Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Desert Campfire Video

Just came across a wonderful video on YouTube of some bedouin musicians in the Jordanian desert near Wadi Rum singing, playing oud and drumming around a campfire at night. It's so atmospheric. It pulls me into the world of A CARAVAN OF BRIDES. It reminds me of nights spent in the Moroccan desert in a campfire circle playing music and singing. Enjoy! The video was filmed by and posted on YouTube by 'Tillytuck'.
To view the clip, click on the words below, or the title of this post.
Bedouin Campfire Music in Wadi Rum

Sunday, December 20, 2009

First Snow of Season - Happy Anniversary

It's a wonderful morning to be snowed in at home. It's the Sunday before Christmas. A blizzard is blowing. I've a pile of books to read (book reviews due very soon), and lots to think about and write. Homemade oatmeal is just about ready. The cat is spending his day purring and sleeping. In New England, we've had a lengthy Indian summer - and just a week or so ago it was 70 degrees and sunny. This rousing Nor'easter is more fitting.

The blanket of white is a tribute to my parents' wedding, 67 years ago. They were married on a snowy December night in Iowa in 1942. My mother wore a white velvet gown. White mums and pine boughs decorated the church. They were wed by candlelight. In 2002, their 60th, we four children wrote haikus in their honor, and my father responded in kind. Here are my personal favorites.

Atop the altar,
Candelabra on each side,
White chrysanthmums.
- Sister Jo

And now, the future.
Those we love, will love again.
Draw us in today.
- Brother Mark

Driving through Canada,
Every day a picnic lunch,
My, it's EL-E-GANT.
- Brother Eric

Sixty years tonight,
Began your loving journey.
This full moon is yours.
- Me

Anniversaries,
It is hard to keep a count.
Sixty seems very good!
- Father

Friday, December 11, 2009

A CARAVAN OF BRIDES

In the last few months I've trimmed and polished the manuscript, and made many improvements suggested by a wise reader.
The book's new working title is A CARAVAN OF BRIDES, with a possible subtitle of THE LAST STORYTELLER OF JEDDAH. Those two were the front-runners in a survey of trusted readers and advisors. The two were tied for the lead, but the women, who are my target readers, felt drawn to A CARAVAN OF BRIDES. My writers group also voted for that title.

Thank you readers and friends who weighed in on the working title question.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Zoe Ferraris' next book - "City of Veils"

I'm very excited to learn more about Zoe Ferraris' sequel to FINDING NOUF, her award-winning literary mystery set in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Her next book is CITY OF VEILS. Nice title! It will take the reader from Jeddah deep into the Empty Quarter. Her website is gorgeous, (click on my entry title to visit it). I'm looking forward to her book tour, hoping she'll come through Boston.

This week I was invited to a book group discussion of FINDING NOUF. It was interesting to hear reactions to the characters and plot twists; the things the readers 'bought' or didn't 'buy' about the plot. What's fun about a mystery set in the Kingdom is that everyone seems to be fascinated with how social rules might allow or restrict the progression of the plot. While each person had his or her favorite scene, the scene in the coat market was in everyone's top three. One reader believed the book was more properly categorized as a tragedy. As for me, I loved the humor that lurks just under the surface in FINDING NOUF. It reminds me of the laughs we had living there. Unusual things happen in Jeddah, and eccentric people live there. In fact, I think Jeddans are proud of the unusual characters in their midst. And they have a great sense of humor, which of course makes them quite endearing.

Murder mysteries aren't supposed to be all fun, and certainly Zoe's books deal with serious social issues. However, they are full of quirky cultural twists that make us rethink our assumptions about how Arabs and Muslims live.

Another Kind of Blooming - Boston Book Festival

There are so many times each year when I find myself thinking, "This is Boston at its best." I think this while strolling through the Public Garden in midsummer as the Swan Boats float by. The ever-changing plantings and sweeping landscape up the hill never fail to impress me. On a summer's day, I think it while eating a sandwich in the shade at Rowe's Wharf, gawking at visiting yachts and tall ships. At First Night, standing in the bundled up, down jacketed throngs lining the streets for the parade and fireworks, and admiring the ice sculptures, an old-fashioned winter-defying frivolity fills the air. Year round, strolls through the back streets of the North End yield all kinds of surprises. Observing early spring blooms in the miniature yards of Commonwealth Avenue townhouses keeps hope alive. In so many ways, the physical setting of Boston makes my heart skip, again and again.

This year's first-ever Boston Book Festival brought a different flowering to the streets, even as the weather played out around us with a strange kind of fusion, like a hastily thrown together band from Berklee. It was, all at once, blustery, rainy and tropical. Very odd for a Saturday in late October.

No matter, enthusiastic readers of all ages packed into venues around Copley Square like Old South Church. An impressive roster of our most admired authors, including Orhan Pamuk, Anita Diamant, and Anita Shreve, read to us and spoke about the world of books, reading and writing. Grub Street sponsored a jam-packed 'Writers' Idol' where first pages of books were read aloud and critiqued.

We completely filled the long pews of Old South's massive sanctuary, proving a point that Orhan Pamuk put forth in his Norton Lectures at Harvard this fall, (another unforgettable Boston experience). He said that modern man makes sense of life through fiction. That we need it to feel at home in the world. And that reading, we redefine our world outlook.

Seeing the crowds pack the halls that day made me so grateful to be a writer, here, now, in this fascinating city where ideas bloom too.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Croissants with Za'atar

Today I should be posting about yesterday's fabulous and inspiring first ever Boston Book Festival. And I will, but it needs to sink into my brain further and distill a bit longer.

Meanwhile, all I can think about is croissants with za'atar. Flash back to a trip to Saudi Arabia with photographer Nicole LeCorgne in 2006, while we were on assignment for Saudi Aramco World Magazine. We usually had breakfast in our hotel room so we could eat while getting ready and checking e-mail. We fell in love with the exquisite combination of croissants filled with za'atar that had been moistened with olive oil. It came as part of the 'oriental breakfast' - consisting of these croissants, sometimes mana'ish (za'atar on flat bread), as well as a salad of cucumber, tomatoes and olive oil. Of course very fresh orange juice and marvelous coffee.

Za'atar is a combination of wild thyme, sesame seeds, salt and sour ground sumac. You can buy it in Middle Eastern delis. It has a lemony and spicy taste that makes your tongue squirm with delight. And with the delicate pastry layers of a buttery croissant, it's pure heaven, especially if you wash it down with a sip of Arabic coffee.

To replicate the experience, buy the inexpensive Pillsbury croissants in the tube in the grocery store. Mix up some za'atar and olive oil in a bowl, probably three tablespoons each. Then put a generous dab of the mixure on the wide end of each croissant before rolling it up. Ten minutes later, voila, your taste buds are doing a riotous dabke dance. You can also add za'atar and olive oil to popovers.

Friday, October 2, 2009

The Man Who Would Be King - Morocco as Movie Set

Last night we watched the film version of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, directed by John Huston, starring Sean Connery and Michael Kane. OK, so we're thirty years late, but better late than never!

I love Kipling's larger-than-life characters and his out-of-this-world plots. Last December, I read Kim for the first time, in honor of the late father of a close friend who used to read it every Christmas. I fell in love with the book - then watched the 1950's black and white film version, starring Errol Flynn. While Kipling might be considered racist by today's standards, in these stories he writes about the unique society of the British Raj and how it interacted with the South Asian society around it. In The Man Who Would Be King there is another story layer about British freemasons living in India, and the plot even proports that Alexander the Great was a freemason. Kipling loves to explore the idea of brotherhoods and the bonds and friendships among men. In Kim, he explores a colorful multi-ethnic network of spies set up by the British - another layer there too. I read in this an implication that all men are brothers - since his characters mix it up with all kinds of people. So what's not to like?

In addition to enjoying the story itself, I got a huge kick out of the scenery and extras because most of the film was shot in Morocco; near Marrakesh in the Atlas Mountains, then further south toward Ouarzazate. The dancers in the Kafiristan scenes were Guedra and other dancers from the village of Goulamine. The extras in the these scenes spoke Arabic perhaps mixed in with Tamazirt (Berber) - couldn't understand all of it. The Bhuddist-like monks were actually singing Muslim chants in Arabic - and they used local Moroccan costumes liberally.

Then, I got a good laugh when the bride of Sean Connery, Roxanne, was brought to him wearing a bright red Khaliji thobe! The film was made in the 1970's during a big 'Oil Boom' so no doubt the wardrobe people had come across one of them, and it ended up on the bride. Today's filmmakers would likely have made this movie in India itself, so they would have no need to find a stand-in country with stand-in languages and costumes. But I still enjoyed it. Best of all, it was wonderful to see places like Ait ben Hadou in the wedding scene - a place we've visited on every Oasis Dance Camp Morocco tour. When we were there last fall, we went horseback riding outside of Marrakesh. It turned out many of our horses have been used in films that we've seen, like Gladiator. Just another indication that the whole country of Morocco is a movie set!

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Grub Street Rules! - Panel on "How To Tell a True Ethnic Story"

Last night I attended a marvelous panel discussion on telling an 'ethnic' story, hosted by Boston's Grub Street creative writing center in downtown Boston, overlooking the Public Garden. It was a warm summer night, so the windows over Boylston Street were open. Amid the riveting discussion laced with many many laughs, we heard Mounted Police horses clip-clopping down the sidewalk, and motorcycles racing to catch the light before it changed.

The evening started with panelists Rakesh Satyal, Rishi Reddi, and Ru Freeman reading from their new books. Each reading and author commentary brought fresh perspectives to writing about their chosen worlds. Grub Street's Executive Director Christopher Castellani moderated the panel, asking great questions, prefacing it all noting that in a way, there is no such thing as 'ethnic writing' per se. Every story, ethnic or not, is set in a unique world, and we must deal with the craft of telling the story correctly in that world. His insightful questions helped pull together the wide-ranging and free-flowing discussion, and he artfully pulled things back to how we might want to consider the issues in our own work. The issues included nitty-gritty points like when to italicize foreign words, as well as over-arching concepts like the pressure on so-called ethnic writers to get trapped into believing their work has to represent their entire culture, rather than just telling the story they want to tell. I could only buy one book - and I chose Ru Freeman's, A Disobedient Girl.

I was deeply inspired by the panelists, the moderator, and Grub Street. How lucky we Bostonians are to have this institution!

Now, back to querying agents.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Harvest Gold in Spring - Short Story in the Aroostook Review

My short story, "Harvest Gold in Spring" just came out in the Aroostook Review, a literary journal produced by the English department at the University of Maine - Fort Kent. The story is set in northern Maine.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Essay in Down East Magazine

Above is the link to an essay I wrote for the "My Maine" column of Down East Magazine. I wrote it last September for our writer's group, and with edit feedback from the group, my big sister Jo Grossmann (who is on the editorial committee of Open Spaces Magazine) and my dear husband Gary, I sent it off and was delighted when it was accepted. I wrote this when I first began querying in earnest and received my first important rejection from an agent to whom I had a referral.

The agents I pitched to at the Maine pitching session in June didn't ultimately pan out, though I highly recommend the experience. It gives you the chance to get instant reaction to your book concept, as well as your platform. I came away with feedback that helped me boost my query's effectiveness and have had a markedly stronger response ever since. Staying positive, I'm back in the game!

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Story published, and a close encounter with a loon

The Aroostook Review accepted my short story "Harvest Gold in Spring" and I'll link to that when it's up on their website.

Meantime I'm beginning work on a new book - not sure where it's going yet. But it's set in Fez. The Maine woods envelop me these days. The woods are soft, inspiring, mysterious and quiet. Strange how I'm writing about Fez here, with all its tumult, noises, smells and chaos, amid the quiet of the woods. Last night I caught a white perch off the dock using a worm and bobber. As I pulled the fish in, a loon followed the fish underwater toward me. It dipped and dived so beautifully - and when it was clear I was getting the fish, it popped up to the surface about two feet from me and just looked at me! It had been tagged on each foot - red and blue tags. I've never seen one that close. We think this might be one of a nesting pair down the stream from us.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Kareem Roustom in the Tufts Journal


My profile of Kareem Roustom came out in the Tufts Journal today. Link to the story here.

Kareem is a rising star - a multi-talented composer and musician who works in many musical genres. He composes everything from pop-star arrangements to classical concert music, film scores and choral works. He also does arrangements of classical and folkloric Arab music and leads the Tufts University Arabic Music Ensemble. He graciously let me sit in on oud with the group this past winter semester - and it was a pleasure to see him in action. We had our recital last Sunday. We shared the stage with the Tufts Klezmer Ensemble, which was a hoot since we had to fit into the right half of the stage, pie wedge style! We loved the pieces we learned from Beth Bahia Cohen who subbed for Kareem in a couple of sessions. She taught us several songs by ear in the old Middle Eastern tradition. We really sounded fine on those songs, since we'd internalized them so directly. It feels good to have this story picked up and out in the world. Kareem has some incredible projects coming down the pike...the film score for Mosque in Morgantown, and Amreeka. Check him out on his MySpace page.

Note: Photo by Alonso Nichols

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Mechanical Owls and Literary Pursuits

Rewind to the early 1960's to the suburb of Boston where I grew up. The local theater, to which we could walk from home, showed double features about the "East" after school and on weekends - matinees for children. In my memory, they were black and white films. They usually involved choosing three wishes from a genie. They had elaborate, fanciful 1,001 Nights plots, exotic settings, and fabulous costumes. At home afterward, my mother listened patiently as I would try to tell her the entire plot, getting overly enthusiastic about the wonders of the story in the process. In my memory there were a lot of talking animals in these films. One had a fascinating mechanical owl. The term 'mechanical owl' is now a family joke - for when I get excited about a complicated story or plot.

If someone asks me when I first become a writer, what should I say? Should I confess that I was a storyteller at a young age, relating these unlikely plots to my mother at the kitchen table? Or that I loved to listen to ghost stories told around a campfire? I wasn't one to spend afternoons at the library reading. I'd more likely be outside playing in a massive game of Capture the Flag, catching turtles with a net, barefooted, or hosting a dress-up 'tea party' with the neighborhood girls, all of us bedecked in second hand prom dresses mailed from my older cousins in Iowa.

Once my novel finds a life in print, I wonder if I'll need to polish the story of my childhood so it sounds more literary. But how do you trick out a mechanical owl? Any ideas, let me know.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Early April Update and Musings

It's truly spring now - the spring peepers are singing in our local wetlands. The Daffodils and Christmas Roses are blooming, and the lawns are greening up. Such a miracle to watch the world renew itself in just a few weeks each spring.

As I'm polishing DRIVING DREAMS and sending out query letters to agents, I'm stirring up ideas for another novel. I have several in mind, but some part of me wants to take on a very focused, smaller story and theme, you know a nice thin book that someone can finish off during a trans-Atlantic flight. An author recently told me we each have a 'set point' in terms of word length and manuscript scope. DD is about 155,000 words now, and while I'll keep whittling away at it, this length isn't completely outrageous since it's a multi-generational saga. I'm also writing short stories, to practice telling stories in about 2,000 words. It's fun to be limited by size. I've sent three of them out...none of these are about the Middle East.

In the meantime, I came across THE WRITING ON MY FOREHEAD by Nafisa Haji. It deals with many of the same themes in DRIVING DREAMS, in the context of an Indian family. The author's website is one of my favorites.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Query Letters

I'm in the process of querying agents - looking for a literary agent to represent the book. Query letters have to be one page long, in three or four paragraphs at most. One has to summarize one's book in one paragraph, then pitch to the agent about one's background as a writer, one's 'platform'. I've been querying agents for the last six months, following advice to send batches of queries, say a dozen or so at a time, every couple of weeks. My letters improve with each batch. Now I'm wrestling with the platform part of my query. Should I include the fact that I teach Saudi and Gulf women's dance, that I lecture at schools and colleges on Saudi women and Arab music? Should I mention my work at the Arabic Music Retreat, or my `ud playing? I do have publishing credits, which I include. But the other activities...do they help or hurt? Until today I haven't mentioned anything but publishing credits. Today, I sent off a query with more information, so it will be interesting to see if it makes any difference. There's a wonderful FREE book available for downloading from amazon.com. It's called How to Write a Great Query Letter, by Noah Lukeman. Highly recommended.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Delia Reads the Riot Act

In the early 1990's, I met author/radio host Ellen Kushner who had a radio show on WGBH-FM entitled "Caravan". She invited me on to share some recordings of Saudi women's traditional folk music. Ellen is loads of fun, so doing the show was a great adventure. At some point I mentioned that I had a novel in process. She volunteered to read it, and later said her partner, author and editor Delia Sherman, would be happy to read it. One late summer day in 1995, Delia and I sat down to a sushi lunch and she basically tore my manuscript apart. My reaction was despair. It was so disheartening. I was doing my MBA at night while working as a commercial banker by day, and she was telling me I had a lot of work to do. Yet I knew she was right. Fortunately I taped the whole thing, listened to it a couple of times, took notes, then started on the long road she told me to travel. I started to read a lot more. I took a fiction class at the Boston Center for Adult Ed. And gradually, a whole new draft of the book took shape. She wisely predicted that every word of the draft would be touched and reworked. That version was 66,000 words long. Now it's more than twice that long. Only two or three scenes have survived the process. Many original characters are gone, replaced by much more interesting ones. Last weekend I listened to the tape again, to make sure I'd done what she said. The very next day, Delia e-mailed me wondering what I was up to! She has a new young adult book coming out in June, THE MAGIC MIRROR OF THE MERMAID QUEEN. You can read about it on her LiveJournal Blog. I've always felt apologetic about her having done me the favor of reading that very creaky, problematic first draft. But she says she loves to read those, to help direct people on their way. She was one of my really important guides, a true Fairy Godmother. Visit her blog and you'll see what I mean. Thank you, Delia, for reading me the riot act!

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Listening to Our Guides

My book, whose working title is DRIVING DREAMS, is now complete, at least it's as complete as it will be before an editor gets his/her hands on it. It's been torn to shreds, reshaped, cut in half, pasted back together, and polished. Now it's in its third incarnation. None of this would have been possible without wise guides, patient readers and insightful helpers who have been willing to sit down and read all or parts of it over the years. Then there are those who have said a kind word when I most needed it, or passed along some wisdom that directly applied to the issue was wrestling with in the book.

No matter what we're working toward in our lives, we all have guides and helpers. But do we always recognize them? I've found that a lot of insight comes from least-expected places. But if you're listening for it, you'll find it.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Unusual Opportunities Knock

Cleaning my desk a couple of days ago, I came across three e-mails that I'd printed out and put on the rising tide of papers on my desk. Each e-mail held the possibility of more writing work, but each was unusual in some way. At first I dismissed them, assuming that since they came over the transom, they must be bogus. Who would want to hire me anyway! In the process of the desk-sweep they came to my attention, and I've followed up on each one. And that is in no small part due to Tahir Shah's blog. He wrote that writers need to keep open to new opportunities and to have many projects going at once. One never knows what is going to grow into something worthwhile.

Friday, February 27, 2009

My Writers Group

I'm lucky to be in a wonderful writers group (also known as a critique group), formed a few years ago within the local branch of AAUW - the American Association of University Women. Five of us meet regularly at a coffee shop - currently twice a month - to read, critique and encourage each other in our writing. Each of us is on a unique writing journey. Beatrice is a poet/columnist who's completing her first novel. Gwen is a natural-born columnist who's also doing features and has a children's book in process. Susan is a poet/editor who is working on a memoir. Patricia is a gifted fiction writer who creates fabulous characters in her short stories. It's a gentle critique group, but not too gentle to be useful. In our first sessions, we did short writing exercises on a given topic. Within a few months, we were bringing our own projects for feedback. We read each other's poems, humorous essays and novel chapters. We often discuss the business of writing, things like how to contact/communicate with editors and agents. We attend workshops together, and share ideas and information. The group is reading several key chapters from my novel - set in Mecca - and their feedback is incredibly useful. We're reading Beatrice's chapters - and we feel like we're in the creative process with her. It's exciting to share one's work and to be an early reader for others. I am grateful for this special ensemble of interesting women and recommend writer's groups wholeheartedly. Here's a good article on finding or forming a writer's group.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Pitching the Novel

Boston-area author Lynne Heitman recently gave a great presentation on pitching your novel to agents, at Buttonwood Books, a bookstore in Cohasset, MA. The event was sponsored by Boston's largest writer's group, Grub Street. Her approach was to get us all to explain the kernel of our books using one simple formula ----- what a concept. It was really difficult for everyone. One writer taking the workshop already had a literary agent and even she had a hard time.

Below is my revised pitch, using her formula. I've sent out several queries using this. Today I got my first 'ding' in response, but that particular query was a real long-shot to begin with.

"When her reckless behavior sets events in motion leading to her sister's death, a young western-educated Saudi woman finds the courage to forge her future in the unlikely story of an old Bedouin woman."

Some of the workshop participants wanted me to include the protagonist's name with a translation of its meaning. Others wanted me to leave it out. We shall see what works, but right now I'm leaving it off.