genre, or region. I like Midwest Writer’s Facebook Group, for example.

Happy writing!

Question:

Where do you find your writing people? Who are they? How do they support you? How do you support them?

Respond here in a comment, or find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

xx,

~Leslie : )

Photo by charan sai on Pexels.com

This issue of Musings & Meanderings is jam-packed with some really great stuff to get your writing and reading off on the right foot. Classes and workshops, bookstore events, book recommendations, journals to submit to, reading recommendations, author interviews, recently published prose, and a quick 4 questions insights interview with Robert Lopez, author of DISPATCHES OF PUERTO NOWHERE.

By the way, I do not get any ‘kick-backs’ or other kind of payment (in-kind, or otherwise) for mentioning these classes/workshops/books/individuals. Sharing because if helps me, maybe it’ll speak to you, too.

Some Writerly Things:

  • It’s hard to know if you are writing enough, too much (it’s a thing–remember to care for yourself and other parts of your life), check out these great TIPS from Danielle Lazarin, originally published in Catapult Magazine. I love the tracking sheet and just might make my own! P.S. Super-sad to hear Catapult is shuttering.
  • Have you ever attended a workshop, class, or retreat with Lidia Yuknavitch or Corporeal Writing? I did back in the fall of 2022 and loved it. The trees! The ferns! The ocean! It was a nourishing and dare I say–healing–experience. If you’re so inclined, take a peek at their Spring 2022 offering at the lovely Salishan Coastal Lodge.
  • If a retreat at Salishan isn’t quite in the cards, I get it. This offering, about mapping the body, telling the book of your body, held later this month, might be of interest to you.
  • Here’s a virtual class on writing memoir for publication taught by James Tate Hill, contributing editor for LitHub and taught through Writer’s Workshops. It’s an eight-week course beginning March 20. Check it out.

“Not all narratives are best-suited to double-spaced, left-to-right, top-to-bottom text, but how does one start experimenting with form? We’ll review published examples of hybrid forms, and together we will deconstruct and reinvent traditional texts to explore exciting ways of marrying form with content. We’ll explore the flexibility of language and discuss ways of drawing on other art forms for inspiration.

Image retrieved from Story Studio website 1.25.23

New!

Musings & Meanderings | Insights

Robert Lopez

DISPATCHES FROM PUERTO NOWHERE:

An American Story of Assimilation & Erasure

“Robert Lopez is one of the most exciting writers working today.”


—Jenny Offill, author of Weather and Dept. of Speculation, on A Better Class of People

“A Most Anticipated Book of 2023” —Chicago Review of Books

Leslie Lindsay:

Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say   DISPATCHES FROM PUERTO NOWHERE is about?

Robert Lopez :

It’s about 260 pages, but there’s a lot of white space.

Leslie Lindsay:

Where did you write DISPATCHES FROM PUERTO NOWHERE? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?

Robert Lopez :

I wrote it at the desk in my office in the three different apartments I’ve called home since I started and finished writing this book. Part of it was written in Salt Lake City, Utah, as well. No special routines or rituals. When I feel compelled to work I sit down and work. This is the way it’s happened with everything I’ve done.             

Leslie Lindsay:

If you weren’t writing, you would be…

Robert Lopez :

A grifter.

Leslie Lindsay:

What book did you recently read that you can’t stop thinking about?

Robert Lopez :

John D’Agata’s About A Mountain

Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay
Photo courtesy of author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Robert Lopez is the author of three novels, two story collections, and a novel-in-stories titled A Better Class of People. His first nonfiction book, Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere, publishes on March 14th from Two Dollar Radio. He teaches at Stony Brook University and lives in Brooklyn. 

For more information, to purchase a copy of DISPATCHES FROM PUERTO NOWHERE, please visit Robert Lopez’s WEBSITE.

Browse my Bookshop.org for more books featured on Musings & Meanderings, what I’m reading in 2023, and some of my favorite books on writing...and more!

Some Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:

  • A conversation with Tanya Frank about her new memoir, ZIG-ZAG BOY: A Memoir of Motherhood & Madness, about her son’s devolve into psychosis at nineteen, how she coped, advocated, and more. It’s a very moving read and interview.
  • Gayle Brandeis and I sat down for a conversation about her breath-taking essay collection, DRAWING BREATH: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Grief in Hippocampus Magazine. The book is available now from Overcup Books.
  • It was such a dream to connect with Nicole McCarthy on her equally dreamy and sublime A SUMMONING (Heavy Feather Press, 2022) and be featured in CRAFT Literary for their hybrid contest (now over), but you can still read the interview HERE.
  • This piece, ANSWERS TO QUERIES, was recently published in the final issue of Scissors & Spackle, part of the ELJ Editions family. Who doesn’t like a family history mystery? Check it out.
  • THE HOUSE, a love letter of sorts to my late grandfather and our newlywed home, recently released from Heimat Review, which is all about ‘your reflections and nostalgia, your narratives of familiarity and strangeness, the things that draw you back to where you are – and where you hope to be.’ C’mon in.
  • Y’all, I am super-excited about this illustrated review in DIAGRAM, which has sorta been like a dream place of mine to get work published. It’s a beautiful melding of all things that bring me joy: fonts, words, ideas, art, books, and the human body. I mean…the only obsessions missing for me is architecture, travel, nature, and basset hounds. Check it out and the book, YOUR HEARTS, YOUR SCARS: Essays by the late Adina Talve-Goodman (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023), which happens to be a Powell’s pick for January.
Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay
My illustrated review of YOUR HEARTS YOUR SCARS (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023) as it appears in DIAGRAM 22.6
  • Kathryn Gahl in conversation with me about her poetic memoir, THE YELLOW TOOTHBRUSH (Two Shrews Press, September 2022), about her incarcerated daughter, perinatal mood disorder, more in MER, November 28, 2022.
  • Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s HALFWAY FROM HOME (Split/Lip Press, Nov 8) in Hippocampus Magazine, about her working-class unconventional childhood in California, moving across the country to pursue writing, home, displacement, and so much more November 13, 2022.
  • A conversation-in-review with the EIC of Salon, Erin Keane, about her memoir, RUNAWAY: Notes on the Myths that Made Me (Belt Publishing, September, 2022), in Autofocus Literary, November 12, 2022.
  • A conversation with Sheila O’Connor about elegantly exploring the nonlinear, (a total obsession of mine), in her EVIDENCE OF V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, Fictions (Rose Metal Press, 2019), in Fractured Literary, October 25, 2022
  • A review-in-dialogue with Su Cho about her debut book of poetry, THE SYMMETRY OF FISH (Penguin Poets, October 2022) in The Cincinnati Review, November 1 2022.
  • Prose in SEPIA Journal Oct/Nov 2022 issue. Interiors is about an Appalachian family, black bottom pie, trains, and ear aches. It was inspired by my own family lore, and also: this journal is STUNNING!
Image retrived from SEPIA website

There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.

Photo by Leslie Lindsay

What’s Obsessing Me:

  • Architecture, Photography…I mean, this doesn’t ever really change, does it?
  • Visual writing. Graphic narrative. Hybrid work. You know…there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
  • Filling my cup. Eliminating things that don’t serve me.
  • Planning my daughter’s 18th?!! Birthday.
  • Graduation announcements

You are reading Musings & Meanderings, a consistently inconsistent weekly newsletter about the literary life from Leslie Lindsay, and home of an archive of bestselling and debut author interviews. I’m also on twitter and instagram. I try to answer comments as best I can. Feel free to find my book suggestions on bookshop.org, and also check out the authors I’ve hosted in in-depth interviews HERE.

In the meantime, catch me on:

Reviewing books and talking about them with others on-line and in-person is one small way to engage with & support the literary community.

Thank you for letting me guide you on your bookish journey.

Photo by L.Lindsay @leslielindsay1

Let’s walk this bookish path together.

THANK YOU!!

Some of you have been reading my reviews, interviews, and meanderings for more than a decade now. That’s huge and I am so humbled. Thanks for being here.

More than 2,800 folks read Musings & Meanderings.

Browse the Archives | Donate

Sending spring vibes your way!

Photo by Alena Koval on Pexels.com

Created by Leslie Lindsay. I’m a proud book nerd. Connect with me on Instagram, and Twitter. See what I’m reading on Bookshop.org. Find my reviews on GoodReads. I’m also a Zibby Books Ambassador.

Learn more HERE.

Are you following us on Instagram?

That’s where you’ll catch bookreels, cover reveals, & bookmail : )

I support writing organizations, authors, publishers, and more. Occasionally, you’ll get a peak behind-the-scenes, too.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is logo-preview.png





Get occasional bookish news delivered to your inbox.

One last thing: I love Between the Covers podcast with David Naimon. Not listening yet? If you’re a serious reader and writer, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS the host of podcast ‘The Only One in the Room,’ Laura Cathcart Robbins talks about her memoir on addiction, STASH; plus micro-memoir classes, visual writing, time management for the writer/creative, Story Studio happenings, Complete Sentence, and more

Published by

By Leslie Lindsay

A curated newsletter on the literary life, featuring ‘4 questions,’ reading & listening recommendations, where to submit, more

Leslie Lindsay|Always with a Book

~MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS~

It’s Still February, Friends!

Earlier this month, we talked a bit about tracking your writing and creative time. I shared these TIPS from Danielle Lazarin, originally published in Catapult Magazine. I made my own tracking sheet and wanted to share some of my results.

Newsflash: writing is hard.

Newsflash #2: writing isn’t just about writing.

Writing and the creative life is about juggling all sorts of things–emails, deadlines, reading, consulting, learning, experimenting, revising, outreach, networking…you get it.

Here’s my sheet:

For each day of the month, I made a chart with various writing-related tasks down the side. You can probably do this in a Spreadsheet and make it so much prettier. I write all over the place and don’t always compose on a laptop, so I carry this ratty piece of paper around everywhere. What’s on it?

Writing. Submissions/including seeking places to submit work. Pitching outside publications. Consulting/Teaching/Book Events. Writing Biz/website management. Book photography. Collaging/creating visual narrative. Interview Prep. Continuing Education/Classes/Webinars. Reading. Publicist Outreach. Social Media (creating content/sharing content). Revising. Research/Prep for a piece. Personal Stuff (yoga, cardio, meditation). Family (making appointments, texting kids, juggling their sports schedules/driving them places, making dinner, last-minute cupcakes).

Here’s the thing: You are replaceable at work, but not home.

I try to touch several writerly things a day. But I always do stuff for my kids and family and I have to take care of me, too. So that ‘personal’ or ‘self-care’ thing really needs to be tended to.

There’s more, too, but for now, I’ll leave you with this…

Question:

Is there more to the writing life than you imagined? If you did some tracking of your own time, would you be surprised by some of the trends? For me, I started to feel more ‘balanced’ and less exhausted when I got my morning exercise in. I felt drained by trying to do too much literary stuff in one day. Respond here in a comment, or find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

xx,

~Leslie : )

P.S. I’ve got the lovely and talented Laura Cathcart Robbins chatting about her memoir, STASH: My Life in Hiding (March 7, 2023, Atria Books). Keep Scrolling

Photo by Carlos Montelara on Pexels.com

This issue of Musings & Meanderings is jam-packed with some really great stuff to get your [writing and reading] off on the right foot. Classes and workshops, bookstore events, book recommendations, journals to submit to, reading recommendations, author interviews, recently published prose, and a quick 4 questions insights interview with the lovely and talented Laura Cathcart Robbins chatting about her memoir, STASH: My Life in Hiding (March 7, 2023, Atria Books).

By the way, I do not get any ‘kick-backs’ or other kind of payment (in-kind, or otherwise) for mentioning these classes/workshops/books/individuals. Sharing because if helps me, maybe it’ll speak to you, too.

Some Writerly Things:

  • I’m pretty intrigued by this journal, Complete Sentence, which is like a gorgeous run-on sentence that tops out around 230-250 words. They accept fiction, nonfiction, art.
  • Do you write hybrid? CRAFT Literary has a call that might really entice and excite. Judged by Nicole McCarthy—who is lovely and thoughtful, I just interviewed her–it’s open now thru Feb 28. Details HERE. There is a $20 reading fee, but it if they are small pieces, you can include two for that price.
  • You’l; have to be quick to nab this one, but Red Hen Press has a contest open for fiction or non-fiction book-length work 25,000-80,000 words writtenb y people identifying as women thru Feb 28th.
  • The Rumpus is looking for essays now through March 1.
  • It’s always a chore to seek placement for your work, right? Jane Friedman’s Electric Speed newsletter alerted me to this downloadable database of 1,000 literary journals, complete with a description (retrieved via Twitter), cost of submission, website, and other great information. Check it out.
  • APUBLIC SPACE, a pretty prestigious literary journal offers Writing Academy Classes. This one struck my eye, all about revision, making it fun and experimental…a revision lab with writer Anne Elliot, Sundays via Zoom, March thru April. Check it out and REGISTER here.
  • I’m intrigued by this micro-memoir class taught by Beth-Ann Fennely, the author of HEATING AND COOLING, which is 52-micro memoirs in a collection. Funny and honest. The class is a one-shot virtual deal.
Image retrieved from Story Studio website 1.25.23

New!

Musings & Meanderings | Insights

Laura Cathcart Robbins

STASH: My Life in Hiding

“An irresistibly delicious story.”

—Holly Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author

A propulsive and vivid memoir—in the vein of Drinking: A Love Story and Somebody’s Daughter—about the journey to sobriety and self-love amidst addiction, privilege, racism, and self-sabotage from the host of the popular podcast The Only One in the Room.

Leslie Lindsay:

Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say STASH is about?

STASH is about a 10-month period in my life during which I ended a marriage, battled an addiction, explored new love… (was that what you meant by without responding in complete sentences?)

Leslie Lindsay:

Where did you write STASH? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?

Laura Cathcart Robbins:

I wrote STASH in my home office.  For six months, every day I would get up at six-thirty, meditate, work out, and then answer emails.  At eleven o’clock I would turn over my phone, turn on old sitcoms in the background (I Love Lucy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, etc), and write until seven o’clock.  I ate lunch at my desk.  So far, my routine hasn’t changed.

Leslie Lindsay:

If you weren’t writing, you would be…

Laura Cathcart Robbins:

Podcasting! I host a podcast called The Only One In The Room. I love telling my own stories, but I really enjoy guiding people through telling theirs.

Leslie Lindsay:

What book did you recently read that you can’t stop thinking about?

Laura Cathcart Robbins:

B.F.F., A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found,  by Christie Tate.  It’s like she got inside my head and exposed all of these feelings about relationships that I didn’t know I had.  It’s a must-read.

Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay
Image retrieved from Shout-Out LA 2.2.23Image
Photo(s) by Scott Slaughter and Cooper Urlich

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Laura Cathcart Robbins is the host of the popular podcast, The Only One In The Room, and author of the forthcoming Atria/Simon & Schuster memoir, STASH (March 7, 2023). She has been active for many years as a speaker and school trustee and is credited for creating The Buckley School’s nationally recognized committee on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice. Her recent articles in Huffpo and The Temper on the subjects of race, recovery, and divorce have garnered her worldwide acclaim. She is a 2022 TEDx Speaker, and LA Moth StorySlam winner. Currently, she sits on the advisory boards of the San Diego Writer’s Festival and the Outliers HQ podcast Festival. Find out more about her on her website, or you can look for her on Facebook, on Instagram and follow her on Twitter.

For more information, to purchase a copy of STASH, or connect with the author, please visit Laura Cathcart Robbins’ WEBSITE.

Browse my Bookshop.org for more books featured on Musings & Meanderings, what I’m reading in 2023, and some of my favorite memoirs..and more!

Some Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:

  • This piece, ANSWERS TO QUERIES, was recently published in the final issue of Scissors & Spackle, part of the ELJ Editions family. Who doesn’t like a family history mystery? Check it out.
  • THE HOUSE, a love letter of sorts to my late grandfather and our newlywed home, recently released from Heimat Review, which is all about ‘your reflections and nostalgia, your narratives of familiarity and strangeness, the things that draw you back to where you are – and where you hope to be.’ C’mon in.
  • Y’all, I am super-excited about this illustrated review in DIAGRAM, which has sorta been like a dream place of mine to get work published. It’s a beautiful melding of all things that bring me joy: fonts, words, ideas, art, books, and the human body. I mean…the only obsessions missing for me is architecture, travel, nature, and basset hounds. Check it out and the book, YOUR HEARTS, YOUR SCARS: Essays by the late Adina Talve-Goodman (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023), which happens to be a Powell’s pick for January.
  • Gayle Brandeis and I sat down for a conversation about her breath-taking essay collection, DRAWING BREATH: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Grief in Hippocampus Magazine. The book is available Feb 7th from Overcup Books.
  • Also? Gayle and I will be in conversation IN PERSON at City Lit Books in Logan Square, Chicago Tuesday, Feb 7th 6:30-7:30pm CST. Come join us!
Image retrived from City LIt Books website 1.25.23
Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay
My illustrated review of YOUR HEARTS YOUR SCARS (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023) as it appears in DIAGRAM 22.6
  • Kathryn Gahl in conversation with me about her poetic memoir, THE YELLOW TOOTHBRUSH (Two Shrews Press, September 2022), about her incarcerated daughter, perinatal mood disorder, more in MER, November 28, 2022.
  • Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s HALFWAY FROM HOME (Split/Lip Press, Nov 8) in Hippocampus Magazine, about her working-class unconventional childhood in California, moving across the country to pursue writing, home, displacement, and so much more November 13, 2022.
  • A conversation-in-review with the EIC of Salon, Erin Keane, about her memoir, RUNAWAY: Notes on the Myths that Made Me (Belt Publishing, September, 2022), in Autofocus Literary, November 12, 2022.
  • A conversation with Sheila O’Connor about elegantly exploring the nonlinear, (a total obsession of mine), in her EVIDENCE OF V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, Fictions (Rose Metal Press, 2019), in Fractured Literary, October 25, 2022
  • A review-in-dialogue with Su Cho about her debut book of poetry, THE SYMMETRY OF FISH (Penguin Poets, October 2022) in The Cincinnati Review, November 1 2022.
  • Prose in SEPIA Journal Oct/Nov 2022 issue. Interiors is about an Appalachian family, black bottom pie, trains, and ear aches. It was inspired by my own family lore, and also: this journal is STUNNING!
Image retrived from SEPIA website

There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.

Photo by Leslie Lindsay

What’s Obsessing Me:

  • This piece in the NYRB about the bleak, slightly unsettling art of Andrew Wyeth. Doesn’t it seem like spring is always just on the horizon in all of his works?
  • The work of Sarah Minor. How she’s a visual writer and so much more. Check out her book, BRIGHT ARCHIVES (Rescue Press, Oct 2020), which was introduced to my by the lovely and talented Kristine Langley Mahler.
  • This book THE NURSERY by Szilvia Molnar, about a new mother feeling isolated in her apartment.

You are reading Musings & Meanderings, a consistently inconsistent weekly newsletter about the literary life from Leslie Lindsay, and home of an archive of bestselling and debut author interviews. I’m also on twitter and instagram. I try to answer comments as best I can. Feel free to find my book suggestions on bookshop.org, and also check out the authors I’ve hosted in in-depth interviews HERE.

In the meantime, catch me on:

Reviewing books and talking about them with others on-line and in-person is one small way to engage with & support the literary community.

Thank you for letting me guide you on your bookish journey.

Photo by L.Lindsay @leslielindsay1

Let’s walk this bookish path together.

THANK YOU!!

Some of you have been reading my reviews, interviews, and meanderings for more than a decade now. That’s huge and I am so humbled. Thanks for being here.

More than 2,800 folks read Musings & Meanderings.

Browse the Archives | Donate

Wishing you much comfort and joy in the New Year!

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Created by Leslie Lindsay. I’m a proud book nerd. Connect with me on Instagram, and Twitter. See what I’m reading on Bookshop.org. Find my reviews on GoodReads. I’m also a Zibby Books Ambassador.

Learn more HERE.

Are you following us on Instagram?

That’s where you’ll catch bookreels, cover reveals, & bookmail : )

I support writing organizations, authors, publishers, and more. Occasionally, you’ll get a peak behind-the-scenes, too.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is logo-preview.png

Get occasional bookish news delivered to your inbox.

One last thing: I love Between the Covers podcast with David Naimon. Not listening yet? If you’re a serious reader and writer, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Musings & Meanderings: Residencies and Workshops, writing anywhere, writing fragmented memoirs, Rebecca Makkai on boarding schools and murders, and so much more

Published by

By Leslie Lindsay

A curated newsletter on the literary life, featuring ‘4 questions,’ reading & listening recommendations, where to submit, more

Leslie Lindsay|Always with a Book

~MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS~

Welcome to February, Friends!

Let’s just say January was a rough start to the year. Did you feel it, too? It felt like every-other-day was another hurdle, and it wasn’t even the weather! I’m not sure if there was something in the air, or what. But I will share that I took a Zoom class on writing your memoir that was hugely validating and supportive. Maybe it’s because the presenter told us what I was doing was the ‘key to unlocking’ narrative.

Okay, it wasn’t just me, but her entire spiel. The idea?

Fragments. Found objects, notes. Lists. Collaging. A mosaic. How does this all work in a book? Does it work in a book? How about lyrical essays? Found forms? A play with structure? Poetry? All of it. Yes, all of it.

Why am I doing this? Will it work for you? It might. Here’s why:

Fragments.

Time is fragmented and precious. We all learned that during the pandemic (hellooo, work-from-home-with-kids), and not just that, but we are continually bombarded by more fragmented things: scrolling. Tweets. Texts. You get it.

Image-obsessed culture.

This is not just about appearances, but that’s there, too. Think: Instagram and Facebook. TV. Billboards.

Trauma.

Many memoirs are rooted in some kind of trauma. It may be death/grief, divorce, mental illness, suicide, abuse, kidnapping, illness, and more. That’s hard stuff. Choosing to write hard stuff in fragments makes it a little easier to work through. You don’t have to construct a straight-on narrative, either. Play with the space.

Memory.

Manipulating documents, calendars, photos, all of that can really help you access memories on a deeper level and make your story as ‘truthful’ as possible. It’s a bit of an investigation.

There’s more, too, but for now, I’ll leave you with this…

Question:

Would this style of narrative work for you? What might you access to write something along these lines? Documents? Hospital records? Yearbooks? Town maps? Would you read something like this? Would it change the way you look at the form?

Speaking of questions, I’ve got the lovely and talented Rebecca chatting about her forthcoming book, I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU. Keep scrolling.

Respond here in a comment, or find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

xx,

~Leslie : )

Photo by charan sai on Pexels.com

This issue of Musings & Meanderings is jam-packed with some really great stuff to get your [writing and reading] year off on the right foot. Classes and workshops, bookstore events, book recommendations, journals to submit to, reading recommendations, author interviews, recently published prose, and a quick 4 questions insights interview with Pulitzer prize and National Book Award finalist Rebecca Makkai on her forthcoming novel, I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU (Viking, Feb 21 2023)

By the way, I do not get any ‘kick-backs’ or other kind of payment (in-kind, or otherwise) for mentioning these classes/workshops/books/individuals. Sharing because if helps me, maybe it’ll speak to you, too.

Some Writerly Things:

  • It’s hard to know if you are writing enough, too much (it’s a thing–remember to care for yourself and other parts of your life), check out these great TIPS from Danielle Lazarin, originally published in Catapult Magazine. I love the tracking sheet and just might make my own!
  • if you’re interested in seeing what else Writing Workshops has to level your writing practice, check out their FEBRUARY offerings.
  • If Thursday mornings work for you participate in live Zoom meetings on craft, check out OCWW, that’s off-campus writing workshops, which is celebrating it’s 75th year…you’ll find their February OFFERINGS here with information on how to register.
  • Do you write hybrid? CRAFT Literary has a call that might really entice and excite. Judged by Nicole McCarthy—who is lovely and thoughtful, I just interviewed her–it’s open now thru Feb 28. Details HERE. There is a $20 reading fee, but it if they are small pieces, you can include two for that price.
  • APUBLIC SPACE, a pretty prestigious literary journal offers Writing Academy Classes. This one struck my eye, all about revision, making it fun and experimental…a revision lab with writer Anne Elliot, Sundays via Zoom, March thru April. Check it out and REGISTER here.
Image retrieved from Story Studio website 1.25.23

New!

Musings & Meanderings | Insights

Rebecca Makkai

I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023: TIME, The Seattle Times, Good Housekeeping, Today.com, Souther Living, and CrimeReads 

The riveting new novel from the author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist The Great Believers

Leslie Lindsay:

Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say I HAVE SOMEQUESTIONS FOR YOU is about?

Rebecca Makkai:

Ooh, no complete sentences! Hmm. Literary feminist boarding school murder mystery. New Hampshire. 1995. A shrine to Kurt Cobain. Wrongful incarceration. #MeToo. The passage of time.

Leslie Lindsay:

Where did you write I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?

Rebecca Makkai:

This one lived in my head a long time, but I started it in earnest during a residency at the Ragdale Foundation in early 2018. I normally rely on residencies much more, but Covid really interfered with that plan, so I did a lot of housesitting in order to be alone to write. I don’t believe in routines or rituals. If you have some special magic teacup and then your teacup breaks, where does that leave you? I need to be able to write in hotel rooms, on airport floors, at Starbucks…

“[Makkai adds] intriguing layers of complication . . . Well plotted, well written, and well designed.”

 —Kirkus Reviews

Leslie Lindsay:

If you weren’t writing, you would be…

Rebecca Makkai:

Probably still teaching Montessori elementary school, which I did in my 20s and early 30s. Every day was different, every kid was different, and it was impossible to get bored.

Leslie Lindsay:

What book did you recently read that you can’t stop thinking about?

Rebecca Makkai:

I’m still figuring out Trust, by Hernan Diaz, and I’m meeting with a couple of friends next weekend to discuss it because we all need to work out our theories. It’s a wonderful puzzle of a book.

Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay
Leicester, Vermont (June 18, 2019) – Author Rebecca Makkai photographed at her lake cottage. (Photo © 2019 Brett Simison)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Rebecca Makkai’s last novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the Clark Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and it was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times. Her other books are the novels The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime—four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca is on the MFA faculties of the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and Northwestern University, and is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.

For more information, to purchase a copy of I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU, please visit Rebecca Makkai’s WEBSITE.

Browse my Bookshop.org for more books featured on Musings & Meanderings, what I’m reading in 2023, and some of my favorite books on writing...and more!

Some Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:

  • This piece, ANSWERS TO QUERIES, was recently published in the final issue of Scissors & Spackle, part of the ELJ Editions family. Who doesn’t like a family history mystery? Check it out.
  • THE HOUSE, a love letter of sorts to my late grandfather and our newlywed home, recently released from Heimat Review, which is all about ‘your reflections and nostalgia, your narratives of familiarity and strangeness, the things that draw you back to where you are – and where you hope to be.’ C’mon in.
  • Y’all, I am super-excited about this illustrated review in DIAGRAM, which has sorta been like a dream place of mine to get work published. It’s a beautiful melding of all things that bring me joy: fonts, words, ideas, art, books, and the human body. I mean…the only obsessions missing for me is architecture, travel, nature, and basset hounds. Check it out and the book, YOUR HEARTS, YOUR SCARS: Essays by the late Adina Talve-Goodman (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023), which happens to be a Powell’s pick for January.
  • Gayle Brandeis and I sat down for a conversation about her breath-taking essay collection, DRAWING BREATH: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Grief in Hippocampus Magazine. The book is available Feb 7th from Overcup Books.
  • Also? Gayle and I will be in conversation IN PERSON at City Lit Books in Logan Square, Chicago Tuesday, Feb 7th 6:30-7:30pm CST. Come join us!
Image retrived from City LIt Books website 1.25.23
Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay
My illustrated review of YOUR HEARTS YOUR SCARS (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023) as it appears in DIAGRAM 22.6
  • Kathryn Gahl in conversation with me about her poetic memoir, THE YELLOW TOOTHBRUSH (Two Shrews Press, September 2022), about her incarcerated daughter, perinatal mood disorder, more in MER, November 28, 2022.
  • Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s HALFWAY FROM HOME (Split/Lip Press, Nov 8) in Hippocampus Magazine, about her working-class unconventional childhood in California, moving across the country to pursue writing, home, displacement, and so much more November 13, 2022.
  • A conversation-in-review with the EIC of Salon, Erin Keane, about her memoir, RUNAWAY: Notes on the Myths that Made Me (Belt Publishing, September, 2022), in Autofocus Literary, November 12, 2022.
  • A conversation with Sheila O’Connor about elegantly exploring the nonlinear, (a total obsession of mine), in her EVIDENCE OF V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, Fictions (Rose Metal Press, 2019), in Fractured Literary, October 25, 2022
  • A review-in-dialogue with Su Cho about her debut book of poetry, THE SYMMETRY OF FISH (Penguin Poets, October 2022) in The Cincinnati Review, November 1 2022.
  • Prose in SEPIA Journal Oct/Nov 2022 issue. Interiors is about an Appalachian family, black bottom pie, trains, and ear aches. It was inspired by my own family lore, and also: this journal is STUNNING!
Image retrived from SEPIA website

There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.

Photo by Leslie Lindsay

What’s Obsessing Me:

  • Basset hounds. Always.
  • Are books ghosts? How about bruises? Postcards? Photographs?
  • Getting my oldest daughter into college. We’ve been accepted…now we just gotta jump through all the hoops!
  • Getting my younger daughter her driver’s license. Why do they make this so complex and cumbersome?
  • Houses and homes and this book on architecture.
  • Clearing clutter. How did the crawlspace get so full, anyway?
  • This book, STRANGERS TO OURSELVES by Rachel Aviv

You are reading Musings & Meanderings, a consistently inconsistent weekly newsletter about the literary life from Leslie Lindsay, and home of an archive of bestselling and debut author interviews. I’m also on twitter and instagram. I try to answer comments as best I can. Feel free to find my book suggestions on bookshop.org, and also check out the authors I’ve hosted in in-depth interviews HERE.

In the meantime, catch me on:

Reviewing books and talking about them with others on-line and in-person is one small way to engage with & support the literary community.

Thank you for letting me guide you on your bookish journey.

Photo by L.Lindsay @leslielindsay1

Let’s walk this bookish path together.

THANK YOU!!

Some of you have been reading my reviews, interviews, and meanderings for more than a decade now. That’s huge and I am so humbled. Thanks for being here.

More than 2,800 folks read Musings & Meanderings.

Browse the Archives | Donate

Wishing you much comfort and joy in the New Year!

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Created by Leslie Lindsay. I’m a proud book nerd. Connect with me on Instagram, and Twitter. See what I’m reading on Bookshop.org. Find my reviews on GoodReads. I’m also a Zibby Books Ambassador.

Learn more HERE.

Are you following us on Instagram?

That’s where you’ll catch bookreels, cover reveals, & bookmail : )

I support writing organizations, authors, publishers, and more. Occasionally, you’ll get a peak behind-the-scenes, too.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is logo-preview.png





Get occasional bookish news delivered to your inbox.

One last thing: I love Between the Covers podcast with David Naimon. Not listening yet? If you’re a serious reader and writer, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Musings & Meanderings: Max Seeck speaks about ghosts of one’s past; writing as a calling, sharing your traumatic life stories, bending time, SINKHOLE, ‘Clinics of the Past,’ exciting books of 2023

Published by

By Leslie Lindsay

A curated newsletter on the literary life, featuring ‘4 questions,’ reading & listening recommendations, where to submit, more

Leslie Lindsay|Always with a Book

~MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS~

Hello 2023, Friends!

Sometimes it’s daunting to write. If it’s your life story, or something of equal weight and power, it might be really hard. What if there’s trauma? I guarantee there’s trauma. I recently heard this phrase, ‘nested in trauma,’ and I found that so evocative. The idea is that all story–and all life–is somehow bookended and infused with trauma. Also? The degree of trauma is subjective.

Back to writing.

It’s hard to back away from a story you’re compelled to share. I know, I’ve been there. I’m there right now. It’s feels like a calling, but I also wonder: is it stupid? Will anyone else care?

It’s terrifying and joyful and challenging. It’s creative and vulnerable.

What if you hurt someone you care about?

What if you open too many cans of worms?

What if it’s too traumatic to relive the past? You certainly don’t want to invite more pain and heartache, right?

And also? It’s overwhelming.

For me, it’s a calling. I tried setting this manuscript aside. I told others it was dead, done, gone; it was not going to be published. Ever. In any form.

Here’s the thing: I can’t not share this story.

I can’t not stop thinking about it, making connections in my daily life, and I cannot stop being obsessing with houses and homes, families, memory, architecture, art, and mental health. It’s just part of me.

The call to turn and face your story is a universal one. It’s part of how you’re hardwired, your legacy. It doesn’t mean you have to do it all at once, or even alone.

Just do a little each day.

Maybe it’s not even writing, but reading. Sometimes I ‘count’ my ‘touch it daily’ goal as just reading about interiors and homes. Sometimes it might look like culling through old photos or doing a little research into a topic. A Google search counts!

Tell me what you’re doing to propel your writing?

Respond here in a comment, or find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

xx,

~Leslie : )

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

This issue of ‘Musings & Meanderings is full of insights, ideas, and more, including a quick Author Insight from Finish thriller writer, Max Seeck, some of 2023’s biggest books, according to lists put out by Penguin Random House (PRH), my interviews with various authors, including Gayle Brandeis, Juliet Patterson, Kristin Keane, Kathryn Gahl, and also an illustrated review in DIAGRAM.

Check it all out! Let me know what ‘speaks’ to you. I’m glad you’re here.

By the way, I do not get any ‘kick-backs’ or other kind of payment (in-kind, or otherwise) for mentioning these classes/workshops/books/individuals. Sharing because if helps me, maybe it’ll speak to you, too.

New! Featured Author|Insights

Max Seeck

THE LAST GRUDGE

Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay

While her colleagues investigate the brutal murder of a prominent businessman, Jessica Niemi must battle demons from her past in this terrifying new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Witch Hunter.

Leslie Lindsay:

Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say THE LAST GRUDGE is about?

Max Seeck:

Not sure if I understand this question right – do you mean something like summarizing the novel in one or two words? Then it would be maybe… painful memories.

Leslie Lindsay:

Where did you write THE LAST GRUDGE? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?

Max Seeck:

I do have an office downtown Helsinki where I do 90% of my writing. I don’t find it convenient to write elsewhere – here I got my own peace and inspiring environment. Also since I have two young kids at home it would be nearly impossible to do anything creative there.

Leslie Lindsay:

If you weren’t writing, you would be…

Max Seeck:

I always wanted to be a professional ice hockey player but I never was any good. I also wanted to become a film maker – a dream that has in fact now come true since my debut feature film (THE KNOCKING) is premiering in cinemas in February 2023.

Leslie Lindsay:

What book did you recently read that you can’t stop thinking about?

Max Seeck:

I just finished reading the Finnish author Maria Turtschaninoff’s SUOMAA, which was an amazing episodic description of people living in Finland during the centuries. A truly magnificent book that is now being translated to several languages

Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay
Photo © Marek Sabogal 2019

About the author

International and New York Times bestselling author Max Seeck writes novels and screenplays full-time. He lives with his wife and children near Helsinki.

Find him online at www.maxseeck.com/books; Twitter: @maxseeck; Instagram: @maxseeck; and Facebook.com/maxseeck.

You can shop for THE LAST GRUDGE by visiting my Bookshop.org storefront. Browse all the books I’m interested in reading in 2023.

More Reading Recommendations:

  • Curious what PRH is predicting will be BIG literary fiction in 2023? Check out their LIST.
  • More into nonfiction? Biography, Memoir Science? Check out THIS list.
  • Maybe BOOK CLUB fiction is more your speed?
  • P.S. I’ve definitely added a few of these to my lists=! Check back here to see who might appear on Insights | Musings & Meanderings
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Some Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:

  • Y’all, I am super-excited about this illustrated review in DIAGRAM, which has sorta been like a dream place of mine to get work published. It’s a beautiful melding of all things that bring me joy: fonts, words, ideas, art, books, and the human body. I mean…the only obsessions missing for me is architecture, travel, nature, and basset hounds. Check it out and the book, YOUR HEARTS, YOUR SCARS: Essays by the late Adina Talve-Goodman (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023), which happens to be a Powell’s pick for January.
My illustrated review of YOUR HEARTS YOUR SCARS (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023) as it appears in DIAGRAM 22.6
  • Kathryn Gahl in conversation with me about her poetic memoir, THE YELLOW TOOTHBRUSH (Two Shrews Press, September 2022), about her incarcerated daughter, perinatal mood disorder, more in MER, November 28, 2022.
  • Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s HALFWAY FROM HOME (Split/Lip Press, Nov 8) in Hippocampus Magazine, about her working-class unconventional childhood in California, moving across the country to pursue writing, home, displacement, and so much more November 13, 2022.
  • A conversation-in-review with the EIC of Salon, Erin Keane, about her memoir, RUNAWAY: Notes on the Myths that Made Me (Belt Publishing, September, 2022), in Autofocus Literary, November 12, 2022.
  • A conversation with Sheila O’Connor about elegantly exploring the nonlinear, (a total obsession of mine), in her EVIDENCE OF V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, Fictions (Rose Metal Press, 2019), in Fractured Literary, October 25, 2022
  • A review-in-dialogue with Su Cho about her debut book of poetry, THE SYMMETRY OF FISH (Penguin Poets, October 2022) in The Cincinnati Review, November 1 2022.
  • Prose in SEPIA Journal Oct/Nov 2022 issue. Interiors is about an Appalachian family, black bottom pie, trains, and ear aches. It was inspired by my own family lore, and also: this journal is STUNNING!
Photo by Leslie Lindsay

Coming soon:

  • A photo essay in On the Seawall featuring miniatures, houses, and a family besieged by mental illness.
  • A prose piece in Heimat Review, which is sort of a love letter to my late grandfather, my newlywed days, and an old house.
  • A a hybrid flash non-fiction piece about the mysteries of ancestry in ELJ Editions Scissors & Spackle.
  • A conversation-in-review with Nicole McCarthy on her genre-defying A SUMMONING (Heavy Feather Review, September 2022) to appear in CRAFT Literary in 2023.
  • A conversation-in-review with Jamila Minnicks, on her PEN/Bellwether Prize-winning debut, MOONRISE OVER NEW JESSUP (Algonquin Books, January 10, 2023) to appear in The Rumpus.
  • Tanya Frank’s ZIG-ZAG BOY: A Memoir of Motherhood & Madness (W.W. Norton, Feb 28 2023), a review and conversation to appear in Hippocampus Magazine, spring 2023.
  • A review-in-conversation with Gayle Brandeis, DRAWING BREATH: Essays on the Body, Writing, & Loss (Overcup Press, February 2023)

I’ll be sharing my published interviews here, after they’ve ‘gone live’ with their various publications.

There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.

Photo by Diahann Addison on Pexels.com

What’s Obsessing Me:

  • Houses and homes, but you know…they always do! I just heard something about Clinics of the Past and I can’t stop thinking about this concept of creating old towns or homes from eras past to help people diagnosed with dementia. Pretty cool, right? [this idea is largely drawn from the imagination and writings of Georgi Gospodinov, as interviewed by David Naimon on the Between the Covers podcast.]
  • You might also like this one, as mentioned in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
  • [Grateful to David Naimon for sharing these with me]
  • Crumbl Cookies...I mean, yum! They really have nailed their buttercream icing.
  • Story as shelter. Time as place. Memory as a palace.
  • A Man Called Otto/Ove. I’m a little obsessed by the way the title shifted a bit from book to movie, and also, my hubby and I recently played hooky one weekday to see the movie…and swooning! Have you seen it yet?
  • Clutter. Clearing it. Why we have it in the first place.

You are reading Musings & Meanderings, a consistently inconsistent weekly newsletter about the literary life from Leslie Lindsay, and home of an archive of bestselling and debut author interviews. I’m also on twitter and instagram. I try to answer comments as best I can. Feel free to find my book suggestions on bookshop.org, and also check out the authors I’ve hosted in in-depth interviews HERE.

In the meantime, catch me on:

Reviewing books and talking about them with others on-line and in-person is one small way to engage with & support the literary community.

Thank you for letting me guide you on your bookish journey.

Photo by L.Lindsay @leslielindsay1

Let’s walk this bookish path together.

THANK YOU!!

Some of you have been reading my reviews, interviews, and meanderings for more than a decade now. That’s huge and I am so humbled. Thanks for being here.

More than 2,800 folks read Musings & Meanderings.

Browse the Archives | Donate

Wishing you much comfort and joy in the New Year!

Photo by Alissa Nabiullina on Pexels.com

Created by Leslie Lindsay. I’m a proud book nerd. Connect with me on Instagram, and Twitter. See what I’m reading on Bookshop.org. Find my reviews on GoodReads. I’m also a Zibby Books Ambassador.

Learn more HERE.

Are you following us on Instagram?

That’s where you’ll catch bookreels, cover reveals, & bookmail : )

I support writing organizations, authors, publishers, and more. Occasionally, you’ll get a peak behind-the-scenes, too.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is logo-preview.png

Get occasional bookish news delivered to your inbox.

Musings & Meanderings: A Curious month, January. Derek T. Freeman on BUILDING UNSTOPPABLE SELF-CONFIDENCE IN TEENS, purging, writer self-care, hybrid writing contests, workshops, retreats, more

Published by

By Leslie Lindsay

A curated newsletter on the literary life, featuring ‘4 questions,’ reading & listening recommendations, where to submit, more

Leslie Lindsay|Always with a Book

~MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS~

Hello 2023, Friends!

January is a curious month. Is it a coming or a going? New and fresh or letting go of the old? I struggle with this every year. In the Midwest, it’s cold. I don’t feel like opening doors and windows to ‘let in the new year,’ likewise for ‘spring cleaning.’ It’s not really spring, either–anywhere. Maybe we ought to rename it ‘New Year Cleaning?’

This year is off to a rough start. When I put it in perspective, it’s not so bad…but let’s just say it’s not flowing like usual, mostly in a personal sense, but a few professional hiccups, too. I’ll get through it!

Here’s a little secret: raising kind humans is hard work.

Being a kind human is hard work.

We’ve got lots of ‘firsts’ happening–all in one week! Sweet Sixteen, college acceptances (and indecision), first jobs, a trip to the city, and…getting dumped by a longtime boyfriend, a dear person who became part of the family…that’s just the kid-raising stuff…which has left little precious time for creativity and work-related things. Invisible and emotional labor is a real thing!

So what am I doing about it? Two things.

1. I checked myself into an Air B&B where I’ll catch-up on my writing projects and hopefully make progress…I have a list…but I also have intentions of taking a bubble bath, doing yoga, reading, and meditation.

2. For the kids, I have a book that will help immensely. I think you’ll love it, too. As a former child/adolescent psych R.N., this book really ‘spoke’ to me…it’s rooted in research, approachable, relatable, and offers such great tips and ideas. Reading through it helped me remember what it was like to be a teenager myself. It helped relate to what my daughters might be feeling. In fact, one of them is reading it now.

Scroll down a bit for a quick 4 Questions Insights Interview with author Derek T. Freeman.

3. I know I said two things, but here’s an allusive third…we are going to work on this purging thing. Less is more. Clutter is stifling. It’s time not just scrub and reorganize, it’s time to eliminate. We need space. To think. To breathe.

Question:

How do you feel this time of year? How do you settle into January? Any special retreats or rituals? Do you feel like we need a space between the flurry of December and the ‘fresh start’ of January…a time when we can just regroup and recharge and not feel the pressure to make lists and goals and manifestations and lose weight and clean house? To just BE?

Respond here in a comment, or find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

xx,

~Leslie : )

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This issue of Musings & Meanderings is jam-packed with some really great stuff to get your [writing and reading] year off on the right foot. Coaching, book recommendations, journals to submit to, reading recommendations, author interviews, recently published prose, and a quick 4 questions insights interview with Derek T. Freeman on his self-help book for teens, BUILDING UNSTOPPABLE SELF-CONFIDENCE FOR TEENS

By the way, I do not get any ‘kick-backs’ or other kind of payment (in-kind, or otherwise) for mentioning these classes/workshops/books/individuals. Sharing because if helps me, maybe it’ll speak to you, too.

Some Writerly Things:

  • Looking ahead in your 2023 writing year, check out these offerings from HEDGEBROOK, which is a dreamy writing retreat and class space in the PNW
  • This poetry workshop intrigues me…it’s probably too late to join, but I am particularly taken with the idea of line breaks, tiny details, more.
  • Really, it’s too late for that one, but if you’re interested in seeing what else Writing Workshops has to level your writing practice, check out their FEBRUARY offerings.
  • Do you write hybrid? CRAFT Literary has a call that might really entice and excite. Judged by Nicole McCarthy—who is lovely and thoughtful, I just interviewed her–it’s open now thru Feb 28. Details HERE. There is a $20 reading fee, but it if they are small pieces, you can include two for that price.

New! Featured Author|Insights

Derek T. Freeman

BUILDING UNSTOPPABLE SELF-CONFIDENCE FOR TEENS

“Building Unstoppable Self-Confidence for Teens is a candid, conversational guide to navigating adolescence that comes from a place of hard-won wisdom and deep compassion. — John B. Valeri, Author, Book Critic & Host of the web series Central Booking

Image designed & Photographed by Leslie Lindsay

Leslie Lindsay:

Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say BUILDING UNSTOPPABLE SELF-CONFIDENCE FOR TEENS is about?

Derek T Freeman:

Empowerment for youth…inspiration. A focus on self-growth BEFORE adulthood! Raising awareness and consciousness.

Leslie Lindsay:

Where did you write BUILDING UNSTOPPABLE SELF-CONFIDENCE FOR TEENS? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?

Derek T Freeman:

This is my first book. To be honest, it flowed quickly. I like to create a detailed outline first, then work down from there. I usually start each section with a “brain dump” – I’ll just write and write, letting it flow without looking back (a glass of red wine pairs nicely with this!). Then, I’ll take a break, go back, and revise. I edited the whole book three times – I’m very picky about wording, punctuation, and the use of bold/italics/capitalization. I like the challenge of getting it to read the way it’s intended to be received.

Leslie Lindsay:

If you weren’t writing, you would be…

Derek T Freeman:

Playing with my cats. Video games and hikes with my kids & wife. In the music studio. Reading. Playing pool, darts, cards, or board games. And definitely, always, eating.

Leslie Lindsay:

What book did you recently read that you can’t stop thinking about?

Derek T Freeman:

I liked Deepak Chopra’s new one You Are the Universe. I had to read many sections over to digest it. It’s hard (impossible) to put reality into words, but I think he comes close.

Image designed & photographed by L.Lindsay
Author image credit: courtesy of author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Derek T Freeman is the author of Building Unstoppable Self-Confidence for Teens.

His work aims to inspire tweens, teens, parents, and families by providing motivational content and guiding them through the years that are often seen as the most challenging parts of both parenting and growing up.

As a young teenager, Derek struggled with self-esteem, bullying, and fitting in. As a father, he has attended countless groups and school functions and, along the way, has realized just how common his school experiences are. He is determined to make the turbulent waters of adolescence easier to navigate for other young people.

For more information, to purchase a copy of BUILDINGUNSTOPPABLE SELF-CONFIDENCE FOR TEENS.

You can connect on Instagram HERE. Find Derek T. Freeman on TikTok and Facebook.

Browse my Bookshop.org for more parenting books, what I’m reading in 2023, and some of my favorite books featuring mental health…and more!

Some Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:

  • Y’all, I am super-excited about this illustrated review in DIAGRAM, which has sorta been like a dream place of mine to get work published. It’s a beautiful melding of all things that bring me joy: fonts, words, ideas, art, books, and the human body. I mean…the only obsessions missing for me is architecture, travel, nature, and basset hounds. Check it out and the book, YOUR HEARTS, YOUR SCARS: Essays by the late Adina Talve-Goodman (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023), which happens to be a Powell’s pick for January.
My illustrated review of YOUR HEARTS YOUR SCARS (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023) as it appears in DIAGRAM 22.6
  • Kathryn Gahl in conversation with me about her poetic memoir, THE YELLOW TOOTHBRUSH (Two Shrews Press, September 2022), about her incarcerated daughter, perinatal mood disorder, more in MER, November 28, 2022.
  • Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s HALFWAY FROM HOME (Split/Lip Press, Nov 8) in Hippocampus Magazine, about her working-class unconventional childhood in California, moving across the country to pursue writing, home, displacement, and so much more November 13, 2022.
  • A conversation-in-review with the EIC of Salon, Erin Keane, about her memoir, RUNAWAY: Notes on the Myths that Made Me (Belt Publishing, September, 2022), in Autofocus Literary, November 12, 2022.
  • A conversation with Sheila O’Connor about elegantly exploring the nonlinear, (a total obsession of mine), in her EVIDENCE OF V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, Fictions (Rose Metal Press, 2019), in Fractured Literary, October 25, 2022
  • A review-in-dialogue with Su Cho about her debut book of poetry, THE SYMMETRY OF FISH (Penguin Poets, October 2022) in The Cincinnati Review, November 1 2022.
  • Prose in SEPIA Journal Oct/Nov 2022 issue. Interiors is about an Appalachian family, black bottom pie, trains, and ear aches. It was inspired by my own family lore, and also: this journal is STUNNING!
Image designed and photographed by L.Lindsay

There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.

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What’s Obsessing Me:

  • Jane Friedman recently brought this search engine to my attention and I am obsessed–ddmm is all about stock images for whatever your heart desires. You can filter to show results for creative commons only. I searched up ‘floor plans,’ and was instantly drooling.
  • Along those lines, I have started thinking about a playlist for my WIP. Many writers do this to get in the writing mood/mindset, and while that might work for you, I’m using it as an accompaniment for the book itself, sort of a multi-sensory read. Check out the Natural Language Playlist, which is an AI-generated mixtape concept you can download right to your Spotify account. Pretty slick!

You are reading Musings & Meanderings, a consistently inconsistent weekly newsletter about the literary life from Leslie Lindsay, and home of an archive of bestselling and debut author interviews. I’m also on twitter and instagram. I try to answer comments as best I can. Feel free to find my book suggestions on bookshop.org, and also check out the authors I’ve hosted in in-depth interviews HERE.

In the meantime, catch me on:

Reviewing books and talking about them with others on-line and in-person is one small way to engage with & support the literary community.

Thank you for letting me guide you on your bookish journey.

Photo by L.Lindsay @leslielindsay1

Let’s walk this bookish path together.

THANK YOU!!

Some of you have been reading my reviews, interviews, and meanderings for more than a decade now. That’s huge and I am so humbled. Thanks for being here.

More than 2,800 folks read Musings & Meanderings.

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Wishing you much comfort and joy in the New Year!

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Created by Leslie Lindsay. I’m a proud book nerd. Connect with me on Instagram, and Twitter. See what I’m reading on Bookshop.org. Find my reviews on GoodReads. I’m also a Zibby Books Ambassador.

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One last thing: I love Between the Covers podcast with David Naimon. Not listening yet? If you’re a serious reader and writer, I don’t think you’ll regret it.