My Bold Bonus Life: 12

Food report from my bonus 18-day life in Manhattan: above you'll see a lamb kofta burger from a fine establishment called 5 Napkin Burger.

It was impressively good. And as juicy as advertised. In fact, 5 napkins were not enough; I needed a bib, really wrecked my shirt.

Speaking of wreckage, here's the update on yesterday's crisis with the plant that I'm supposed to be plant-sitting for here that I allowed to dry up. (All the other plants around it were fine?!) Thank you for the sympathy and advice that came pouring in. People all over the country have pondered over this plant. No one has yet been able to identify it, including the person in the library at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens where I took it this afternoon for a consult. She's going to do further checking and get back to me. I've yet to hear back from the vacationing Audrey Hepburn who owns this apartment and its plants.

In the meantime, I bought a nice jasmine at the BBG to fill the space in the bank of terrace plants that was like a missing front tooth. And have done what I can to start the wounded one into recovery; in the days to come, we shall see....

And I am pretty much psychologically recovered. I suppose there had to be a crisis if this was going to be a real mini-life. I hope I have that covered now.

Rest of the day quite busy. I'd decided I had to get a grip on my schedule. Without office hours or Husband Bob to keep me in line, sleep had been sliding all over the place. (Probably not surprising in the setting up of a mini-life. At first, it's like going off to school....)

Today I was up-and-at-'em by the not-too-taxing hour of eight. Had time for a cruise through Saks and some perfume testing, before hitting the Matisse show at Moma. (Bathers by a River repeatedly caused me shivers, don't know why; but it's widely considered a masterpiece so there's something at work there).

A very strange installation by Bruce Nauman also stopped me. It was a room full of recorded voices repeating the names of days over and over. The idea at first seemed to me somehow sophomoric, and then when I first walked in: insane. And then I was very taken by it. The names of days coming from every direction felt like time hurrying, something I'm quite conscious of, more in my regular life than in this bonus life.

After my afternoon gardening consult in Brooklyn, I headed for "home", but took the wrong train. Wound up zooming out to Queens. When I realized this, I decided to just keep going. I'd meant to go out to Astoria anyway, had heard it was the largest Greek community outside of Greece, and seemed important to my multi-national tour of the boroughs.

My short walk in Astoria, hauling two large plants still, was in a pleasant downtown largely-residential neighborhood, with Greek and Latin people seeming to predominate. Lots of Greek names on businesses, but no Greek-Island-style houses climbing hills from the dazzling blue sea. I was only there about an hour, maybe I missed them.

Food report from this afternoon: a cup of chocolate frozen yogurt in Astoria and one of chocolate ice cream in Brooklyn. A traveling feast.

Back in Manhattan, still hauling the two plants, I browsed through Bloomingdale's which was an elegant Friday night carnival. As I finally headed to the apartment, one of the drivers of the Central Park horse buggies,nodded at my two plant sacks and called out to me, "You better clean out those bags. There's stuff growing out of them."


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My Bold Bonus Life: 11

Well, I screwed up.

I'm here in New York apartment-sitting, with the simple duties of watering the plants and bringing in the mail. You'd think I could handle that.

But I let one of the plants on the terrace go too long without water. Its prognosis is now iffy.

I've sent my confession and apology to Audrey Hepburn (that's the way I think of the New Yorker who owns this apartment). I didn't want her to discover the news here first.

I feel bad.

And, as regular readers here may already know, I have a touch of mild-to-medium obsessive-compulsive disorder of the type known as scrupulosity: fear of doing wrong, of accidentally hurting somebody, that sort of thing.

I've done the best I can to turn my upset to action to fix the situation as well as possible. I'm trying to ID the plant. Have sent photos of the troubled creature to two NY Botanic Gardens and an extension agent back home in NC. Been to three plant stores this afternoon. No help. At one of them, the guy didn't know a leaf from a stem. (I should talk!)

In the meantime, I'm hoping that watering and misting and staring at the plant will help.

Again, I'm sorry, Audrey Hepburn and my friends who helped to entrust me with her plants. I'm striving to make it up to you.



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My Bold Bonus Life: 10

The first day of the second half of my bonus life in New York felt like four different days crammed together. Yesterday was:

Gallery-hopping.

Doll clothes.

Meeting with book editor.

Evening haircut that felt like a Japanese tea ceremony.

And then today turned out to be a half-day. Time has been funny that way in this extra life.

Yesterday morning I started with the galleries, the cluster of them in the 57th street area. Clutching a torn page from a magazine guide, I found that finding each one was part of the adventure. The first gallery, curiously named Haunch of Venison (you'd think it was a rock band), turned out to be upstairs in the same building with Simon & Schuster, publisher of my first novel, Revelation. Huge erotic paintings formed a major part of the show: tangles of pink limbs based on photographs of moments in the life of the artist. In another room was a sound sculpture made by the amplifications of the faint noises of a foot bridge, with a weirdly fascinating video of vibrating cables. I loved the music of the bridge -- a strange sort of wind chime.

Four other galleries forming a similar melange. One of the highlights in an exhibit on privacy was called Privet: a wall lighted from within made of green glass shards. A hedge forbidding and beautiful.

While I was hunting for these art spots, I happened upon a collection of a radically different sort: The American Girl Place. You may have heard of this doll that has become a cultural phenom. I had read about it, and the American Girl emporia that have become pilgrimage sites for pre-teen girls and their mothers.

I was never big on playing with dolls -- I feel disloyal to Cuddles and Jane as I say that. But I've always liked miniatures. And this store for me was a museum of intricate and detailed miniatures: the customizable and child-like dolls in their bazillion different outfits and settings. And then there were clothes for children to match those of the dolls; a girl could get a photographer's outfit (short loose jacket, serious working pants, and a beret) for herself and her doll.

Aside from the fascination of the miniatures, I was interested in seeing what a pro-girl-power message was conveyed. Be brave, be a leader, pursue your interests, follow your inner star. So valuable for girls of this age.


In the afternoon the meeting with a book editor: I pitched several ideas. She liked one, was interested in a proposal, but first wanted me to increase my blog traffic.
A much more complex and mysterious undertaking than writing a book.

The meeting felt relaxed and fine to me. But I felt wiped out afterward, wandering around in the heat in stupid high heels. I also realized I hadn't had my daily caffeine and it was too late in the day for it.

But an oasis lay ahead: I had a 7 p.m. appointment for a haircut. It was with a student at a high-end salon; a $10 bargain I'd discovered in The Cheap Bastard's Guide to New York City. I'd badly needed a trim at the time I got this apartment-sitting invitation and, in the flurry of getting ready, forgot about this detail.

The salon on E. 55th was Shige Kosuda and the hairdresser's name was, as I understood it, Santoshi, a lean young guy with thick black hair. He conducted my haircut in a stylized manner that felt like a quiet, almost religious ritual that went on for a full hour and included a neck and shoulder and scalp massage. As you might imagine, I enjoyed this. And felt completely restored. Here is the haircut.


Mid-evening, I went back to the apartment and slept sixteen hours. I started my day at 5 p.m. today. This is the half-day I'm talking about. I couldn't believe I'd slept so long. But I woke up doubly restored.

Spent the evening in the West Village, had supper at the White Horse Tavern, haunt of many writers in the 50s and 60s. My friend Dan Wakefield, author of New York in the Fifties among many other books, had asked me to hoist a pint there for him. I stopped in and hoisted a chicken pot pie and a Sprite. (Food report: the pie was excellent, but no bigger than a cupcake).

Then to a musical that's part of the arts festival, Fringe NYC. I didn't love it, had had enough at half-time and slunk out, though I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Somehow, the story just hadn't engaged me. It was about this novelist....




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My Bold Bonus Life: 9

Number 9? This means that I'm at the halfway point in my 18-day extra-life-within-a-life. As a New Yorker, I'm middle-aged.

But I'm not taking this as a sign that I should re-assess, have a crisis, or do anything differently in my New York adventure. I'm going to keep on poking into things on whim.

I worked some yesterday on getting ready to talk with a book editor today. Then went off to "New York's largest witchcraft/goddess supply store," Enchantments, Inc. on E. 9th in the East Village. At the time, I didn't think the meeting prep and the store visit were related, but now I wonder. I did glance twice at an orange Success candle.

The low-ceilinged little store was rich in atmosphere, deeply worn floorboards with ground-in sparkle as if from old meteor showers. Incantatory smells. Soothing music. And shelves and shelves of jars of gathered-from-nature mysterious materials.

Fascinating story about the place in a 2008 New York Times. If I'd read it first, I might have bought the orange candle.

I'd planned on having lunch at an appropriately atmospheric place nearby, Cloister Cafe, with its monastic stained glass windows, suit of armor, wall sword, etc. But, no. Closed on Mondays. I peered in the window and absorbed the medieval darkness.

Food report: I wound up around the corner at a Japanese bakery and sandwich shop, Panya. Had a salmon sandwich on a baked-on-the-premises-that-morning baguette. The bread was wonderful, better than salmon.

Then a long train ride uptown in time to catch an ethicist giving a talk at PicNic Cafe, an Alsatian bistro. The $10 ticket included one drink.

The subject was the moral value of "negative" emotions, such as anger. The speaker was a Columbia philosophy professor, Macalester Bell, who described herself as "a recovering Kantian." I have no idea what that specifically means, but found her very thoughtful on what constitutes moral anger: the acknowledgment of wrongdoing, etc. She was quite young and seemed charmingly un-angry --and has taught previously back home at UNC.

At the end of her talk, she asked us to please be kind to the wait staff: she did that kind of work for years and knew that it could stimulate lots of negative emotions.

The wait/philosopher and the goddess store: that's the kind of combination I'm finding intriguing in these days here. Note the combo of business and building in the photo below. The CVS in Raleigh was never like this.


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My Bold Bonus Life: 8

Sunday was Rap Day for me.

First, brunch at The Grey Dog in the West Village. Highly recommended spot, but I was there to say hi to the daughter of a friend back home who waits tables at the cafe when she's not going to auditions. She just got a one-month role on Seinfeld! But she was off yesterday and so I left my note to her with the very charming young maitre d'.

Food report: huge brie and mushroom omelet that came with huge pile of hash browns and two fat slices of cranberry-walnut wheat bread.

Then, to the rap. It was one of the free summer concerts in Central Park and headlined a piece of hip hop history, Public Enemy, the first rap group built on a political pro-black message -- and the first to go worldwide in acclaim.


All very interesting, of course, but what draws me is the spirit and the pounding beat. It was one dancing crowd yesterday, never mind that it drizzled and rained much of the afternoon, and that most of us were standing. I stayed just short of four hours and got a rousing good workout.

I don't have a lot of friends at home who share my interest, but on my 18-day Bold Bonus Life in New York, I'm mostly by myself anyway. So I went. Looking for the bandshell (you'd think something like this would be easy to find) I fell in walking with a guy I'd asked directions; he was also looking for the place -- Rob, a dapper fortyish black comic book illustrator. Then added on a middle-aged Italian woman, Silvana, who updated us on Italian rap. The male security guy frisked Rob and peered into the purses of Silvana and me. Then we went our separate directions into the already large crowd.

I listen regularly to hip-hop on my car radio. But I don't pay attention to who's rapping. (Same with every other kind of music, but not at all the case with books.) So I kept thinking Public Enemy had arrived. The warm-up seemed plenty rhythmic and well appreciated. Blitz the Ambassador, of Ghana and Brooklyn, was a good concert in himself.

The crowd was wonderfully multi-cultural and diverse. Directly in front of me for much of the time, was a scrawny young guy in yarmulke with the fringes of his prayer shawl hanging out from under his T-shirt. He danced almost continuously -- and well!-- for most of the three hours and 50 minutes I was there. His apparent date, a large black woman, was more of a quiet foot-tapper. There was even a couple behind me who appeared to be of my advanced age.

The music was still going when I left. I could still hear it halfway to the edge of the park. It's a wonder I'm hearing anything this morning.

Here's the sorry picture I took with my phone held blindly overhead. That crowd was moving, though it doesn't show.




Actual knowledgeable reviews online today include this item at Crawdaddy.

Not sure yet what I'm up to today.





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My Bold Bonus Life: 7

A few highly personal images from my Bonus Life in New York:

From the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. At home, I live beside a little pond with a Japanese zigzag bridge. Husband Bob has very Eastern tastes and philosophy.


A piece of the Tudor City neighborhood, on the east side of mid-town, where two of my good friends grew up.



The base of a beech tree in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, wonderfully sculptural. (I'm a great fan of trees.)

Waiting for the train. I like cobalt blue almost as much as I do trees.


The Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park: a fair summation of my Bonus Life in New York experience.


And PLEASE NOTE: IMPORTANT: An image of the Time Out New York cover salted caramel sundae
.



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My Bold Bonus Life: 6

5:40 a.m. I was up getting ready to go get my ticket to see live Saturday Night Live.

I arrived under the famous NBC marquee at Rockefeller Plaza by 6:30, only to learn that the making of the shows is "in hiatus."

But that's not what the website had told me.

Furthermore, the security guard helpfully advised me that if a new performance had been scheduled for tonight, I'd probably have needed to spend the night on the pavement out front to have any chance of getting a ticket.

Website didn't say that either. So I came back to the apartment and took a nap and did a little work. Soon to go have lunch at the apartment of a friend from my school days. I haven't seen her since 1972. She's now president of a large university. And they make fun of English majors' job prospects... She and I had some classes together. She must have taken better notes.


I did go out to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and was glad I did. The Japanese Hill-and Pond Garden alone was worth the trip. And a blooming lotus, a marvelous creamy-white thing. And lunch on the terrace in the breeze: a turkey, brie, arugula sandwich with raspberry mustard.

From there in central Brooklyn, I walked to the cafe whose caramel salt sundae was the cover of Time Out New York magazine this week. It did deserve a cover: caramel ice cream with caramel sauce and whipped cream and some sort of cookie chunks mixed in and, the crowning glory, broken pretzels on top.

From there I planned my next move: to go and see Paul Taylor's company dance at a venue in a Lower East Side waterfront park. I had two hours, so I decided to walk. Quite a distance from where I sat in Brooklyn, but surely I could make it in two hours or get a train when I needed to.

So I walked across the Manhattan Bridge at sunset. Gorgeous views of the Brooklyn Bridge, the city skyline, the boats down below, and Liberty in the distance. Then through Chinatown, past so many fish markets, fruit markets. And on to parts of the Lower East Side I'd never seen before. I walked the entire waterfront of that East River park and never found the first Paul Taylor dancer. Oh, well. The walk was really the point, which was not true of this morning's fruitless hike. By the time I got back to the apartment, I'd walked most of four hours: a slow scenic marathon.


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My Bold Bonus Life 5

Posting in the morning today, for a change, while I'm feeling fresh and clear-minded. Never mind that it's 12:13 pm. That's mid-morning for me in this New York 18-Day Bonus Life. I've settled into a schedule of going to bed about 1:30 or so and getting up about 9. Not really much different from my sked at home. But this feels much more leisurely, of course, since I'm not heading off to my office and working until mid-evening. (Instead, doing a little work on a manuscript and making one call to an editor)

Breeze coming from the terrace through the glass atrium is so nice. Second cool day in a row. Yesterday it was 74 degrees at midday. This weather feels miraculous, is giving me an extra season in my bonus life.

The weather is right to go to Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where I've never been but always had in mind. As my website bio says, I'm a devoted-but-slapdash gardener. Dedicated in spring and fall and laissez-faire in the hot months. I want to see the Brookly spread and do so in this weather, but am feeling more urban than herbal today. And I'm making a point of following whims during this time.

Today's the last day of a gallery show I wanted to see: Richard Kalina at Lennon, Weinberg. Just looked at it online and now I feel I've seen it -- and really enjoyed it.

Just had a glance at this video of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It says to me: Go, you haven't seen but a glimpse. Today?


Maybe I'll just head out and see where I wind up. But I do have to go to bed early tonight to be in line at dawn to try to get a ticket to see Saturday Night Live live.


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My Bold Bonus Life: 4

Lotta lotta walking -- twice across the island of Manhattan, and from 87th down to 42nd and halfway back. And almost every instant of it interesting.

And a little shopping: got a couple of light cotton tops at Forever 21 for dealing with the heat. (I know I'm actually 28 on this trip, but I'm young for my age.) Then, fittingly, went to Love, Loss, and What I Wore, a play by Ephron sisters based on a book by a woman who didn't start writing until she was 60, Ilene Beckerman (hurray for her!). The play is about the stories that particular pieces of clothing evoke, and was very sisterly, funny, and well-done.

I also did a little work, critiquing a manuscript. I'm managing to comfortably fit some work into my bonus life in this new and refreshing setting.

Food report: a stuffed potato at a diner that was extremely ordinary but served with the best Coke I ever tasted. I must have been thirsty.

A caramel sundae is on the cover of the Time Out New York that I bought today. It's the Dessert issue: perfect timing. And as it happens, a caramel sundae is what I had for lunch my first day here.

A fine slice of takeout chocolate chip cheesecake awaits me now. Must go.



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My Bold Bonus Life: 3

Tired. I went out to Coney Island on the train this afternoon, a place I richly imagined as an elementary school kid. I'd heard back then that this was a place that had even more carnival rides than nearby Carolina Beach. This was inconceivable bliss.

But my interest in such rides waned, and definitely ended after I had my first and only roller coaster ride at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. I boldly refuse to do any such thing ever again.

But something about the nature of this trip (see My Bold Bonus Life: 1) made me want to go. Also, Coney Island Beach is adjacent to Brighton Beach which interests me because it's a strong Russian emigre community and I love pockets of other cultures.


Anyway, I had a pleasant and long walk on the beach, which wasn't as crowded as pictures of NY beaches always seem to be. Admired the prodigious size of the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster. Bought and consumed exotic jellied candies, presumably Russian. Heard a lot of Russian spoken, came to understand that not all Russians are blonde like Baryshnikov. And that what appears to be the main drag of Brighton Beach runs directly underneath the elevated train.

And now I've been to Coney Island, home of both Coney Island Beach and Brighton Beach. This desire is fully and happily satisfied.


But an even better part of the day: I had lunch with a friend here who is one of the most inspiring speakers I've ever heard: Colleen Keegan. She is also inspiring and emboldening at lunch. I came away with the feeling that the future is promising, that exciting new possibilities exist in what generally seem to be discouraging global circumstances. And that individual voices and quirky ideas really do have a better chance of reaching people than ever before.

Plus, the lunch and the view were splendid. (Reader/commenter/artist Lynne asked for more food reporting here.) We dined at A Voce, in the Time/Warner building on Columbus Circle. The Stracciatella,
"creamy pugliese mozzarella,roasted artichokes, lemon thyme, arugula, bresaola," was kinda unbelievable. That alone could expand one's sense of possibilities.

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My Bold Bonus Life: 2

After the euphoric first day of my 18-day life in Manhattan, I learned that even in a bonus life, one has to run errands: the drugstore, the ATM, etc.

However, doing these mundane things here makes them fresh and new. For one thing, everything was in walking distance. No driving. That alone was staggeringly refreshing.

And, coming back, half a block from "my" apartment -- hereafter to be referred to as my apartment -- I walked up on a crowd of people all over the sidewalk on both sides. And there were lots of piles of stuff on the ground and on tables. A multi-family yard sale, I thought. But then I tried to figure out what they were selling: cross-country skis, folding chairs?

A second later, I figured it out. It was a shoot. For Law & Order, I learned. (A surge of feeling lucky overwhelmed me at this point.)

I didn't see any of the stars. What I saw was people who were referred to by the shouting crew as "background" being taped walking back and forth on the sidewalk. One woman's assignment seemed to be to rummage in her bag while walking. I thought she did it very well, but somebody yelled "Cut" every time she got a few seconds into her rummaging.

Had I been really bold, I'd have said to one of the guys with clipboards: You need any more background?

Still, a surprise shoot was a nice addition to errand running.



This morning a mini-transcendent experience in the Cooper-Hewitt design museum: Lobmeyr Glass. I was drawn to the place by a photograph of a cobalt blue bowl. I like glass art and love cobalt blue. What I saw stretched my idea of what glass can do. (This video is Lobmeyr glass, but not the display at the museum)


One case of goblets and such was made of extremely fine muslin glass, "with a restrained iridescence, a whispered reference to Roman technique." The curator said these pieces have "the delicacy of a soap bubble." He wasn't exaggerating. The glass seemed barely there.

Bold design ideas are the point of this museum, and there were so many astonishing ones on display. Example: a machine that "prints out" houses, extruding concrete in lines that make walls, rather than print in lines that make type.

And some contemplative moments watching model sailboats skim across a pond in Central Park....

Bonus life personal change: I'm getting rid of a couple of pieces of clothes that I brought. They're worn out. How had I not noticed that back home?















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My Bold Bonus Life

Have embarked on my 18-day life-within-a-life in New York, the one I promised myself as celebration of turning 60 a year and a half ago. I hadn't yet figured out how to work it out (pay for it) and then this marvelous house-sitting arrangement fell in my lap and suddenly I'm here.

And it's thrilling. I arrived yesterday on "the Chinatown bus" -- an express overnight trip from Grand Asia Market at home in NC to Canal Street in Chinatown (a $30 trip, can you believe it?)

We rolled in at 10 am and then, sweat-drenched, I rolled and toted and subwayed my monstrous suitcase (housing computer et al)to a lefty church service where a former client of mine is minister. Got there just in time to hear her preach, and meet her afterwards. I'd never even met her; being several states apart, we'd communicated only by email. Her sermon was inspiring; about making important changes by shifting your weight in the desired direction, a little and then a little more and so on. Music was gorgeous: a piano and flute performance of one of Satie's Gymnopedies, and then a solo by a woman with a Broadway style voice (rather different from most of the church sopranos I've ever heard, no warble)

Then uptown to my home for this bonus lifetime. Wow! it's terrific. A sunny studio on the third floor with a glass atrium at the back that has been made into a sunlit office that then opens onto a large third floor terrace in a breezy canyon of trees within the center of the block. (see terrace view in photo)

Also, the owner, whom I've never met, (daughter of a friend of a friend, and oh, what nice people) is 28 years old with a glamorous career, Audrey Hepburn taste, and an excellent book collection. I am happy to be twenty-eight again for the coming weeks.

In the afternoon, I went first to the Manhattan Dominican Day parade.
Continuous dance music and everybody dancing. (I had no idea that 90% of New York was Dominican.) Then to the E. 60th Street Fair, and more walking (my favorite thing in New York) and sudden exhaustion: back to the apt. Ate the owner's mother's homemade pumpkin bread and leftover white wine on the terrace at dusk. (I was asked to eat up all the leftover perishables or get rid of them)

How did I get such a miracle opportunity as this? By telling everyone I knew. And I didn't even do it to look for an opportunity, just out of excitement. But the results convince me more than ever: if you have a dream, start making it real by making it public.

Feel free to announce any dream(s) of your own here in the comments.





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Junk Mail to Art

My friend, Christina, knowing I'll be in Manhattan next week, passed on word of a cool workshop there.

I love the idea, and it can be done anywhere: turning your junk mail, your pile, into a piece of art. When you think about it, there's no end to the forms one's pile of garbage paper and odds and ends can take. Highly customized notecards at the very least.

It'd be interesting to take one day's trash/recycling and see what can be made of it.

If you exercise your creativity and come up with something, send a photo. I'd love to post it.

Note: the wonderfully inventive artist Bryant Holsenbeck has an ongoing slide show on her site displaying her art made from trash and recyclables.

A Taste of My Plan B Life

New York has called me and I need to cancel the Get-Published workshop that I announced in my last post.

Thanks to those who expressed interest. I'm sorry for any inconvenience.

The situation: I got an offer I couldn't refuse: 2.5 weeks plant-sitting and being a "New York writer" in an apartment on the Upper West Side. Great chance to see some colleagues--even though it's August-- and lead some of my Plan B life. (If I had two lives, one would of course be in Manhattan and, as it happens, on the Upper West Side.) So when the Big App calls, I go.

Do you have a Plan B life? Do you ever visit it? (A virtual Second Life on line doesn't count.)





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Seminar: Get A Book Published

You’re invited to a Get-Published-in-Today’s-Market Seminar
on Saturday, August 14,
at my cabin in the woods, south of Chapel Hill, NC.

You’ll learn:

--How to think about your book or idea – however literary or personal – from a commercial perspective

--How to approach an agent (with fiction or nonfiction)

--The trends in publishing by the major houses and how to stay current

--How to choose and approach small presses

--Self-publishing’s new respectability—how and where to begin

--How to make the most of your credentials

--As well as up-to-date high points of: promotion, Internet and print resources, “building a platform,” networking, and aspects of getting a book out into the world.

(What we won’t cover: photo books, books for small children, poetry.)

My publishing credits include: two novels, Sister India published by Riverhead (Penguin Putnam), a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and Revelation (Simon & Schuster) with screen rights sold to Synergy Films. Co-authorship of a nonfiction book, The Healing Power of Doing Good, published by Fawcett Columbine (Ballantine Books). I’ve published articles, essays, and reviews in More, Ms., Cosmopolitan, Travel & Leisure, Family Circle, Motor Boating & Sailing, and other magazines, and in newspapers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and most of the other major American newspapers.

Writers I’ve worked with in my consulting services for writers have found agents, published with major book houses including Simon & Schuster, Wiley, Workman, and St. Martin's, as well as smaller presses, literary journals, magazines (Gourmet, Newsweek), newspapers, and online publications.


Nuts and bolts:

Class hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Hang out until 5:30 and socialize, if you like.
Lunch and drinks are provided.
Feel free to bring your laptop.
No prerequisites: you’re welcome whether you’re previously published, finishing a book, considering an idea, or looking for one.
Cost: $95
Reserve by sending a check to Peggy Payne, 410 Morson Street, Raleigh, NC 27601 or click on the payment button at the bottom of this page.

Did I leave out anything? Contact me with questions at peggypayne(at)peggypayne.com or in the comments section here. Thanks.

Peggy



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Spunky Mama: A Hospital Adventure

It's been a wild couple of days. At first, seemed as if Mom had had
a heart attack. Then it appeared to be an infection in a lung.

Then it was definitely a fairly weird situation. I won't encumber you with the medical details, but some organs had gotten kinda twisted up. And apparently, she has had this situation for decades, maybe even from having twins 57 years ago, and no one knows why it got painful at this time. (Also, no one could understand why it didn't affect her appetite at all.)

A couple of doctors were saying she needed surgery to fix it, but then the pain went away with one Tylenol. She said she saw no need for surgery for anything that could be cured by one Tylenol. And the last surgeon said: let it be, maybe it'll never be a problem again. If it is, then operate then. She liked him a lot. But he wanted her to have one more test to be sure.

So mid-afternoon Friday, she went downstairs to the outpatient surgery wing to have that. After more than an hour Brother Franc and I started getting worried. Then we learned, unbelievably, that the whole county had no water, a main line had broken and water had to be shut off and porta potties were being brought to the hospital and there would be no surgery except emergency because they couldn't wash instruments.

The whole hospital turned into a sort of convivial gathering the way a town does during a power outage or some such. It was during that moment that a lot more relatives arrived in Mom's room and a woman came in to announce personally to every patient not to drink the water and the CEO of the hospital decided to pop in for a visit and found Franc fully clothed lying on Mom's bed making phone calls. (He'd already told one caller that Mom was in for breast augmentation and a facelift because dating at 88 is so competitive.)

The CEO thought Franc lying in bed with his shoes on was the patient and said, So you're about to be released? Then Mom was rolled back into the room, and said she was going home, which she did. And I drove the three hours home to my house, back to where it was possible to take a shower.

Saturday Mom went out and ran errands and got her hair done. I, on the other hand, am exhausted. She's to go get the last test sometime this week after they've taken care of the more pressing cases. I still have a faint worry that it will show something bad, but the medical opinion is that it probably won't.

And one medic said that based on the tests they'd done, she has another good ten years, that nothing else is wrong with her at all and she isn't at any risk for anything. Energetic as she is, Husband Bob thought she'd be upset at the idea of only ten more years, but she thought making it to 98 would be fine.



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Fear Not...

“Every thing we do is music and everywhere is the best seat.”

— John Cage

(discovered on the website of Ranch La Puerta spa in Tecate, Mexico)

"He was an early writer of aleatoric music (music where some elements are left to chance),..."




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Take Heart and Let the Sadness Come

Today is Tisha B'av, a Jewish fast day dedicated to mourning the various acts that destroy holiness in the world. I learned this from the blog of composer Meira Warshauer. She and I have been friends since we were in first grade.

She writes: "Today, for a few more hours, we can feel the sadness of a world in pain. Today we don’t have to get busy fixing it. We also don’t have to turn away from things too difficult or inconvenient to face. We can live with the sorrow. We don’t eat, we don’t bathe or listen to music. We are just present with the broken-ness of our world. We feel compassion. We let our hearts break."

That takes courage. That's bold.


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Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway?

Brain research from Israel shows that what works best for taking immediate brave action is to disconnect from the fear and do it anyway.

Neuron magazine reports that people watched in an MRI machine could let a live snake closer to their heads if they "dissociated" from the feeling of fear.

"Courage is associated with dissociation of reported fear and somatic arousal." Somatic arousal being the physical agitation: pounding heart, sweat, etc.

In my view, anyone who can let a snake get near them in an MRI machine is already Batman.

But I do find the research potentially very useful to me. Essentially, it is to put the feelings aside. We've all done that, putting an emotion aside in moments when "the show must go on." So everyone knows how. Probably courage is a matter of being conscious and practiced at "not feeling the fear" though we know it's there, rather than being fearless or panicked.

(I'm currently working on putting aside the feeling of being sweat-soaked from a half hour midday walk -- by blogging and carefully placed ice cubes.)








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Taking a Bold Approach with Tennis Elbow

I put my little kayak in the water yesterday and went for the first longish paddle of this year. Tennis elbow has kept me away from it for months.

I was waiting for it to be totally healed, then got tired of waiting, and went for a little kayak ride anyway.

I've used that strategy with an injury on two other occasions. Once it was a total permanent cure (for back trouble) and the other time it landed me in six months of physical therapy (for a frozen shoulder.)

This time, no change. I had a fine time on the lake and today my elbow hurts no worse than it was already accustomed to.

In fact, it hardly hurts at all.


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