Change of Scenery

I hope you’re enjoying a change of scenery in this space. Residencies allow for soul searching and lots of creative discussion.

One of the things I took away from Portugal is the necessity to change my approach to writing here.

I’ll still post occasional updates like this one. I may keep a free-form online diary at another residency. But for now, building composite characters and writing in third person expands my options for craft. I’m taking a recent life event, the loss of my aunt, and exploring notions of grief, inheritance, empathy, humanity and more through these characters. While creators always pull from their own experiences, I am not my characters.

Removing myself from the frame allows me to write without a filter, to take risks, try on different costumes. All are essential to creating.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading. If this isn’t for you, that’s fine, too.

I have several exciting announcements.

Hard to Die will be featured by BookBub 12 – 18 August, 2019.

The novel will be 99 cents on Kindle, iBooks, and Kobo both in the US and internationally. If you’ve been trying to convince someone to give my fiction a try, here’s an excellent opportunity to introduce them to my work for less than a buck.

Also, 18 August is Meriwether Lewis’s birthday. So here’s your chance to celebrate Merry by giving someone the gift of reading.

I’m trying to expand my speaking platform. Lots of disappointment, slips, falls, and no, but I do have several upcoming gigs to celebrate.

• Park City Club, Dallas – 7 August 2019. This is a private member event, but if you’re in greater Dallas and you’re free for lunch, you’re welcome to attend as my guest. Shoot me an email or text for details.
• Greater Eastside Chamber of Commerce, Snellville GA, 21 August 2019. If you’re in greater Atlanta, I hope you’ll stop by for some motivation to jump start your life at any stage.
• Greensboro Garden Club, Greensboro NC, 15 November 2019. If you’re in greater Greensboro, join the garden club now and see me in November!
• Lots more on my fall calendar!

I will be writer-in-residence at Cill Rialaig on the west coast of Ireland. 26 May – 9 June 2020.

I will be working on my next Nowhere story. It features an Irishman named Thomas Francis Meagher, first person to fly the Irish tri-color flag. Transported to Tasmania for his revolutionary tendencies, he’s one of the only prisoners to ever escape. He surfaced in New York City and built a fiery career as a speaker. When the Civil War broke out, he joined the Union Army and led a platoon of Irishmen. He was decorated for his service and appointed territorial governor of Montana, but he wasn’t popular with the racist brute squad who controlled the landscape. (The Irish were considered a 19th century immigrant infestation by the white men in power.) He disappeared from a boat in the Missouri River. His body was never found.

I will be writer-in-residence at NES Iceland. 4 August – 30 September 2020.

If my current project needs tweaking, I will polish it during this residency. While I realize there’s some interest in what I was writing in Portugal (ie my current project referenced above), I am not prepared to share its subject matter or discuss the content at this time. I went to Portugal intending to create a very personal work about complicated family dynamics, but the story morphed into something much bigger than me. I really haven’t shared it with anyone, because talking about it robs it of energy.

If you want to digest this post in bits, here are some other things to savor.

My current read – Idaho a novel by Emily Ruskovich. Winner of the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award, this story sprung from a hike Ruskovich took in her home state of Idaho several years ago. She walked into a clearing and immediately sensed something horrific had happened there: A child murdered by a hatchet. She couldn’t shake this vision, something I completely identified with as a writer. Told from multiple perspectives across several decades, Idaho requires concentration, but the gorgeous prose and slow-burn storytelling are worth it.

Best thing I’ve read online lately – “The Last Days of John Allen Chau”, an article in Outside Magazine by Alex Perry. It’s a long read but worth the time and effort. Perry does an excellent job of digging into the nuances of this tragedy and how we process them as humanity.

Best tech discovery – I’d never heard of Transferwise until last night. If you need to transfer funds overseas, it’s the easiest, cheapest way I’ve found. I was able to pay my Iceland residency deposit without wire fees, foreign transaction fees, or a visit to my bank. And the coordinators already let me know the money arrived, in Euros, this morning.