Category: The Blogging Life / The Writing Life

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Happy New Year 2023 From Rochester, NY!

Happy 2023, Everyone!

It’s been ridiculously long since I last posted.

2022 was a rather big year for me. I sold my house in Arizona and moved cross-country with my dogs back to New York. But not the City this time; I moved to Rochester, up in Western New York. I was offered a job as an appellate attorney in the Monroe County Public Defender’s office. This is very similar to my old job in New York City. I’d thought often of moving back to NYC since leaving it in 2011, but since living in LA and Phoenix where I became accustomed to space and became mom to two dogs – one rather large – it just didn’t seem like I could fit back into my old lifestyle in my tiny Manhattan apartment very easily. So, when several friends moved to Rochester, I came to visit and fell in love with its charm, its history, its proximity to beautiful nature, and its affordability. Plus, for a small city, it has a pretty thriving arts scene. There are many museums and art galleries – this one is a favorite, a small arthouse film theater, two playhouses, a gorgeous music hall with a world-class philharmonic orchestra, a lovely ballet company, and an African-based modern dance one. It just seemed like a good fit.

So in January 2022 Sofia, Irina, and I moved, right after a pretty big snowstorm dumped quite a bit of snow in the area no less – hadn’t seen any real snow in 10 years, so that was an experience! I bought a sweet colonial in historical Swillburg, and spent much of the year fixing it up, acclimating myself back to my job as a criminal appeals attorney, and exploring my new home. I visited Toronto (about 2.5 hours away by car), my old neighborhood in NYC (about 5.5 hours by car, 7 by train), and took multiple trips to various beach parks on Lake Ontario and in the beautiful Finger Lakes region (about 45 minutes to a couple hours away depending on which lake you visit). The Finger Lakes soon became one of my favorite summer destinations, with gorgeous lake views, many, many wineries, and a couple of farm sanctuaries, including a new one, which made its own cross-country trek this year from California. At top is a pic is of me at Dr. Konstantin Frank winery on Keuka Lake.

I am loving my new area, and my new/old job. I am lucky to have a great boss that understands that writing briefs is an art form, which makes me feel fulfilled in my day job, something I haven’t experienced in a very long time. It’s also good to be back in the state in which I am barred to practice law, so I can do side work on behalf of animals and their protectors. I promptly joined a state bar association’s animal law committee and am helping organize panel discussions on animal law.

Now that I am finally settled, I am returning to my creative writing. I had to take the past year off from my WIP – a paranormal cozy mystery series set in a cat cafe and adjoining dog bar. It had been set in Sedona, AZ, but I’m so inspired to write about my new home, I am working on relocating it here. I’m hoping to release it later this year, with two other books in the series to follow shortly.

I am so very thankful to everyone who has enjoyed my writing, written reviews of my books, joined my newsletter, and continued to follow me on social media for the past several years. I haven’t produced new fiction in a while, and I am so grateful to readers who have stayed with me. I wish everyone a wonderful 2023 filled with lots of engaging reads!

 

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WHO WERE YOU 20 YEARS AGO?

A couple photos of Najma, taken in the apartment we were living in on 9/11/2001, in Hoboken, New Jersey. The bottom shows the phone (a landline, remember those!) on which I tried in vain all throughout that day to call relatives and coworkers letting them know I was okay. Both landlines and cell towers were awack for a while. Fortunately we had the internet and I ended up communicating with people by email. One of my most solid memories from that day is an email from my boss letting us know everyone in my office – two blocks from the World Trade Center – was accounted for and okay.

I was walking to the PATH station to take the train across the Hudson River into the WTC when the first plane hit. I watched everything from across the water before walking back home, in a daze. In addition to getting that email from my office, my other strongest memories of that day are waiting in my apartment building to hear all of my neighbors return home – thankfully they all did, and Najma continually sitting in the front window, ears perked up, looking in the direction of the WTC. She clearly knew something was up. But she was a cat, so of course.

Anyway, over the last twenty years I’ve written about that day so many times, I thought this year I’d reflect more on who I was twenty years ago than where I was. The pandemic has made me reflect repeatedly over the past year and a half, so it seems natural on this anniversary.

Twenty years ago today I was a newish lawyer working my second real law job, as an appellate public defender in lower Manhattan. I was living in Hoboken, New Jersey with a Russian blue mix I’d adopted from the ASPCA, whom I named Najma, after a fellow law school student. I was two years into the job and beginning to fit into it. I loved researching and writing briefs, hated oral arguments in court. I still loved books, primarily fiction, and as busy as the job was I still entertained dreams of a writing career. I remember that night the Brown University Alumni Club (I’d gotten my masters at that school), which I’d recently joined, was to have its inaugural meeting. Of course it ended up being postponed. But I would go on to befriend several people in that group who worked in publishing. Some of them tried to convince me to go into a publishing career, which, after much deliberation, I decided I couldn’t afford to do with my student loan debt and my desire to live without a roommate. That remains my greatest regret. My only real regret, actually. But I don’t want to harp on that.

Four months after that day I decided life was too short and I needed to start on that writing career, no matter how busy it would make me. I began classes at Gotham Writers Workshop in the Village, and started my first novel. I later got an agent and had my first, and likely only, experience with traditional publishing. I ended up indie publishing it and it won several awards. I left the public defender job about seven years later, and with it, the legal profession. I embarked on a writing career, penning articles for online magazines and eventually a blog that become popular in the dance world, before publishing six more novels. I now have a seventh on the way, whose main character is actually Najma, the Russian blue cat I lived with all those years ago. Though she passed away in 2005 of a congenital heart condition, she’s never really left my life.

It’s funny thinking what my 9/11/2001 self would have thought of what her life became 20 years later. She’d be shocked, that’s for sure. She would never have thought she’d return to the desert, live outside of a big city, buy a house, and have, instead of cats, dogs, one of which is a Belgian malinois / German shepherd mix! A large dog who kind of looks like a coyote? Never! She never would have thought she’d publish romance novels set in the world of ballroom dancing. She was so into “literary fiction.” And she’d never danced anything but ballet as a child! But would she be surprised to be writing a novel in which Najma is one of the two main characters, about a woman her age who’s left the law to begin a cat cafe? Probably not so much, although she’d be sad to know Najma is no longer physically with her. And she wouldn’t have known what a cat cafe was 🙂

She definitely could have imagined she’d become an animal advocate, since one of her favorite classes in law school was animal rights law, and she’d always loved animals. She easily could have imagined she’d write fiction about animals.

Hey, maybe I’ve actually come full circle, writing a series involving animal characters and using some of my criminal procedure background.

Anyway, enough navel gazing. If you’ve stuck with me this far, thank you! It’s good to reflect sometimes on who you once were and where you’ve come in order to chart a course for what’s ahead. On this most solemn of days, I wish you peaceful thoughts and happy continuing progress on life’s journey. I wish you all the excitement for life and hopefulness for the future that I felt at that stage of my life, and that, yes, despite the pandemic and the threat of climate change, I can’t help but still feel today.

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Sweet Katusha: Thank You For Being So Good to Me

It’s been about a month now that my dear Katusha passed away and I’m still mourning her, as I always will in some form. She had an aggressive form of abdominal cancer and I didn’t even know she was sick until she suddenly stopped eating and drinking. It was too late to do much.

She was a few weeks short of eight years old, so very young for a cat. My other cat, Rhea, passed away only a little over two years earlier, also of cancer. She was only ten, and hers was a sarcoma on her head. I asked the vet if it was something in my house, in Arizona, in the air or water. But she said no; these are two very common forms of cancer in cats. Most likely something in their genetic codes.

I adopted Katusha seven and a half years ago when I lived in West Hollywood, CA. My job at the time had crazy hours and I felt badly because Rhea, whom I’d adopted in New York a couple years earlier before moving to CA, was alone for hours on end. I thought she needed a companion.

I saw a post on Facebook. It was kitten season and a woman fostering a litter found motherless on the street was required to return them to the high-kill LA County shelter she volunteered for since they were now old enough. She was worried and needed adopters. I spotted a cute-looking boy cat in the litter and called the foster. It turned out the boy cat had already been adopted and they only had a girl available. I was dubious about adopting a female because I worried two girl cats wouldn’t get along. But I picked this little one up – her name was Cinderella at the time because of her fondness for making a little bed for herself out of her foster mom’s shoes – and she immediately purred and let me cuddle her as much as I wanted. She was perfect for me. I called my vet and she told me that as long as everyone was spayed gender wouldn’t be an issue. So she was ours!

Katusha continued to love shoes, by the way. I changed her name from Cinderella because there was a Russian ballroom dancer I adored and I loved her name. Katusha seemed perfect for a cat 🙂

At first Rhea was pretty mad at me. Actually I think she kind of remained mad at me. She had the run of our fairly large apartment all to herself and now she had to share space with a little kitten who constantly wanted to play. But she soon learned to tolerate her new sister. And the vet was right – there were no fighting issues.

Katusha’s coat was the most amazing pattern! She was so playful as a small kitten, as I guess most small kittens are.

She and Rhea really loved that WeHo apartment with its big patio door and floor-to-ceiling windows that were perfect for bird-watching!

Unlike Rhea, who wasn’t very cuddly, Katusha loved to snuggle in my lap as I read. This is one of the things I miss most about her.

I volunteered at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. In Dogtown. And realized I really missed my dog from childhood, named very imaginatively by my five-year-old self, Fluffy. I lived in a pretty big apartment in LA and everyone in my building seemed to have a dog, and I knew there was room for a small one. One of my friends who volunteered with LA County posted a video on Facebook of a dog for adoption who looked ideal. She described her as shy. I went to West LA Shelter and met her. And we bonded on the spot. Sofia was perfect.

But not to the cats! I brought her home and she immediately chased them. Katusha was the most scared, and she nearly opened the locked window in her attempt to escape. Poor kitty. It took the better part of a year to get her to calm down and accept Sofia. Rhea was easier. You can read Sofia’s take on the whole thing if you like here.

But Katusha was good to me and she loved me. And for my sake, I believe, she eventually managed to get along with Sofia. I made her and Rhea a cat tree and she played in it, even with the crazy dog present down below. She eventually even shared the couch with the dog.

I grew weary of LA traffic and I really wanted to buy a house, which I knew I couldn’t afford in LA, so I decided to move back to Arizona, where I’m from. I thought of moving back to New York but … I’m actually not sure why I didn’t, to be honest. I missed my friends there, I missed the ballet, the culture. I missed my life there. But I think I just wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to return to all the noise and the lack of space and the ten plus hour work days. I’d done somewhat well self-publishing my novels and I’d remembered how angry people in traditional publishing were about the success of indie authors and Amazon and all and I didn’t really want to return to that negativity. Plus, I wanted to buy a house with a yard, see what that kind of life was like. My aunt was also ill at the time and she had no one to care for her. As you can see, I’m still trying to figure out why I didn’t return to New York…

Anyway, we moved back to Arizona. We rented a condo for a few months until I could get enough local work experience to qualify for a mortgage. Six months later, we moved into our first house.

Rhea loved the house. It had a bi-level living room, which I found so charming and full of character. And a balcony, which she couldn’t get enough of. It reminded me of the balcony of the loft in our New York apartment, which she loved to sit on and peer down. She loved to jump off the balcony onto the bookcase, little gymnast!

But I’m not sure how much Katusha liked the new house. She pretty much hung out in the walk-in closet in the master bedroom, which of course contained all my footwear. She still loved to cocoon herself in my shoes, or between the shoe boxes in the corner. She liked to hide. Perhaps it was because she had longer hair than Rhea and southern Arizona is warm and dry. She’d come out to the kitchen to eat, and use the guest bathroom, where I kept one of the litter boxes. But, unlike Rhea, who loved to climb the stairs, she never ventured up to the second floor to use the other bathroom’s litter box.

A year and a half after we moved in Rhea was diagnosed with a sarcoma on her head. She went through grueling stereotactic radiosurgery, which left her with large radiation burns that eventually became infected. Poor Rhea. I think it must have been traumatic for Katusha to see her sister so sick. I don’t really know how animals handle those kind of things.

A few months later Rhea passed away. Katusha came out of the closet a little more often but not much. She’d sit at the big patio window and look out back a little, but not much. Sitting at the window had always been more Rhea’s thing than Katusha’s, although Katusha seemed to like looking out the window in West Hollywood.

I began volunteering at my local SPCA. I felt Sofia, who’d become best friends with Rhea, missed her sister. She and Katusha got along but they weren’t besties the way she and Rhea were.

I did a couple of short-term fosters with some small dogs at the shelter and Katusha seemed to get along with them. I was amazed. She seemed to now be a dog-friendly cat.

Six months later, I decided to adopt another dog to befriend Sofia and hopefully Katusha as well. I went to the shelter to adopt a dog about Sofia’s size that I’d walked and read to and liked but that dog had gotten adopted by the time I got to the shelter. The adoption counselors encouraged me to look at other dogs since I was there with Sofia, so I did. I hesitantly brought home a dog for what’s called a slumber party to see if she’d get along with everyone in our household. They tested her with cats and found she wasn’t predatory and she and Sofia got along, so even though she was larger than the other dog I was thinking of, I decided to try it. We now had a big backyard, suitable for a larger dog.

When I introduced her to Katusha, Kat was immediately scared of her. No wonder. Irina was much bigger than Sofia. She was a German shepherd / Belgian malinois mix and kind of resembled a coyote with her coloring. Katusha hissed and swatted at her. Irina cried and ran off. I felt that was a good reaction. Irina was giving Katusha her boundaries and hopefully Katusha would soon come around.

But soon took much, much longer than I’d expected. I hired a total of three private trainers and took three group classes. I worked hard on getting both of them to like each other, for many, many months to no avail. I moved Katusha’s litter box and food into the master bedroom and kept her shut in there and away from Irina, which was fine with, really, her since that’s where she always hung out anyway.

It wasn’t until the pandemic when I began to work from home that they finally became friends. And it was mainly Irina’s doing. I opened the door to “Katusha’s room” and let Irina go in with me. She kept trying and trying to break the ice with Katusha, just by touching noses. With Irina in the room whenever I was, Katusha eventually realized that I wasn’t going to let Irina hurt her. Irina didn’t want to anyway. She was just big and scary-looking.

I was so happy when Katusha finally let Irina get close to her.

Katusha slowly began not to be scared. She’d walk around the house and climb into her cat tree even when Irina tried to climb in after her. I’d originally kept Irina crated at night and spend the night with Katusha alone. But when I was home all the time I began to let Irina sleep with us as well. At first Katusha would sleep in the cupboard in the bathroom. But soon she began to come out and sleep with us at night, cuddling with me, while I read to her, even while Irina slept feet away, at the foot of the bed.

The thing was, I think Katusha was feeling sick for a while and it just wasn’t noticeable to me. I think she wanted and needed my attention and she realized the only way she would be able to get it was to befriend the coyote-looking dog. It was literally only days after the above picture was taken that she stopped eating and drinking and I rushed her to the vet. I was so happy they were all getting along and we were all happy and at peace with each other. I do think it was genuine, I just think I forced the peace-making on Katusha and she may not have been truly comfortable for a large part of that time.

When I found out about her cancer it was already advanced. The vet said we could still try chemotherapy. I was hesitant after Rhea’s horrible experience with radiation, and her cancer wasn’t nearly as advanced as Katusha’s. So we tried palliative care. The steroids initially worked wonders and I began to seriously consider chemo. But those wonders were sadly short-lived. After one week she wasn’t eating and drinking again. The vet told me to increase her steroids and pain-killers but Katusha hated me giving her medication and she fought me every time. She started trying to hide from us. She began hissing at Irina and Sofia again when they tried to play with her, which I understood of course since she was feeling so horribly. But it still totally broke my heart.

I separated her from the dogs again and crated them at night, sleeping alone with her. But she often stayed in the cupboard and I had to reach inside and pull her out at night to put her on the bed with me. She purred a little, but it became less and less. I kept increasing the meds until all she did was sleep. The night I had her euthanized at the ER she was so out of it I honestly thought she was going to die of an overdose anyway. Keeping her alive just so I could feel her soft fur against my skin, so I could hold her and make myself believe the steroids would work again, and try hard as I could to wish the pre-sick Katusha back, just became so obviously wrong.

I still feel badly that I didn’t try the chemo even though the ER vet told me her cancer was advanced and it likely wouldn’t keep her alive for long. Cats don’t know they’re being kept alive for so and so much time; they just know they feel unwell and they’re unhappy. I know I did the right thing but I still wonder what if I’d done the chemo. She’d probably still be here. Even after my experience with Rhea, I’m not sure I’m the kind of person who can’t do everything I possibly can to save an animal.

Looking back, I think Katusha made herself get along with the dogs for my sake. First Sofia in LA then Irina in Arizona. She wanted me to be happy and she knew I would be if only they would all get along. I will forever cherish her for doing that for me.

And I’m not so sure she’s really gone. I feel her spirit around the house the same way I still feel Rhea’s. I know the dogs do as well.

Here she is in her cat tree looking outside at us in the backyard. When we’re out back, I often still feel her inside looking out at us.

A month after her death and Irina still sniffs and looks intently at the cupboard, waiting for her to come out.

I’ve been working on a new cozy mystery series, set in a cat cafe and adjoining dog bar with animal sleuths and ghosts. Rhea is the basis for the character of the main ghost, and the cat character who heads the cafe is based on my dear Najma, the cat I had back in New York. Katusha passed away after I finished the penultimate draft but I managed to write in a recurring role for her. So my beloved animals never really die. They live on in my writing and in the spirit energy with which they continue to fill our lives.

 

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WITTY KITTY is Now MY CAT JEOFFRY BOOKSTORE AND CAT LOUNGE

Just letting everyone know I changed the name of the cat cafe / bookstore I long to open from WITTY KITTY to MY CAT JEOFFRY BOOKSTORE AND CAT LOUNGE. You can find it here. If you’re an avid reader and an animal lover or if you’re interested in adoptable kitties, please follow us!

Right now, it’s pretty much a blog where I write mainly about books for animal lovers and post links to local pets up for adoption. I sometimes blog about great vegan food or personal stuff involving my own wonderful rescue kids 🙂 I hope to open in brick and mortar form someday soon and will definitely keep everyone posted on our progress 😀

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TO A MOUSE: My New Animal Literature Blog

 

I started a new Tumblr blog focused on books about animals. It’s called “To A Mouse: An Animal Literature Blog.” I had been writing a Tumblr called “Literary Aperitif,” in which I paired a cocktail with a book. But I started to get migraines every time I went near alcohol 🙁 So I couldn’t really keep that up. But I love animals, and I love books, and I am finding myself reading so many books involving animals – both nonfiction about animals, and fiction featuring animals as main characters. And I am trying to write a mystery series starring animal sleuths (along with a human investigator :)). (I am still writing the dance romances though!) So I figured I’d change my blog to center on where my passions lie.

I also realized how much I’ve missed blogging since I moved out of New York and stopped writing “Swan Lake Samba Girl.” Novels take me so long to write, and I don’t like to be away from readers for so long 🙂

Here is the link to To a Mouse. And I’ve copied and pasted my first post below.

Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley is a fitting starting book for my new blog! I found this book at my favorite local mystery bookstore, the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, AZ, even though it’s not a mystery. I’m a sucker for anything with a dog on the cover – and anything blurbed by Garth Stein:) So, I snatched it. And so glad I did. It became one of my favorite books of last year … well, one of my favorite books ever, actually.

It’s kind of hard to describe – mostly realistic with a slight bit of fantasy thrown in. Ted is a gay man living in Los Angeles, approaching middle age, his writing career is not going so well, he’s broken up with a long-term boyfriend, he’s not tremendously close to family. And then, his dog, Lily, his best friend in the world, becomes sick with cancer – the “octopus” which he finds one evening on her head, with its tentacles creeping down over her temples, taking root. It’s a rather fitting image of cancer. The book is basically about his dealing with this horrible impending loss.

I found myself relating to so much of Ted’s life. I’m not a gay man, but I am a writer and I lived in LA and I know too well how it feels to be stuck in your writing career, to not be in a relationship, and to have your pets be a huge part of your world, even if it’s largely a world of your own human-centric creation. Ted and Lily have movie nights, pizza nights, they have lively discussions of actors and actresses. My dog and I have different kinds of discussions – we talk about passing scenery and prior travels when we’re on road trips, people when we’re at outdoor cafes, books and news and Facebook friend updates when we’re lazing on the living room couch. She goes practically everywhere with me, she sits at my side when I read or write, we eat together, sleep together, we experience the world together. I can’t imagine losing her. It physically hurts to think about it. Everyone can relate to this book because everyone has someone they share their life with, whom they can’t imagine living without.

The book is about love, the deepest friendship imaginable, about surviving grief, and about surviving death. Ted is an agnostic throughout most of the book, but at the end, he comes to believe that Lily will experience the afterlife. He tells her to look for her mother up in heaven; she will take care of her. And, later, when he embarks on a new (human) relationship, he tells the new man the story of Lily, making Lily very happy. So, Lily will survive, as we all will, through story, though art. This book is ultimately about the power of literature, which, as the owner of Gatsby Books in Long Beach, CA, once said, connects us all through time and place.

Rowley recently toured to promote the paperback. So fabulous to meet him at Changing Hands in Phoenix!

 

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FEVER Series Launch Date!

Hey everyone,

So excited to announce that I am finally getting ready to launch my FEVER series, the first in my INFECTIOUS RHYTHM series of romance novels set in the world of ballroom dancing. FEVER is a trilogy, and I’m launching all three books at once, in early June. Read more about each book here.

Infectious Rhythm is the name of the Hollywood dance studio where FEVER’s hero, Sasha, and heroine, Rory, meet.

Look for other books / series to follow, featuring other couples who meet at that studio.

I’m super excited about this project. As everyone who’s read my blog well knows, I’m a huge dance lover. I’m also an avid reader of romance novels and fun, contemporary fiction featuring smart, complex women and mysterious, intriguing men. And, there just doesn’t seem to me to be a better blend than dance and romance 🙂

In upcoming days and weeks, I’ll be posting cover reveals, as well as some of my favorite dancer video clips, photos, and interviews.

I had such a blast writing this series. I hope you all have as much fun reading as I did writing!

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Swan Lake Samba Girl is Taking a Hiatus

Hi guys. I guess it’s obvious by now, since I haven’t blogged since September, but I’m going to need to put this blog on hiatus for a while. I’ve been working really long hours at my law job, and with the little time I have left over for writing, I must work on my novel or it’s never going to get done. Sadly, I have hardly any time for reviewing, or even viewing, dance performances these days.

I’ve been writing this blog since 2006 and I’ve had such a wonderful time with you all. I’ve met so many fascinating people here – from other ballet and ballroom enthusiasts, to professional critics and dance historians, to past and current professional dancers with so much knowledge. Talking about dance with you all has been so educational and enlightening for me – not to mention fun. So thank you!

When I get more time, or somehow figure out how to more successfully juggle my legal work, novel-writing, and dance writing, I will either pick back up here, or I’ll write for other publications. I definitely intend to keep tweeting about dance-related events, so if you’re on Twitter, please do follow me!

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Ballet Arizona’s SLEEPING BEAUTY, and Phoenix Society For the Arts Reads SWALLOW!

I feel so badly that I haven’t had time to write very much here lately. Writing doesn’t come close to paying the bills right now (will it ever??) so I do legal contract work, and I have a really time-consuming assignment right now. When I’m between assignments, I’ll try to write as much as I can, but otherwise it’s going to be slow going, sadly…

Anyway, I spent last weekend in Phoenix. I was a guest of the Phoenix Society for the Arts book club whose February read was Swallow! I was so honored, and it was such a wonderful experience. People asked all kinds of interesting questions, and they pointed to specific scenes and characters in the novel that they found particularly entertaining or related to well. One of my early writing instructors – the illustrious James Conrad 🙂  – once told me that you can tell if people are really into your book if they talk about specifics; if they just say general things – even nice things like “I really liked it,” or “I thought it was really good” – they are probably just b.s.ing. So it made me so happy that people were remarking on how horrible the sister and her nephews were or how wicked Alana was or how they couldn’t believe what Sophie did with the wedding dress or how the judges behaved in the courtroom.

They also asked me a lot of questions about how real everything was – how autobiographical the novel really was. I found that so hard to respond to because the inciting incident – Sophie’s globus hystericus – came from a very real experience, and yet I don’t think there’s a single scene in the book that actually happened, from start to finish. Most of the characters are combinations of so many people I’ve known and then added onto that they’re virtually made up. In order to make something dramatic and interesting that will keep readers’ attention, you really have to work with climax and character arcs and creating a twisting turning plot that will surprise and maybe even shock. You have to make stuff up, and a lot of it or the book just won’t compel readers to turn pages. And then at a certain point you get so carried away with your characters, they start to have a life of their own. And then that removes it further from “reality.” Yet everything is true with that proverbial capital T, you know. Anyway, I got very tongue twisted trying to explain that.

It was such a wonderful experience, though, and I’ll be forever thankful to the Phoenix Society for the Arts for having me, and for giving me such an engaged, inquisitive, alive audience of extremely thorough readers. It was one of the very best experiences I’ve had yet as a writer 🙂

That Saturday, my dad took me to downtown Phoenix to see Ballet Arizona’s production of Sleeping Beauty. (This was also with Phoenix Society for the Arts). I was so happily surprised by how excellent the company is! I really didn’t know what to expect, because once you see dancers like Alina Cojocaru and Veronika Part and David Hallberg and Marcelo Gomes in all the main roles, you really don’t know if you’re going to be able to have a favorable response to anyone else. I thought the company very much resembled New York City Ballet, which isn’t surprising since the director, Ib Andersen, was a Balanchine protege and a dancer with NYCB. He really has a wonderful little company of dancers. The principals stand out with their charisma, their very strong dance technique, and their good acting, but without being flashy and star-like – just like NYCB.

 

 

I especially loved Astrit Zejnati (above, click on photos for original source) as Prince Desire and Natalia Magnicaballi as the Lilac Fairy. And I thought Tzu-Chia Huang was a very sweet Aurora who acted each of the three acts very well. She and Zejnati got loads of applause in the third act, not surprisingly, for their gorgeous fish dives – and her legs were straight up in the air, like Cojocaru’s. Some of the best fish dives I’ve seen! Her Rose Adagio balances were good – not the best I’ve seen – but she held onto them long enough for the audience really to applaud her. Zejnati is small – he reminded me a bit of NYCB’s Joaquin De Luz – but with a very commanding presence. He was a true prince. And he had the ever so engaging expressiveness of Gonzalo Garcia, and everyone knows how I feel about him 😀 It’s so hard for me not to think of dancers back home when I write about dance now – sorry if that’s annoying!

 

 

Magnicaballi (above, second photo of Swan Lake, with Zejnati) was one of the most magical, larger than life Lilac Fairies I’ve seen. She reminds me a bit of San Francisco Ballet’s Maria Kochetkova. She was the perfect embodiment of the “fairy godmother” as she blessed baby Aurora with her beautifully eloquent port de bras, countered Carabosse (Nancy Crowley) with a swift but elegant flick of her arm, and she captivated the audience along with the Prince at the end of the Vision scene as she whisked him off to the real Sleeping Beauty.

Ib Andersen has a wonderful company. It’s too bad they don’t have a very long season – they seem only to perform for two or three days every two or three months. They do mainly classical ballet and Balanchine, with some Robbins, and some of Andersen’s own work, which I now really want to see. Fans of NYCB would definitely love this company.

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Sexy Kindle Party Reading


Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

So, my reading Thursday evening is now archived on the Reading is Sexy Kindle Party ustream; I embedded it here. I’m the sixth reader on the list – out of eight. The readings were so diverse. The only similarity between us is that we all happened to be women (though the event definitely wasn’t excluded to men)! Each of the books seemed to be of very high quality – really the quality of self-published books is not at all what those in traditional publishing seem to want to make it out to be – and the authors were quite adept at reading from their own work, which surprised me – usually authors don’t make such good readers 🙂 Many of the authors have won awards for their writing (either for their books or short stories), some have been published in anthologies, some have MFA degrees, and some are Amazon bestsellers.

The authors I read with were:
Karen Cantwell, reading from her comical mystery, Take the Monkeys and Run (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery)”
L.B. Gschwandtner, reading from her literary novel, The Naked Gardener
Lisa Leibow, reading from her women’s novel, Double Out and Back
Laverne Thompson, who writes romantic suspense and erotic romance novels
Cathy Wiley, reading from her cozy mystery, Dead to Writes
Misha Crews, reading from her literary novel, Still Waters
D. A. Spruzen, reading from her literary suspense novel, Not One of Us (The Flower Ladies Trilogy, Book 1)

I think the event was really a success. The live audience was packed – I’d say there were about 50 seats set up in the reading room, which was completely full. And we had an internet audience as well, actively asking questions of the readers. So a big huge THANK YOU if you were one of the online participants!!!

Someone asked me if my next novel (the legal / urban drama about the group of men who witnessed a shooting) was based on a true story. I’ve been kind of working on two novels simultaneously – that one, which is taking a while because I needed to take a little writing break and do some research, and a sequel to Swallow, that will include dance. I thought the second might have more sales potential, which is why I was working on it as well, trying to get it out as soon as possible. But several people (mostly outside of the dance world 🙂 ) keep telling me they’re eagerly awaiting the legal drama. So the person who asked that question prompted me to work hard on that one, because there is interest, and in my heart that’s what I want to write about. So, thank you person who asked me that question!! The answer to the question is yes, but I’m taking a lot of liberties with the actual event it’s based on, completely creating new characters, etc.

Also, three of the authors happened to be lawyers or former lawyers, and someone asked the third what was up with that! What’s drawing lawyers to a profession that’s so much less lucrative than their original career? Leibow, the last lawyer to read, laughed and said it just so much more creatively rewarding. I’d strongly second that, adding, in my case, that it’s also far more rewarding to write for intelligent, open-minded readers, than for judges, most of whom are conservative, jaded and cynical.

I had such a good time doing this and am so glad I went down to Virginia for the day. I realized though, in doing so, that I’m not as young as I once was. Funny though, because I got carded ordering a rum-based Hurricane with my lunch at the Pizzeria Uno in Union Station. I always seem to get carded when I order alcoholic beverages down South. So, apparently to some I don’t look as old as I feel 🙂 Anyway, such a long one-day trip there and back really kind of took the wind out of me and it took me most of yesterday to recover. I should have stayed overnight in DC and gone to the AWP (Association of Writing Programs) conference yesterday, but for some odd reason I decided to catch the 1:40 a.m. bus back to NY.

I always travel like this and, I know, I’m weird. My third year in law school I had an interview for a federal clerkship, down in Albany. Not Albany, NY, but Albany, GA, about two hours out of Atlanta. I was living in Hoboken, New Jersey at the time. I left my apartment at 6 in the morning, bussed to Newark airport, flew to Atlanta, caught a connecting flight to Albany (one one of those 10-seater planes, which I don’t think I’ll do again…), took a long cab ride to the courthouse, had my interview, then went back all the same way, arriving at my Hoboken apartment nearly 24 hours after I left it.

And, during my first dance competition, which was in Miami, I decided last minute I just had to see Key West. I only had one day until my first day of competition, and then my flight back to NY was the evening of my last comp. So, I took a day trip from Miami to Key West the day before the comp. It’s about 3 1/2 hours each way. I spent about six hours out on the island, and I still managed to get a full night’s sleep (part of it on the bus) and was up early and ready for morning practice the following day. I don’t know how I did that…

Anyway, I had a wonderful time in Vienna, met so many wonderful writers and readers. The Soundry, a multi-room venue kind of like the KGB Bar in NY, was an excellent place to have a reading. Thank you so much to the Soundry’s Jennifer Crawford for including me in the roster at the last minute. Thank you so much to Karen Cantwell for telling me about the event in the first place (on the Kindleboards), and for carting me between the Soundry and the Vienna metro station! So nice to meet several Kindleboards authors I’ve been chatting online with for months now. Can’t wait for the next event!

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Reading is Sexy Kindle Party!

 

This Thursday night I’ll be participating in the first ever (that I know of anyway) Kindle party. There will be a total of eight e-book authors, including acclaimed women’s lit writers Karen Cantwell and L.B. Gschwandtner. Audience members are encouraged to come with their e-readers, though it’s not necessary to have one. (I think most of us have print versions of our books published as well.)

It’ll be held at the Soundry, in Vienna Virginia, but will also be live-streamed online! So you can watch from the comfort of your home, and participate in a live chat (format is similar to the Guggenheim’s Giselle live stream & chat). It’s from 7-10 p.m. EST on Thursday night, February 3rd. Go here for the ustream channel. There will also be a discussion of e-readers and e-publishing in general. So, tune in (or come if you’re in the DC area) if you’re interested in any of those things.

This is the first time I will have read from my book post-publication, so I’m really excited about it. I’m also really excited about all of these live-streamed events!