Author and Inspired Writer

A thousand apologies for the long delay in updating the old blog, an item that’s been on my To Do List for an indefensible length of time.  There is much happy news to report however, so make yourself a nice cuppa and throw another log on the fire and I’ll begin.

The Halloween readings!  Ah joy!  They were such fun!  First, the morning reading at From the Heart Gift Shop – the owners Jackie McCreary and Geri Maisonneuve went way above and beyond the call in promoting our books (Mary Ann Mulhern’s “Sleeping with Satan” and my “holy cards: dead women talking”).  As it turns out, we were the first actual reading ever done at From the Heart, and it was very well received!  Marty Gervais, our publisher (Black Moss Press) took some video of the reading and posted it on You-Tube.  First time I’ve seen myself give a reading and my reaction was a combination of a beaming “Oh, that looks really good!” and a wincing “Oh, I could have done that better…”  But overall, joy, joy, joy!

Then off to Page 233 in Amherstburg for the afternoon reading.  All throughout October I’d been working with the local papers and sending out invitations all around to drum up interest for the event.  Well, ahem, seems I was successful.  The little book store was packed to the rafters with many folks standing in what little space there was left.  One of my choir members videotaped my part of the reading and made a DVD of it for me!  I was delighted!  My first DVD!  Ain’t technology grand!

There was such a palpable energy in the room that I was able to perform some pieces I’d never done before – St. Jeanne Louise Barre, St. Laura Vicuna to name two.  These poems take enormous effort to perform, and if I can’t feel the…expectation?…affirmation?…deep listening? from the audience, I won’t even attempt them.  But that afternoon, in that little store, I encountered a graced moment, what the Irish call “a thin place” and I gave it my all.  It was aaah-some!

And as Marty couldn’t come to the Burg that afternoon due to a pressing engagement in Detroit (I’m thinking a top secret mission for the CIA maybe), I was pegged to introduce Mary Ann and was very grateful for the opportunity to express my admiration for one of the brightest lights in Canadian literature and my dear friend.  After the reading and the book signing, we discovered we were starving, and went out for some food and still more great conversation.  It was just a glorious day!  That night I couldn’t get to sleep for hours!

A few days later, Mary Ann officially launched “Sleeping with Satan” at BookFest 2010, and once again it was standing room only.  (Windsor and Essex County are a hotbed of literary appreciation.)  Mary Ann launched with Terry Ann Carter who debuted her book “A Crazy Man Thinks He’s Earnest in Paris” about the disappearance for her brother and his struggle with mental illness.  Both these books, and all of Mary Ann’s previous books, “The Red Dress”, “Touch the Dead”, “When Angels Weep”, and my book are available for purchase at www.blackmosspress.com .  With the holiday season almost upon us, remember, books make great gifts!

People are still talking about the reading.  I’ve been stopped at Wal-Mart, my church, and even my doctor’s office for pete’s sake (!) by folks who wanted to express their appreciation and who are urging a repeat performance.  Nothing would please me more!  But for now it’s back to the hard slog of writing.  I’m continuing to write volume 2 of “holy cards” as I feel I owe it to the “she-saints” not to leave their stories half-told.  (As long as they keep talking, I’ll keep writing.) And then there’s a new short story that’s been rattling around in my head for months, not to mention the novel languishing in my desk drawer…But all in good time.

So there dear readers, you’re up to speed.  I promise to be a little more regular in my posting from here on, and a million thanks for your support!

A couple of days ago, a dear patron saint of mine sent me an article by Parker J. Palmer, entitled “Taking pen in hand: A writer’s life and faith.”  (Christian Century, September 7, 2010)  The article had so much to say to me, as my patron saint knew it would, but it was Palmer’s treatment of iconoclasm I found particularly powerful.  An iconoclast, according to the dictionary, is one who assails cherished beliefs, a breaker of images.  Palmer writes that without a periodic deconstruction of religious images, we are in danger of idolatry, making gods of our symbols, stories, creeds and dogma.  And this kind of idolatry, to my mind,  is one very small step away from a rigid, close-minded elitism which can only too readily find expression in triumphalism, isolationism and even violence, as religious history attests.

holy cards: dead women talking was never intended to disparage or denigrate the women saints of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.  Quite the contrary, my admiration and respect for these women grew by leaps and bounds as I researched, then wrote about their lives.  But I do admit I was driven to write about them in large part by a great anger at how the saints had been represented throughout the years, a representation I felt mocked and trivialized their contributions.  So I set out deliberately to help them off their plaster cast pedestals and make them more human, more real.  I neither desire nor expect that everyone will be pleased with the result, but it is my hope that some will  at least consider  that the discomfort we may feel at the breaking open of these images could possibly lead us to a deeper truth about ourselves,  our tendency to pass judgement and our deep-seated fear of changing the status quo.

Palmer relates an old Celtic tale “about a monk who died and was interred in the monastery wall.  Three days later, the monks heard noises coming from inside the crypt.  When they removed the stone they found their brother alive.  He was full of wonderment, saying, “Oh, brothers, I’ve been there!  I’ve seen it!  And it’s nothing at all like the way our theology says it is!”  So they put him back in the wall and sealed the crypt again.”

Plans for a fall reading with Mary Ann Mulhern are shaping up nicely, and expanding!  We originally thought we would do a reading at Page 233, the new bookstore at 233 Dalhousie in Amherstburg, October 30th – and so we shall at 2:00 PM.  But Marty Gervais, our illustrious publisher, suggested an additional reading earlier the same day in Windsor at the From the Heart Gift Shop, 1356 Ottawa St. at 11:00 AM.  Of course, we were delighted!  Mary Ann will read from her latest book of poetry, Sleeping with Satan, Salem Witch-hunt 1692.  This is Mary Ann’s fourth book and another powerful collection it is!  The narrative poems are written in the voices of the women who suffered and died in Salem during the horrific witch trials.  Mary Ann has brought to these women a tender humanity and the reader cannot help but be moved by their stories.

I will read from my book, holy cards: dead women talking, which deals with the stories of the women saints from the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, some historical, some legendary.  I found the accounts of their lives so engaging I felt compelled, dare I say “possessed” to write about them.

All of Mary Ann’s books, The Red Dress, Touch the Dead, When Angels Weep, and Sleeping with Satan, as well as my holy cards will be available for purchase at both venues.  Hope to see you there!

In a chapter on the desirability of the writer maintaining a certain detachment, especially when describing sad characters or scenes, Madeleine L’Engle in A Circle of Quiet says this:  “All the scenes that move me deeply while I am writing them end up in the wastepaper basket.”

Ye gods and little fishes!

Notwithstanding that it always gives me a galloping case of the heebie-jeebies to toss anything in the wastepaper basket, to throw out that which moves me, brings tears to my own eyes, would be like drowning a kitten!  I’m all for detachment, and I do see the value of standing back a bit when we describe human darkness lest the loss of objectivity drive us to a dangerous identification.  But why shouldn’t a writer feel deep emotion when she creates something meant to break the hearts of her readers? 

In my story “Blood of the Lamb,” I describe a scene where a woman, pregnant with a female messiah, faces the horrific choice of permitting the damnation of humanity or aborting her own child.  I trembled to write it.  I tremble now to recall it.  It’s one of my most powerful pieces and the only one to have received a nomination for the Pushcart Prize.  I can’t imagine tossing it aside simply because it evoked such a profound response in me.

I’m willing to admit I may be missing something here, or misunderstanding the whole idea.  I do that from time to time.  But if the writer doesn’t feel, and feel deeply, what is there to write about?