Q&A with writer Suellen Zima

Suellen Zima

Suellen Zima is a writer and blogger in Southern California. She is the author of Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, and the forthcoming Out of Step: A Diary to My Dead Son.

Q: Why did you decide to write a diary to your late son, and how would you describe the relationship between you?

A: My son died in 2003.  As Mother's Day approached in 2011, I had a strong feeling that he was just too dead.  I needed to try to do something to make him come more alive to me.  I had half-heartedly, unsuccessfully tried a few times to write something about him, but that had gone nowhere. 

So, I thought, "Why not write a diary to him and see what happens?"  I had no plot, didn't know if anything would come of it, or where it might lead, if anywhere.  There were a lot of pieces to our mother-son relationship that were unsaid and unfinished.  We both had felt abandoned by the other after [my] divorce.  Although I always knew something about him from his dad, there had been long gaps where he had refused any contact with me. 

When being HIV-positive turned into AIDS, he knew his time was limited.  It was then he started calling me again, and visited me once.  He died two years later, a month before his 35th birthday. Interracial adoption in the 1970s, divorce when he was 12, guilt and abandonment, homosexuality, HIV-AIDS, dying and grieving were all parts of our complicated mother-son relationship.

Q: How did writing the diary affect you?

A: I wrote in the diary frequently until Mother's Day of 2012. Sometimes I talked to him as I would if he were alive, telling him about up-to-date news I thought would interest him. I discussed interesting aspects of books I was reading. I told him about my life after the divorce that he hadn't wanted to hear about. I attempted to understand him better, both as the child he had been, and as the adult I barely knew. And I wanted him to know me as the person I was now. 

Slowly, subtly, I felt a shift in my emotions. I purposely became more optimistic. My anger and guilt became muted as I endeavored to talk to my son. I enjoyed our communication and felt more connected to him than I had in years. He popped into my mind often, reminding me of things I wanted to tell him in the diary.

Q: Your previous book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, followed your travels around the world, particularly to China. What about China kept drawing you back?

A: I first went to China in 1988 out of sheer curiosity. I knew nothing about China.  I didn't know any Chinese people. And no one was talking much about China at that time. My first fascination with China was, I suppose, the third-world time machine effect. I knew I wanted to get to know the people, and I chose teaching as my tool to learn the culture from the inside. 

At that time, the students were an intriguing mixture of both innocence and depth, with incredible motivation for learning English. They not only respected their teachers, but treated them as people they wanted to know better. They took me places and invited me to visit their families. Because I nurtured the relationships and visited often over the years, my students became my friends. 

We are still in contact. Now I am a senior, and they are middle-aged.  Six of them asked me to be the foreign grandmother to their children, and this has been a continuing joy in my life.

Q: Do you see links between your two books, and if so, how are the themes you explore in both books connected?

A: Out of Step:  A Diary To My Dead Son is really a prequel and a sequel to Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird. Because my son chose not to travel with me after the divorce, our communication in a time before the ease of computers, e-mail, and long distance phone calls was limited. Since he felt I had abandoned him by choosing my life abroad, he didn't want much contact. 

So, the years covered in Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird did not include him. His rejection, plus my guilt for choosing to divorce, made it too painful for me to write about him. However, in the diary, I filled in the gaps of those years without much contact, continued the relationship after he re-connected to me two years before he died, and covered the years since his death in 2003. 

The two books offer very different perspectives on the roads I have traveled in my life. 

Q: Are you planning to write another book?

A: While the seed of writing a book about the times and cultures I explored through my travels was in my mind for a while, the idea to try writing a diary arose unexpectedly from the nagging thought that my son was too dead. 

When I had tried writing about him, I realized I didn't really know enough about him after the age of 12 to write about him. Besides, I craved a form of writing that would re-start some form of communication. The diary emerged spontaneously and I continued to write in it frequently over the next year.

After I ended the diary as a book, I missed the communication with my son.  So, I have continued to write him e-mails. I don't know at this point whether those e-mails will one day become a book. I surprised myself by publishing one book.  There is also a Chinese translation of my first book on an online website in China. And now Out of Step:  A Diary To My Dead Son will be available to all.  Because I am sure I won't stop writing, I know that I will continue my blog (www.zimatravels.com/wordpress). It's quite possible another book will emerge eventually.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Visit http://www.zimatravels.com and Follow the Senior Hummingbird as she wanders, wonders, and writes.

How I Fought the Amazon Wars and Won

When I wrote my first historical detective mystery, Forevermore, I had a clear goal in mind: I wanted to write the best story for my reader to enjoy. This is the goal of every independent author out there, and the reason I want to communicate this fact of indie publishing is that many of the "big publishing houses" are not publishing the best stories for their readers. Please allow me to elucidate.

I have been published by a big publisher. It was called "Harcourt-Brace," and it was the small professional arm of the corporation, "AP Professional Press" that published my book, The Digital Scribe: A Writer's Guide to Electronic Media. Notice the quaint reference to "electronic media." Back in the late nineties, we were still bedazzled by the newness of digital technology and its "multimedia" aspect. Today, digital multimedia is part and parcel of most of the "packaged novels" that get submitted by the big agents out there. They've already looked ahead to all the money to be made on movies, computer games, translations, Chinese edited versions, ads on the walls of urinals, and on and on with the corporate merchandising aspect of business. This was 1996, so publishing had yet to go through the gigantic and tumultuous war with the Amazons (coming soon to a screen near you!), and I was too much of a rookie to see the writing on the Amazon wall, so to speak.  Amazon, after all, was also a "big corporation."

Flash forward to 2013, and I am completely entrenched in the "indie publishing movement." Yes, I am politicizing this because there is a grassroots "political" movement going on that dares to stand-up to the big publishing giants and call them on their intrigues and misrepresentations. I wrote a "little mystery" that I was proud to say was a "big publisher's worst nightmare." Why? First of all, it was short (114 pages in paperback, 12 pt. font); it was not padded with description and useless back story; it was, in short, the best short mystery I had ever written, and it was meant to grab the readers' interest and keep them entertained for the entire 114 real pages and 2415 Kindle pages. I used the simple and straightforward distribution method of Amazon's (there's that creepy name again) Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). This method allowed me (ME, ME, ME, a thousand times ME) to control all of the content, all of the revisions, all of the covers, all of the entire blasted book! Oh my God! It was if I had been re-born! I now had a direct line to my reader! No longer would I have to haggle with an editor about using a drawing of a male monk in the Middle Ages on my book's cover because, she said, "Eighty percent of readers are female, and they would not want to see a male monk."   But, I argued, monks were male in the Middle Ages!  Anyway, I had to "compromise" and use the "hands of the monk" holding a feather pen! With KDP and those lovely Amazon ladies, I was able to make all of these big, "executive decisions" about my own book! What power! All of that concentrated energy infused my body!  (Or perhaps too much caffeine?)

Of course, I must give a spoiler alert to all you would-be indie pubbers out there. Unless you know what goes into a really good story, and you've consulted with other indie authors about how to set-up your book, you had better stay away from the wild forest where the Amazons roam. They will capture you, possibly castrate or dismember you, and put you in a pot for Mah Jong hors d'oeuvres later that day. Suffice it to say, get somebody to "have your back" when you go down the indie road into the dark Amazon forest of KDP or even the seemingly "friendlier" places where they Smash Words or read together with Sluggo and Little Lulu. I suggest you check-out places like Indies Unlimited. They have some crusty old buggers who have been down many of the self-publishing roads, and they are really friendly to newbies! Don't, under any circumstances, fall for the scams out there! You thought Amazons were tough? You haven't experienced anything until you've been raped by Author Solutions and its vast minions of corporate goons!

Okay, where was I?  Oh yeah, me (my favorite topic).  So I wrote this tiny little mystery that began to receive some favorable reviews on Amazon (up to 11 so far) from my readers.  These weren't reviews from some paid author who publishes his books at the same big publisher as I do, or some "computer harvested mass of reviewers" who are paid by big publishers to receive some other "reward."  No, these were actual readers of the book (the best kind for reviews, by the way).  I know they are the best kind because I have been hoodwinked by so-called "professional" reviewers who never read my book.  In fact, my favorite short story is "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff.  In this story, the protagonist, Enders, is a professional book reviewer of this ilk, and he receives his just desserts!

The final bullet in my brain came from my hero detective author, Lawrence Block.  He was saying how he recommended all would-be mystery writers to become independent if they want to bypass the "screwing over" that was becoming the norm in big publishing.  This is a gentleman who could practically "name his advance" in the detective mystery genre, so when he barked I sat up.

Are there independent author success stories?  I'll let you be the judge.  This ain't a war for nothin', ya know!

Jim Musgrave is an author, English Professor and business owner who lives in San Diego, CA.  His most recent historical mystery series features Detective Pat O’Malley in Forevermore. 

Home

Home. A simple word; a loaded one. You can say it in a whisper; you can say it in a cry. Expressed in the voices of father and daughter, you can hear a visceral longing for an ideal place, a place never to be found again.
Imagine the shock, imagine the sadness when a daughter discovers her father’s work, the poetry he had never shared with anyone during the last two decades of his life. Six years after that moment of discovery, which happened in her childhood home while mourning for his passing, Uvi Poznansky presents a tender tribute: a collection of poems and prose, half of which is written by her, and half—by her father, the author, poet and artist Zeev Kachel. She has been translating his poems for nearly a year, with careful attention to rhyme and rhythm, in an effort to remain faithful to the spirit of his words.
Zeev’s writing is always autobiographical in nature; you can view it as an ongoing diary of his life. Uvi’s writing is rarely so, especially when it comes to her prose. She is a storyteller who delights in conjuring up various figments of her imagination, and fleshing them out on paper. She sees herself chasing her characters with a pen, in an attempt to see the world from their point of view, and to capture their voices. But in some of her poems, she offers you a rare glimpse into her most guarded, intensely private moments, yearning for Home.
Uvi Poznansky
                                                                               

http://uviart.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/uviart
https://twitter.com/UviPoznansky
http://www.amazon.com/Uvi-Poznansky/e/B006WW4ZFG/
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5758946.Uvi_Poznansky

Tomb Of The Unknown Writer

For the last several weeks, I have struggled to finish reading a book. This is a book written by someone I call a friend. A face book friend - true enough, but we have supported and encouraged each other and though I have never met this person, I consider him a friend.  I was really looking forward to reading his book. The book, so far is receiving high accolades from reviewers on at least two continents.  Imagine my disappointment, when after more than a month I was only on page 87. I could not finish reading this book...No - I refuse to continue to read this book. This book is dead!

What is it about books that cause a reader to lose interest, or stop reading? I don't know. I suppose that is an individual's taste and is different for everyone. For me, I can muscle through most stories. The truth is I enjoy reading, so if the story is good, and the characters are believable, I'm good. With my friend's book, the story line was excellent. The way he was developing his characters - superb. So why did I stop?  There were too many of these:  anywho-be-doo,  hunky-doubly dory, loopy-doo, doggy doo- doo, lazy-daisy and more. On top of which there were numerous cliché, and the syntax of the cliché left me with mixed messages. It was British...it was American...it was cowboy...it was rural, poor Ohio. For me, it was confusing.

The combination of all of the above made this book, for me impossible to read. I was so distracted, I could not move forward. But that was me, and as I said before, it is highly individual. It is different for everyone.

You will probably never read a review I write that smashes another writer's work. I believe that writers, novice to master deserve credit for making the journey, and writing a story for others to enjoy. The fact that they spend months, or years writing their story for my entertainment or education is good enough for me. Still, there are books out there that for one reason or another are difficult for some of us to read.

I wish I could have ignored the distractions in this book, and enjoyed the ride his character was clearly prepared to provide. It was a great story line. For much of the first 87 pages, the writing was flawless.

So the question I throw out to the universe this morning is this: How many cliché is too many? How many - I do not even know what to call them..."any who" types of words and phrases can a manuscript have before those words and phrases become intrusive to the story?

Oh! I don’t have the answers. Just the questions. I think I will leave the answering of the questions to you.

Have a regular week every one.  I figured if I said "great week", I would be raising the bar too high, and setting us all up for failure!

Brian M. Hayden

first published March 21, 2013 on my blog

http://brianhayden.net/

http://www.amazon.com/Brian-M.-Hayden/e/B00520BT8U/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

Joy, Interrupted

The conception of this anthology was inspired by my own grief journey. After the death of my daughter in 2003 from SIDS, I noticed is that there wasn't a book that addressed the many different interruptions of the joy of motherhood.

So, I decided to edit Joy, Interrupted: An Anthology on Motherhood and Loss.  It includes tales of mothers whose joys had been interrupted, deferred or delayed. Women who had miscarriages; daughters who talked about the pains of being adopted; women struggling with the loss of identity while mothering; men and women who were taking care of their dying mothers.

I learned to see my experiences in a larger, more universal, context.  Some of these universal themes addressed include: coping with the death of a child; relationships between mother and child (including adoption and estrangement): caring for disabled children: and having to mother one’s own mother because of an illness. In reading about other dimensions of loss, I saw new opportunities for coping, for making meaning out of pain, and for healing.

The anthology showed how motherhood and loss exists in the space between grief and joy.  We remember and hope for the joyous aspects of mothering at the same time we mourn the loss. It is my hope that this anthology can allow others to move closer to joy. I hope this anthology can reveal how each loss reaffirms the many possibilities of motherhood, even when joy is interrupted.

I believe these voices  open up our views about the space between joy and grief, and what the act of mothering can entail. I see this anthology as a prism reflecting a multiplicity of voices. Each voice meant something to me, and I anticipate that some of the pieces will mean something for others, as well.

This book is intense and isn't meant to be read cover to cover. I believe this book is one you put on your nightstand, and in your darkest hour you turn to it for processing your grief.  I think we all need those moments to grieve openly, while still being able to function, and hopefully, feel joy once again.

The contributors demonstrate courage in baring their souls.  They teach us how creativity can exist even in tragedy. They show us how even through our tears we can find some meaning in life.  They share their stories after going through the fires of loss.  They are proof that we can rise up out of the ashes of grief.

So, this book is ultimately about motherhood, loss, and healing.  I believe it can do the same for others as it did for me, moving us closer to joy, even when it has been interrupted.

More info about the book
The book on Amazon:
If you are interested in reviewing the book, I can send you a free PDF copy.  It is available to buy now but hasn't been shipped to anyone yet.
                                                     

You can contact me, Melissa Miles McCarter, at fdfarmpress@gmail.com or go to the website of my small press at http://fatdaddysfarm.org
I am on facebook at http://facebook.com/Melissa.miles.mccarter
My twitter handle is @fatdaddysfarm
 

Dark Night of the Dinosaur

Dive!
Dive deep
Wild child of the night
Playmates gone
Supper’s over
Jammies on
Time for bed
Lights are off

It’s very quiet . . . quiet . . . quiet
A l l   a t   o n c e!
YYEEAAAH !
Attack!!!
A big ole’ dinosaur jumps straight inside his head!
No!   no, not a dinosaur - better’n that
A long nose scissor tooth grinning fishy-eyed ichthyosaur
One from the picture book 
Green thrashing around right inside his head!
Swimmin’ in an ocean eatin’ everything in sight
A BIG crashing scaly water dragon
Better’n anything walking anywhere
CHOMP    YEEEARRG    CRUNCH
Eating a whole tyrannosaur that’s walkin’ in the water
WOAARRR
Then,
Underwater dragon goes down,  down,   down . . . down . . . down
Where lights are off 
And no one’s home . . .
And everything is quiet . . .
But sleep’s not there
A big black shadow sneaks across the wall
Oh no!
Tyrannosaur comes back for revenge!
Wild child rises to the challenge
And grabs his truck beside the bed
Truckasaurus flies everywhere
No one can escape
He flatfoot gallops on bare feet around the room
Pounce!   Attack!
POUNCE    POUNCE    POUNCE    POUNCE    POUNCE 
On every toy that sits around the bed
Yea!   Here comes streakasaurus to the fight!
Streakasaurus grabs tyrannosaur by the neck
KRRAAAAKK
Tyrannosaur rears up and roars with his big claws slashing
Slashing,  slashing,    slashing . . . slashing

Then, he falls right off the pillow
And  s  l  i  d  e  s  down the covers to the floor
Down, down, down a thousand miles deep
. . . Bump
Into sleep . . . into dreams . . .

From the doorway slightly closing
A slim blade of light slices across the wall
Then the latch resets itself noiselessly
Supersaur backs away and tiptoes lightly
Gently turning lights off down the hall . . .

©  Sandy Hartman                          

9/28/10

Reading poetry aloud has always been a joy for me.  A friend once remarked that I would read aloud to a tree stump if given the chance.  Well, she was wrong. . .I will read to the wind or an empty room should a power packed  poem or gorgeous paean come my way.  Dark Night of the Dinosaur was especially fun because of its audio challenge.  It is posted on my web site   www.eonriter.com  along with other other poems and the many, many photos from flickr photoshare, Getty Images, and Google images. You are invited.

                                                                                            

Algernon and Bertie

 
The day was warm and the spring birds filled the countryside with their happy chirruping; Algenon Pinsbury and his Bertram Rushley were walking along the country lane when Bertie turned to Algie and asked him, "Algie, dear friend, why do you rise so late? By the time you get up it is almost midday."

Algie stopped his afternoon stroll by a stile, and sat down before he explained, "Bertie,my dear fellow, I rise late for many reasons. If I stay in bed I can remain warm, my room is cold and when I get up I can feel the cold start to creep into my bones."

"I'm sorry old chap, I hadn't realised your lodgings were that bad."

"That is just one reason, Bertie, if you want to hear more all you need do is ask."

Bertie and Algie were close friends despite the vast differences in their backgrounds. Algie was a struggling writer whose words could enthral Bertie, while Bertie was the man about town with the connections; however, coming from a wealthy family this side of life had never occurred to him, his friend always met him in the lanes and not at his lodging house and even on a bad day; Algie was usually careful not to let on about his squalid life,"Please, go on, if you don't mind," Bertie said.

Algie took his cap off and laid down on the grass at his feet, then he started, "Bertie, I rise late because by getting up late, I can miss breakfast as my first and main meal of the day counts as both breakfast and lunch."

Shocked at this news, Bertie said, "I am so sorry, Algie I never realised things were so bad for you. I thought your work was liked and read."

"They are, Bertie, but the sales have dried up and I cannot live on reputation alone. Do you remember the bad fall I had a few years ago?"

Bertie stopped to think back to the day, and replied, "Yes, it was terrible you slipped on the ice and banged your shoulder, if I remember."

Algie rubbed his shoulder to ease his pain a little and said, "That's correct, the pain has got so bad there are days when I cannot write, which brings me to the other reasons I rise late. By staying warm I can ease the pain in my shoulder, this is why even on a warm day like today I wear a cardigan on top of my shirt, Bertie. By staying in bed, I found that lying down helps ease the pressures on the shoulder muscles too. By staying in bed, not only do I stay warm but you see it is less painful for me, Bertie."

Bertie had a thought and said, "I know you are a man of honour, but will you allow me to subsidise you until you can make some money. It would be an honour for me to be able to help you, your work is so brilliant it needs to be read."

Algie looked up at his friend and said, "It is a lovely thought, Bertie, and I thank you for your kind offer but I will never be able to repay you and you know how that will tear me apart."

"I meant no offence, Algie, as I know you as a man of honour; but what do you intend to do?"

"No offence was taken, Bertie. For now, my plans are too keep writing and hope something changes, if not I may have to consider other work and let the writing become a smaller part of my meagre life."

Alan Place http://hereiamattheedge.blogspot.co.uk/
http://alsdomain.weebly.com/index.html#.UYki5qKG0W7 and http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=152423744&trk=tab_pro