Blogroll – Donald Levin's Blog

Book Launch for Savage City

On Saturday, February 5, 2022, from 2 till 4 p.m. at Color | Ink Studio in Hazel Park, MI, I’ll celebrate the publication of my latest novel, Savage City (Poison Toe Press, 2021) with a book launch party.

This will be a hybrid event, held live for participants at the studio and simulcast over Zoom.

Savage City is a stand-alone historical novel that takes on racism, anti-Semitism, political corruption, and 1930s-style home-grown terrorism–all problems relevant to today’s world.

In a lively, interactive conversation, I’ll talk about how I developed and researched the book. Along with a Q&A session with in-person and online participants, I’ll read from the book, sign copies for in-person attendees, and take orders for personalized copies from those attending over Zoom.

Set in Detroit, Michigan, in 1932, Savage City follows four characters during a violent week of labor unrest in the bleakest year of the Great Depression:

Detective Clarence Brown is one of a handful of Black officers in the Detroit Police Department, navigating a thicket of lies and racism to find the killer of a young Black man.

Ben Rubin wants to move from petty crime into the ranks of Detroit’s notorious Purple Gang.

Elizabeth Waters is a fiercely independent Communist sympathizer who has turned her back on her privileged Grosse Pointe upbringing to join the workers’ fight for a piece of the American dream.

Roscoe Grissom is an unemployed auto worker enlisted by the fearsome Black Legion to sow terror as a night-riding emissary of hate.

Against the backdrop of the bloody Ford Hunger March, events hurl these four into the center of a political storm that will change them forever.

Early reviews of Savage City have been stellar. The Prairies Book Review called the book, “Layered, powerful, and sharp . . . In a word, brilliant. [Levin’s] insightful ruminations on the nature of power, bloodshed, class and racial disparity, fascism, the labor problems of the era, and universal truth gives depth as well as substance to the affecting narrative.”

The venue, Color | Ink Studio, is located at 20919 John R Rd. in Hazel Park MI, just north of 8 Mile near I-75. This program is free and open to the public, with registration required for both in-person and Zoom attendance. To register, please visit the website, https://colorinkstudio.com/events/savage-city/.

Visions of Goldstein

For the past year, I’ve been engaged in a project of imaginatively reconstructing the past of a great American city–Detroit, Michigan. I’ve been doing this in the form of the draft of a novel set in 1932. I’ll be saying more about this in coming weeks. But as I’ve been thinking about the social and political dimensions of time past, I’ve also been wandering around my own personal past.

I tend not to do that in my fiction. There, all my attention is on the not-me, my interest directed outward toward the mysterious interrelationships of character and action under the stresses of crimes.

But when I began to write poetry seriously, about twenty years ago, my past is what I went back to . . . mapping what Philip Levine called “the landscape of memory.” From the standpoint of what was then my relatively stable early 50s, I used poetry to look back on my early life, hoping to gain a clarity I had not previously had.

I wrote about my childhood and my family of origin, particularly some of the more important events, painful or otherwise, wishing the poetry could help me to put it all in some perspective that made sense in a way I had not been able to do previously.

One of the poems I wrote was “Visions of Goldstein.”

My father had been a film distributor in the 1950s and 60s. He was the Detroit branch manager for Allied Artists Pictures Corporation; we moved to Detroit from Boston, where I was born, so he could take that job. Allied Artists was a motion picture production company that put out mostly low-budget action movies and thrillers.

One of their most famous was the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1956.

As a distributor, my father was the middleman between the film producers and the exhibitors (the theatres).

The head of promotion for the company was a man named Harry Goldstein. Whenever Allied Artists had a new picture coming out, Harry Goldstein would come to town to mount a promotional campaign.

A highlight for me would be the nights when Harry Goldstein came to dinner at our house. On those nights, I was allowed to stay at the table after the meal and listen as Harry Goldstein spun story after story of people in the film industry that my parents knew.

I was rapt during those evenings. I’m not saying Harry Goldstein made me a fiction writer, but he has a place in my life-long influences. I learned from him the power of stories.

“Visions of Goldstein” helped me to relive those nights, and what I now realize I was learning at the time.

Visions of Goldstein
Donald Levin

The thin-armed man with round belly
unreeled his endless stories
like the curlicue of skin
from the apple I sat and peeled
or the twists of smoke over the table
from the Winstons my mother chained.
Cackling at his own accounts,
he called them by their worst names—
the guinea, the spic, the yid—
those characters in his true-life tales
known to my parents but not to me
and he told how they betrayed their tribes
marrying outside their kind
stealing from their employers
running off with other women’s 
husbands, chasing other men’s wives.
He told about them after dinner
over empty dessert plates on a white
tablecloth, the last leavings
of our meal.
 
                       Harry Goldstein,
director of promotion, barreled
through Detroit ahead of the release 
of every Allied Artists picture.
(That’s what they were, never movies,
never films, just pictures, like
the ones he rendered in the blue smoke
coiling from my mother’s nonstop cigs.)
Harry prepared their way with stunts.
He scattered mannequins around
downtown streets for Invasion of
the Body Snatchers, the pale cadavers
piled later in the company storeroom 
lurching through my dreams for years. 
He staged a tawdry street fair at
the Palms Theatre for a picture called
The Big Circus. 

                          Allowed to sit
with them those nights while my father 
sipped his coffee and suffered 
Harry Goldstein’s ceaseless stories 
and my mother exuded her rude sighs 
I devoured his reports 
of life beyond the chandelier’s glare.
His stories declared the ways
their futile passions and deceits 
ruled the lives of foolish people. 

A guest at the table those nights
slicing the somber flesh of 
my apple into neat slivers
on a stained expanse of white cloth
cleared of food, I hung on the visions
of that traveling man in charge
of promotion, arriving 
in advance of my grown-up life
in time to prepare its way.

This week’s guest: Brenda Hasse

This week I’m delighted to host Brenda Hasse, a multi-award-winning author and freelance writer. Brenda has written and published award-winning young adult historical romance, pre-teen historical mystery, and adult metaphysical/visionary novels. She is also the author of several picture books for children. Brenda volunteers her time researching and writing scripts for the Fenton Village Players to perform during the Ghost Walk and Historical Cemetery Walk. She resides in Fenton, Michigan, with her husband and cats.

I spoke with Brenda about her new release, The Cursed Witch.

DL: Congratulations on your new book! We’re anxious to hear what it’s about.

BH: The Cursed Witch is a romantic suspense novel based on Anna Stewart. Here’s the synopsis:

Edinburgh, Scotland, 1828—Born the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter, Anna Stewart is cursed as a witch. Shunned by society, she is blamed for her family’s misfortunes. The night before Samhain, Anna, now eighteen years old, is sent on an errand. Hearing shuffling footsteps behind her, she turns, and her vision fades to black. She awakens to see the full moon in the cloudless night sky, grasps the freshly turned soil where she lay and watches as a fleeing pair of body snatchers disappear into the shadows of the kirkyard. Alone among the gravestones, she stares at the open end of a casket deep within her disturbed grave. As she begins to walk home, Anna encounters the town witch, who tells her she was murdered and buried. With the killer still at large, the old woman warns Anna to hide, or risk being killed, again.

Douglas MacEwan, the successful owner of a mercantile shipping company, is staying in the city while his ships unload and take on cargo before returning to Virginia. His happenstance encounter with Anna leaves him spellbound by her beauty. After learning of her plight, he offers to investigate and track down her murderer. Knowing he must soon depart with his ships, his affection for Anna grows, as does his determination to ensure she remains safe.

In a race against time, will Anna be able to unravel the mystery and identify her assailant or will her killer discover her whereabouts and attempt once again to silence her forever?

Please note—Even though The Cursed Witch is a work of fiction, it is based on history. Anna Stewart was declared dead at 18 years old, buried, and within 24 hours exhumed by two men, Martin and John. Many of the terms such as ‘graveyard shift,’ ‘dead ringer,’ and ‘saved by the bell’ (yes, the dead were buried with bells and often in mortsafes) that we use today, came from this time period when the poor living on the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland turned to ‘body snatching’ for money. In 1829, William Burke and William Hare were found guilty of killing 16 people for profit. Their wives turned them in, or so the rumors indicate. Hare was found innocent, while Burke was hung and his body donated to the autonomy theater. Dr. Knox was also tried for his role with the two men. He was found innocent and lived the remainder of his life in London, England.

Even though Anna’s birth order is not mentioned in history, it is true when a woman was born the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter, she was thought to be cursed and only someone outside of the family would volunteer to be a godparent.

I find it fascinating when true history is included in a novel. It makes it more believable. What truly happened to the real Anna Stewart? Once she ‘returned from the grave,’ she eventually married and settled in America. For further reading about the topic, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a novel with the same setting in 1831 titled, The Body-Snatcher.

DL: What inspired the creation of the book?

BH: A friend from Edinburgh, Scotland, posted a brief summary of how Anna Stewart was exhumed from the grave. I found it fascinating and thought it would make an interesting opening chapter for a novel. Another friend encouraged me to write about a witch, and through research learned of the birth order curse. I could not find any other information about Anna or her family, but creating the fictitious birth order and cursing her as a witch added an interesting facet to the storyline.

DL: Could you talk about your writing process? Did it differ from the way you’ve written your other works?

BH: My writing process is flexible, such as life. I try to write everyday. Some days I write a lot, while others I write very little. I set a goal to write for a length of time or obtain a certain work count each day. My writing process is probably similar to many other authors—rough draft, rewrite, edit, edit again, format, send to editor, send to second editor, and publish.
I write most of my novels during National Novel Writing Month (November), but not this novel. I wrote The Cursed Witch during Spring 2021.

DL: What was the best part of/most fun about writing this book?

BH: Researching! I love history. I was able to travel to Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2016 and 2019, knowing that someday I would base the setting of a novel in the historic city. Writing about Anna, whose home was in Edinburgh, made her come to life, so to speak. I enjoy instilling each character’s personality, goals, and flaws to make them believable. I always try to include a cat or dog or both in each novel I write. Who doesn’t like a cat or dog?

DL: What was the most challenging part of writing this book?

BH: That’s an easy question—editing. I have discovered that I am more of an audio person than a reading person. When I read what I have written, I don’t always see my mistakes. I read what I think it should say instead of reading what it actually says. So, I am able to catch the mistakes easier when I listened to it read to me. I use the read back feature in my document. I also have two editors who help me find what I miss. However, even then some of the typos squeak through.

DL: How can readers purchase it or get a signed copy?

BH: The Cursed Witch may be ordered through any independent bookstore, Bookshop.org, and as always, Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Indie bookstores may order it through Ingram.

DL: Any final reflections about the book, or things you want people to know about it?

BH: Through my research, I learned the difference between a ‘graveyard’ and a ‘cemetery.’ A cemetery does not have a church on the grounds while a graveyard does. While in Scotland, I learned a church is called a ‘kirk’ and its graveyard is known as a ‘kirkyard.’ Also, an alley is known as a ‘close.’ Some closes join one street to another while others are a dead end into a residential area.

It’s always a little strange when I complete a novel. Even though the characters are usually make-believe, I experience a void when I am no longer interacting with their personalities.

DL: Thank you for joining us this week, Brenda. Much luck with the book!

Indie Monday

This week’s guest: Doris Rubenstein

This week I’m pleased to host award-winning author Doris Rubenstein. Doris is a native of Detroit and graduate of the University of Michigan. After two years in Peace Corps/Ecuador, she started a long career with non-profit organizations and in the field of philanthropy. She is the author of five books besides her newest one. You’re Always Welcome at the Temple of Aaron won the 2009 USCJ Schechter Award, and The Journey of a Dollar was a Silver Franklin Award winner from the IBPA. Doris has lived in Minnesota since 1984 and received her M.A. from Augsburg University there in 1993; her thesis won a Kenneth Clark Award for Research in Leadership from the Center for Creative Leadership (N.C.). She has been a regular contributor to numerous local and national publications on the subjects of Philanthropy and the Arts.

This week Doris will talk about her newest book, The Boy with Four Names (iUniverse, 2021).

DL: Congratulations on your new book! What is it about?

DR: The book is an historical novel about a Jewish family, and especially their son, who fled Nazi Germany and landed in Ecuador. There are three points of view in the story: the father, the mother, and the Boy with Four Names himself. Each of them has a different path, but they come together through dangers and difficulties to find a new home that is safe, free, and welcoming.

The book is aimed at teenagers, but—like War Horse and the Harry Potter books—adults can enjoy it, too. The boy has a really difficult time defining his identity, as do many teens wherever they may be. This makes it especially appealing to that audience. But then again, who didn’t struggle with their identity in high school? I was amazed when I talked with many of my classmates while preparing for my class reunion four years ago; how many of them identified themselves entirely differently than I would have identified them at that time: the “cool” kids, the shy kids, etc. From what I could tell, it wasn’t until we broke away from our neighborhood roots and families that we created our own identities. That’s sort of what happens to the “hero” of this book, only he manages to do it when he’s younger than most.

DL: What inspired the creation of the book?

DR: There is a real boy with four names, only he’s about 84 now: Enrique Cohen. His family fled Europe when he was a toddler and he was brought up in Ecuador. Along the way, he attended the University of Michigan, where he met my cousin and they married a couple of years after graduation. I’m a lot younger than he is, and the difference seemed even greater when the two of them got married and headed off for a life in Ecuador. But, as fate would have it, when I was accepted into the Peace Corps in 1971, I was assigned to Ecuador. When I worked on the coast and in the Amazonian areas of the country, when I’d come into Quito for R&R (or training or whatever), I’d stay with the Cohens—either my cousin and Enrique or Enrique’s parents, who treated me like a niece. I lived in Quito for eight months during Peace Corps and saw them at least weekly during that time. I’ve been back for visits five or six times over the past 48 years. I was always curious about their story, but they really didn’t talk about it much. I got snippets here and there, but nothing close to a narrative.

I got the idea for the book while on a visit in 2013. We were invited to an event at the synagogue there. I knew some of the other Jews in Ecuador, but didn’t know their stories, either. My Jewish (and non-Jewish) friends in the States were amazed to learn that there are Jews living in Ecuador, some for four generations now. Their exposure to Holocaust stories pointed toward those who fled to the U.S. or Canada, or Israel. Maybe some of our generation knew that Jews had gone to Argentina because of the Eichmann trial. But Ecuador? As for teens, the only “teen” story they seem know of is Anne Frank’s, and that’s got a pretty sad ending. I thought that a different story directed at them—like Enrique’s life—would shed new light on the lives of Holocaust survivors. And his true search for a unified identity certainly should resonate with many teens, too.

DL: Could you talk about your writing process? Did it differ from the way you’ve written your other works? Did the pandemic affect the writing or launch?

DR: The writing process started with research. I visited Ecuador in 2019 and did an in-depth interview with Enrique. His wife sat in on it and after it was over, she said that she’d never heard most of the stories he told—and they’d been married over 50 years at that time! I’d written a “novelized” history of my father’s family about six years earlier (printed just enough copies for my relatives and a couple copies for Historical Societies), so I felt comfortable with the genre of historical fiction. In reality, I’m a non-fiction writer—mostly histories and newspaper and magazine articles. I surprised myself that writing this book was not all that difficult: inventing dialogs, etc. seemed to flow fairly easily.

Aside from the interview with Enrique in Quito, he and I exchanged many more emails when I had questions or needed clarification. But there were numerous questions he couldn’t answer because he’d been too young to remember things, or his parents and grandparents never discussed them in his presence. So I had to invent a lot of things that seemed plausible and were historically accurate. For example, I wrote that the family got forged identification papers from the Olivetti family, of typewriter fame. They probably didn’t, but it’s a documented fact that the Olivettis (who were Jews) forged hundreds of documents for Jewish refugees from across Europe.

Even with this, I still had places in the story that could be filled in only by other Jewish refugees to Ecuador. I can’t remember how I found it, but I found a Facebook group called “Jews of Ecuador” (the JOEs, as they refer to themselves). It is a closed group for Jews who were born in Ecuador, or who grew up in Ecuador, or whose parents fit those parameters. I asked for permission to join the group, explaining my purpose. They were terrific! The JOEs supplied me with numerous stories from their families’ experiences that were slipped into The Boy with Four Names when Enrique’s memory was deficient.

I also read two books by JOEs: one was a memoir written in English; the other is a history of the Ecuadorian Jewish community. It’s written in Spanish and is very academic, but full of good stuff! My Spanish sure got a workout with that book!

The hardest part for me was to make the language “teen friendly.” I didn’t want to write at too high a level, but I didn’t want to talk down to them. I ran a fairly late draft past two friends who taught high school and both assured me that I was right on target.

The pandemic didn’t really help or hurt me while writing. I’m retired, so my time is my own. I also was working on another project at the same time, a history of Jewish theatre in the Upper Midwest (I live in Minnesota). That came out last fall. I wrote it for the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest. So when I needed a break from one project, I would concentrate on the other.

DL: What was the best part of writing this book?

DR: Actually, I loved the research. Connecting with Enrique in an entirely different way, though I’ve known him since I was twelve. Meeting the JOEs on Facebook, reading their stories, and being so completely accepted into their world.

DL: What was the most challenging part of writing this book?

DR: The hardest parts were making sure that the events of the Cohen family coincided accurately with the actual historical events that drove them out of Europe to Ecuador. I wanted to be sure that this book could be used as a teaching tool about the Holocaust as much as a pleasure-read without making it like a textbook or, on the other hand, a totally fictional book.

DL: How can readers purchase it or get a signed copy?

DR: As I’m writing this, I’m waiting for the publisher’s rep to call so that I can order copies of books to be delivered to me for autographing and direct sales. I’ve set up a Facebook page for The Boy with Four Names that has a link to my email address. The best way to buy it is from the publisher: www.iUniverse.com/Bookstore. Then insert my name or the book’s title in the search box.

DL: Any final reflections you would like to share?

DR: I ran a PDF of this book past the Executive Director of the Association of Holocaust Organizations. She exclaimed, “There’s NOTHING like this for teens on the market right now and this story has to be told and read!” Wow. What an endorsement! But this book is not only a Holocaust story. It tells a LOT about Ecuadorian geography and culture during the 1940s: what it’s like to have lived in a Third World country back then. And, of course, it’s appealing for the psychological profile of a teen, trying to figure out who he truly is as his own person.

DL: Thank you for joining us this week, Doris. Much luck with the new book!

Indie Monday

This week’s guest: Nancy Owen Nelson

This week I’m pleased to host author and educator Nancy Owen Nelson. While still teaching college English classes, she has turned to memoir and poetry writing over recent years, publishing two memoirs, including the award-winning Searching for Nannie B: Connecting Three Generations of Southern Women (2015); a poetry chapbook, My Heart Wears No Colors (2018); and a poetry book, Portals: A Memoir in Verse (2019). She lives in Dearborn, Michigan, with her husband Roger and cat Fortuna (Tuna). In future, she hopes to revise a novel, Four Women, giving it more literary “verve.”

Nancy will talk about her brand-new release, Divine Aphasia: A Woman’s Search for Her Father (Ardent Writer Press, 2021).

DL: Congratulations on your new book! We’re anxious to hear what it’s about.

NON: Thanks, Don. It’s a pleasure and honor to be featured on your blog!

DL: What inspired the creation of the book?

NON: Divine Aphasia: A Woman’s Search for Her Father has been in process for decades. Sadly, the suicide of someone close to me pushed me toward writing creative nonfiction. I had recently broken my fibula and was on crutches for several weeks. This gave me more opportunity to sit with my laptop and write. The suicide also brought me back to the importance of living in the moment, doing what I wanted to do, speaking, and writing my story.

DL: Could you talk about your writing process? Did it differ from the way you’ve written your other works? Did the pandemic affect the writing or launch?

NON: Unlike many authors, I don’t journal. I wish I did because I know how much it helps authors to track and remember key points of their writing. I just have a concept and decide to start in small pieces. For instance, I have an unpublished novel which began with a character coming home from school in the late 1940s. From there, the novel birthed four women characters, each with her point of view.

When I began Divine Aphasia, which went through several titles and phrases (including different foci and story arches), I decided to construct a memoir around the months after falling and breaking my leg. Though it seems an ordinary and common injury, I took the opportunity to write chapters around aspect of my life—parents, sisters, marriages (more on that later), my son, etc. These chapters progressed with my healing process, and I wrote of surgery, of walking on crutches, and eventually, walking again in my neighborhood. Ironically, I ended up with eight chapters; then I met my current husband, Roger, and I was able to write the ninth, which ended up being read at our wedding luncheon. The nine chapters felt like a gestation and birth.

The original titles for this version were The Fortunate Fall (an allusion to Adam and Eve), and later Reductio Absurdus (my Latin may not be so great 😊) around the idea of the absurdity of the human situation. I’m a huge fan of Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot. In fact, I’ve been impacted deeply by it since reading it in a college French class. You’ll find references to it throughout this memoir, including the title.

Readers reviewed the manuscript in various versions, and the common response was that I was trying to cover too much material, that all the parts of my life need not be in one memoir. As it turned out, I’ve published a few of the chapters and individual pieces. Some poetry grew out of them as well.

Finally, I settled on focusing on the impact of relationship with my career-military father and my last husband, the one who died by his own hand. My question was “Why did I marry so many times?” The memoir is an answer to this question. An earlier title, In the Army Now, eventually became Divine Aphasia, an allusion from Beckett’s play.

The pandemic? As mentioned, this memoir was mostly written before COVID-19. Most of what I did was to tweak and edit. I gave a lot of time and care to the cover, which was created after many Zoom hours with photographer Joel Geffen (with Cathy Dutertre). Since I teach online and work otherwise from home, being inside the house wasn’t a huge adjustment. Nonetheless, like many others I’ve talked with, I felt the need to write about the pandemic—silent and invisible, but frightening. It became a metaphor in some poetry I wrote.

DL: What was the best part of/most fun about writing this book?

NON: After what I’ve already said, you’ll understand that “fun” isn’t the first word I’d associate with this book. However, as painful and challenging as it has been, I am gratified about having survived the process of self-examination and come to some terms with my question.

Probably the most satisfying part of the book was the almost-last chapter, “Beginnings,” in which I catch my dad up on my life and challenges since he died at 62 in 1968. I’m able to describe my journey and to bring forward what I’ve learned from it. Joyfully, I tell him about my current husband, my son, who is named after him, and my granddaughter, his great granddaughter.

DL: What was the most challenging part of writing this book?

NON: I probably answered this under #3 above. I will add that, as the date of release on June 30 comes closer, I’ve needed to reexamine the manuscript to make sure this is what I want to say.

In fact, I added this addendum to my Acknowledgments:

Most names are changed. To readers who may recognize themselves or others in this book, I intend no harm to anyone. Please take me at my word, as I say in the Preface: “Now I know that these marriages were a pilgrimage to find, to fully understand my father, . . . . [and] why I married so many times.”

Those who attempt memoir know the tug-of-war that can happen between telling one’s truthful story and NOT deliberately hurting anyone. It’s a tough balance and it’s risky. However, writers will find that the impulse to move forward is compelling. This helps them, I believe, to know that their stories need to be told.

DL: How can readers purchase it or get a signed copy?

NON: Divine Aphasia can be purchased here on Amazon. Readers may also purchase a signed copy from me at this link. The payment includes a slightly adjusted book cost + media mail shipping + a small fee from Paypal.

DL: Any final reflections about the book (what you learned from writing it, for example) or things you want people to know about it?

NON: Readers can follow my occasional blog, “Ruminations,” on my web page: http://www.nancyowennelson.com/. Contact information is there as well. Thanks again, Don, for this opportunity!

DL: Thank you for joining us this week, Nancy. Much luck with the book!

Indie Monday

This week’s guest: Jean Davis

This week I’m pleased to host author Jean Davis. Jean lives in West Michigan with her musical husband, two attention-craving terriers, and a small flock of chickens and ducks. When not ruining fictional lives from the comfort of her writing chair, she plays in her flower garden, visits local breweries, and eats gluttonous amounts of sushi. She is the author of nine books, including a space opera series, The Narvan, two short story collections, and four standalone novels.

This week, Jean will talk about her new release, Not Another Bard’s Tale (StreamlineDesign.com, 2021).

DL: Congratulations on your new book! We’re anxious to hear what it’s about.

JD: Not Another Bard’s Tale is humorous fantasy. Bruce Gawain has been between knightly quests for longer than he’d like to admit. In the town of Holden, he meets a seer who tells him where he can finally find his destiny. All he has to do is travel to the distant Wall of Nok in Gambreland. With only three coins to his name, Bruce isn’t getting much further than a barstool at the town’s inn.

As luck would have it, the innkeeper’s beautiful daughter Svetlana and her flock of troublesome god-gifted sheep need an escort to Gambreland. With a paying job, everything seems to fall into place for Bruce’s quest…except for Svetlana’s killjoy bodyguard sister, an evil overlord with looming prophecy issues, and a dragon threatening to eat the townspeople until its stolen treasure is returned.

Bruce sets out with his pan-wielding companion Mydeara and the negligibly talented bard, Harold to seek out the Wall of Nok. Will they find Bruce’s destiny, return Svetlana safely home, and save the people of Holden from the vengeful dragon?

DL: What inspired the creation of the book?

JD: Not Another Bard’s Tale was brought to life in 2008. I’d been on a humorous fantasy reading binge and happened across John Moore’s Heroics For Beginners. Between that book and my love for Monty Python’s Holy Grail, I decided to set out to write my own funny fantasy novel.

While some of my books do have bits of snarky humor, this one went all in.

DL: Could you talk about your writing process? Did it differ from the way you’ve written your other works? Did the pandemic affect the writing or launch?

JD: The vast majority of my novel writing takes place during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November. I’ve been churning out rough drafts every November for fourteen years. One of those novels was published in 2015 and I’ve been working my way through my backlog of drafts ever since, slowly rewriting and editing until they are ready for publication. Each year my drafts get a little cleaner and the writing more polished on the first draft. A couple of the novels aren’t worth wading through but were good learning experiences. Not Another Bard’s Tale is my sixth NaNoWriMo project to be published.

As far as process is concerned, I’m a tried and true pantser. I like to discover the story as I write. That used to mean a lot of rewriting and editing, but my drafts are much cleaner and clearer these days, usually taking one or two big editing passes to tighten the plot and character development and then just the usual line edits and proofing.

Because Not Another Bard’s Tale is intended to be funny and most of my other books are not, this one did take several rounds of reader feedback over many years to find a good balance of what different readers find funny. Humor is vastly subjective. I went for a mix of campy, dark, and bawdy to hopefully please a wider range of readers. When my proofreader told me fantasy wasn’t really her thing but “this was a hoot to read,” I felt pretty confident that I’d achieved my goal.

Book launches during the pandemic . . . ugh. It’s been rough. I like to do in-person events and that just hasn’t been possible on the scale we were used to. This is the fourth book I’ve released in the pandemic vacuum. Honestly, having nearly all events canceled for the past year has freed up a lot of time I hadn’t planned on having to not only write but work through my backlog of drafts. Not Another Bard’s Tale wasn’t originally on my publishing radar for another year. I guess that’s one little bright side to the pandemic? I’m hoping with things opening back up again, we’ll be able to get back out and meet readers in person, sign books, and attempt to make all this writing time we’ve had profitable.

DL: What was the best part of writing this book?

JD: The best part was allowing myself to frolic through lighthearted plotlines. Most of my books are fairly dark and heavy on the character arcs. Not Another Bard’s Tale follows eight main characters on their adventures, allowing me to play in each of their heads for a couple of chapters without having to delve in too deeply, focusing instead on the humor each of them offers.

DL: What was the most challenging part of writing this book?

JD: Several parts were challenging. The original draft in 2008 didn’t have an end other than a general idea and the middle was bogged down in a humorless bog. After the initial round of disheartening feedback from my critique group that did make it to the middle, I put the book to rest for years. The amount of work it needed was too overwhelming. A couple of years ago, having published several books and learned a lot, I pulled the file out again and wrote the ending, made some notes on what needed to be fixed, and slowly plugged away at it. I ran it through another critique group over another year and made more changes and then finally last year, having time to implement all the feedback, the story elements fell into place.

DL: How can readers purchase it or get a signed copy?

JD: Not Another Bard’s Tale is available on the following sites:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1734570180

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1079264

https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/Search?Query=9781734570199

https://www.scribd.com/search?query=9781734570199&language=0

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/not-another-bards-tale-jean-davis/1139208219

https://bookshop.org/books/not-another-bard-s-tale/9781734570182

And if you’d like a signed copy, you can find my in-person event list on my blog:

http://jeanddavis.blogspot.com/

DL: Any final reflections you’d like to leave us with?

JD: For you writers out there, don’t give up on your drafts. Just because it isn’t good right now, doesn’t mean it will never be. It took me roughly ten novels to get my process down, to figure out how to write a draft that can go from a three-sentence synopsis to a finished book in a year. We’re always learning and fine-tuning our process. Revisit those projects you put aside every now and then, you never know when the creative gears will suddenly crank out the inspiration you were looking for.

DL: Thank you for joining us this week, Jean. Much luck with the book!

Indie Monday

This week’s guest: Rick Bailey

This week on Indie Monday, I’m proud to host Rick Bailey, author, educator, essayist, and world traveler. Rick grew up in Freeland, Michigan, on the banks of the Tittabawassee River. He taught writing for 38 years at Henry Ford College in the Detroit area. While writing textbooks for McGraw-Hill, he also wrote with classes he taught, a work habit that eventually led to Tittabawassee Road, a blog of essays on family, food, travel, and currrent events. His blog became the basis for American English, Italian Chocolate: Small Subjects of Great Importance (University of Nebraska Press, 2017). A Midwesterner long married to an Italian immigrant, in retirement he and his wife divide their time between Michigan and the Republic of San Marino. His second book is the memoir/travelogue The Enjoy Agenda at Home and Abroad (University of Nebraska Press, 2019).

This week, Rick will talk about his brand-new release, Get Thee to a Bakery: Essays (University of Nebraska Press, 2021).

DL: Congratulations on your new book! We’re anxious to hear what it’s about.

RB: Thanks for the opportunity to talk it. And major congratulations to you. I can’t wait to get into the next Martin Preuss book.

Get Thee to a Bakery is my third collection of essays, part memoir, part creative nonfiction. Think David Sedaris. In this collection there are 42 new pieces. That’s a lot. So they’re on the short side. You can read them on the beach, or waiting in the doctor’s office, or on a flight (when we start to fly agains, that is). Try them lying in bed at night. Readers of my first two books tell me they go to sleep with a smile on their face.

Among the important topics I explore are: family and friends, food and wine, technology and the environment, the general weirdness and surprise in contemporary life. My wife and I live in Italy three months of the year, or we did until Covid, so there’s some Italy in the book. And there’s some China in the book. And travel around the US West. One of my current favorites is an essay about the American smile. Americans smile more than other people. I mean in public, presenting this congenial disposition. Europeans think Americans are kind of crazy like that. Another current favorite in this collection is about earworm, a condition I’m afflicted with too often. Why is that Captain and Tenille song stuck in my head this morning? How do I get rid of it?

DL: What inspired the creation of the book?

RB: I write a blog (rick-bailey.com), which sort of keeps me in a constant state of alert. The blog is my compost pile. It’s a place where I “write my life.” The books grow there. This particular book came sooner than I thought it would. By Spring of 2019 I had accumulated a lot of stuff on my blog, when I came down with a detached retina. That will slow you down, let me tell you. I had to sit for a week, to avoid jiggling my repaired retina. And I thought: what the hell, let me see if there’s enough accumulated material on my blog to make a book. And there was.

Initially I was kind of surprised, even a little embarrassed about, you know, the use of the term “memoir.” I always thought of memoir as something old famous people wrote. Well, I satisfied one of those conditions. (I’m 68 years old.) Back in the 90’s and 00’s, I started reading reviews of memoirs in the New York Times. Regular people were writing memoirs. People who were, like, 35 years old. In my mind, the genre started to morph. I began to see it as what I said above, “writing my life.” I saw that I didn’t have to have this big overarching narrative. I wasn’t writing the story of my life. I was writing stories from my life.

I usually choose one of the essays to become the title piece of the book. American English, Italian Chocolate, my first book, is named for an essay about pride in regional language and regional foods in the US and Italy. The Enjoy Agenda, my second book, is named for an essay about getting older, the perils of international travel, and being able to manage your life to maximize pleasure and avoid pain. I think that’s called hedonism. That’s my agenda.

Get Thee to a Bakery, my new book, is named after an essay about cleaning the gutters on my house in the fall, the delightful season of pumpkin pie and my reflections on falling from a ladder into a bed of dying hastas, where I pictured myself like the drowned Ophelia in that Pre-Raphaelite painting. As long as I was full of pumpkin pie, that would be an okay way to go. Again, maximize pleasure, take rational steps to minimize risk and pain. I’d say that’s Get Thee to a Bakery. I guess it’s all three books.

I’m working on a fourth collection of essays right now that focuses more on growing up years. I remember the first time I heard Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” going to see “Bonnie and Clyde” the weekend Martin Luther King was assassinated, how we worked through our agonizing differences on the Vietnam war in our family. A lot of that formative stuff. We’ll see where that goes.

DL: Could you talk about your writing process? Did it differ from the way you’ve written your other works? Did the pandemic affect the writing or launch?

RB: I’m a morning person. I taught online for 20 years and formed the habit of writing a few hours every day with and for my students, usually beginning at about 5:00 a.m. In retirement, you’d think I’d be sleeping in. In fact, I get up even earlier, usually sitting down to my laptop and coffee around 4:00 a.m. There’s nothing much happening at night that interests me. I go to bed thinking about what I’m writing and I wake up thinking about it.

I’m also a quota guy. I aim for 750-1000 words a day. When you hit that number by 7:00 a.m., you have the rest of the day to ruminate, to open your imagination, to pay attention to your receptors and be alert to new ideas. If my wife and I are walking and I think of something related to the writing, I don’t trust myself to remember it. I take out my phone and capture it with the Notes app in a sentence or two. I write first drafts on Google Docs. Sometimes I sit in the grocery store parking lot. I’m there to buy a cauliflower. But the car is a quiet place. I take out my phone, open Google Docs, and read what I wrote that morning, editing by voice or by thumb. I have a little portable keyboard I can open and use with my iPhone. When we’re in Italy I spend quite a lot of time waiting for my wife. She’s in a shop, I’m in a coffee bar. I take out my two devices, keyboard and phone, and write up what we had to eat at that restaurant, Il Passatore, the night before. With color photos. I can blog while having a glass of wine in a bar in Italy. That’s the indescribable beauty and utility of modern technology.

The pandemic? It’s been good for my writing. Isolation and I get along pretty well.

DL: What was the best part of/most fun about writing this book?

RB: The best part is the capture—of memories old and new. I always wonder why some memories are so vivid, from my childhood, I mean. I want to capture some of those moments. If I remember them, they must mean something. And I want to capture funny or interesting stuff that happened yesterday or last week.

The fun part is making connections. I take my son to have his wisdom teeth out and I hear on the radio that Encyclopedia Britannica will cease publication. Two unrelated subjects that I bring together in an essay. We have a power outage in the middle of summer, I write about that—two days sleeping in the basement, but also a brief history of air conditioning technology. In The Enjoy Agenda, there’s an essay about having a toothache in Italy. I tell that story. But I also did some research for the essay, stumbled onto what art historians say about smiling and teeth and portraiture conventions in Renaissance painting (only peasants and dead people show their teeth). I also looked at the history of dentistry (the first of important book was written, in Latin, by a Venetian in the 16^thcentury), at gruesome primitive dental practices in the 18^th and 19^th century, at-home remedies for dealing with toothache. This discovery process is fun. And making connections involves an act of imagination that’s always kind of a rush.

The capture is the thing, putting memories in context—sometimes, as in the case of toothache, in a really broad context. I like thinking that my grandkids might read one or more of my books one day, that they might laugh and wonder at what happened to me and at what I thought about, that they might appreciate the sound of my voice. I guess I think that about readers in general.

DL: What was the most challenging part of writing this book?

RB: Any book, it’s a long-term project. In that week with a detached retina, I assembled a manuscript. Then came rewriting, revising, adding and subtracting content, moving stuff around. Five months later I had something that felt like a book. The work doesn’t do itself. You have to stay with it, move it along. That’s a challenge. I had the good fortune of writing a doctoral dissertation in the 80’s. The experience was awful, the work was of no great value, but I learned how to manage a long-term project and see it through to completion. It made doctoral suffering worth it. I’ve written a lot since that doctorate, a bunch of textbooks and now these books, which have been really fun.

DL: How can readers purchase it or get a signed copy?

RB: It doesn’t look like I will have a face-to-face launch or any signing events for this book. I’m hoping to do a few Zoom launches. I’ll announce those on Facebook and Twitter. If a reader wanted a sample of my writing, I’ve recorded a bunch of podcasts and posted them on my website, and I’m working on screencasts now, too. They’re under 5 minutes in length. You can hear how my voice sounds and sample the content. And of course, my blog gives readers a sample of my work. “The Summer of 1964,” which I posted on February 15, will probably be an essay in my fourth collection.

To purchase Get Thee to a Bakery, I recommend your local bookstore. We need those stores. I mean communities need those stores. And I’d be happy to get a signed copy to anyone interested in that. Contact me by email—baileyrv@gmail.com.

DL: Thank you for joining us this week, Rick. Much luck with the book!

Sestina: The Cleaners

Back when I was writing poetry more or less full-time, I loved to experiment with poetic form, both organic and received. As a boy I once wanted to be an architect (until I realized you had to learn, you know, math). I’ve never lost that interest in structure.

As visual artists are fascinated by the structural intricacies of, say, fractals, I’ve long been fascinated by the ways in which language works; how letters represent sounds and join to form words, then larger syntactic elements, then even larger structural constituents until lines, sentences, paragraphs, stanzas, and so on create the massive architectural units of a poem and a novel.

As a poet, I found great joy in writing in (and ringing changes on) forms as disparate as sonnets and their minimalist siblings, word sonnets, and their maximalist cousins, sonnet crowns; gloses; ghazals; villanelles; pantuns; and so on.

One of the forms I found especially compelling was the sestina, a form dating from the twelfth century. It’s a poem of six stanzas of six lines each, followed by a three-line envoi. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotating in a set pattern. The envoi contains the six line-ending words, often in a proscribed order.

There have been some great sestinas written by poems such as Elizabeth Bishop, W.H. Auden, and Seamus Heaney, to name just three.

Besides its elegant complexity, one of the things that fascinated me about the sestina was the almost hypnotic repetition of line-ending words that gave the poem a sense of obsession, even of being trapped.

When I sat down to write my own sestina, I drew on my experience as the manager of a movie theatre in Birmingham, Michigan, many years ago. (The theatre was the Bloomfield, if anybody remembers that; it has sadly morphed into a parking garage underneath a gym.)

Every night, a young married couple came in to clean the place after each day’s showings. It was not a pleasant job, and the young man–Ricky, his name was–seemed perpetually angry; his wife was mostly silent.

I decided to write a sestina in the form of a dramatic monologue spoken by the wife. It seemed to me that she was trapped in a bad marriage with a volatile man who didn’t appreciate her, and the sestina with its restricted order of repetition of words would be a good correspondence.

As I started to work with the poem, I quickly saw that the woman was trapped in more than just a bad marriage. I tried to reflect that.

I was chuffed that this poem won the Grand Prize for poetry in a literary contest put on by the Metro Times in 2005. It also appeared in my chapbook, New Year’s Tangerine (Pudding House Press, 2007).

Sestina: The Cleaners

Every midnight when we leave our small room
in the boarding house basement where we stay
beside the lumberyard in Hazel Park
we drive to Birmingham, to finish
the night inside an empty theatre. We clean.
We pick up what the rich leave behind.

Stuffing the car’s back seat, behind
Rickie and me, our supplies leave no room
for a passenger. Mops, gallons of Mr. Clean,
Windex, boxes of urinal cakes that stay
in my nose all night, polish for the brass finish
on the front doors — these fill our life. We park

under the marquee, in the “Do Not Park”
zone, while my Rickie leaves me behind
to unload the car alone. When we finish
our work in the morning, every rest room
will be spotless, the long lobby will stay
as we leave it, sweet smelling and clean

until those who hire others to clean
their own homes come and treat this like a park
where they can throw trash anywhere and it will stay
where it is until Rickie and me follow behind
to pick up after them. There is no room
to even walk in the auditorium after they finish

dumping the tubs of popcorn they never finish
while they lounge at the movies. The greasy floor is clean
when Rickie stops mopping, while in the Ladies Room
on my hands and knees I carefully park
the stiff brush against the toilet that some behind
sat on like a throne and hope my dinner can stay

in my belly, my canned macaroni and cheese will stay
where it is till the tile is scrubbed when I finish.
Now is when I want to scream, now crawl behind
the stall partitions on the floor that is spotlessly clean
and rage against Birmingham and Hazel Park
and curse my life that has so little room,

curse this narrow stinking room that will finish
my dreams, make me stay on my knees and clean
in an endless “Do Not Park” zone, forever left behind.

Indie Monday

This week’s guest: Brenda Hasse

This week on Indie Monday I’m delighted to host Brenda Hasse, a multi-award-winning author and freelance writer. Brenda has written and published award-winning young adult historical romance, pre-teen historical mystery, and adult metaphysical/visionary novels. She is also the author of several picture books for children. Brenda volunteers her time researching and writing scripts for the Fenton Village Players to perform during the Ghost Walk and Historical Cemetery Walk. She resides in Fenton, Michigan, with her husband and cats.

This week, Brenda will talk about her forthcoming release, A Victim of Desperation.

DL: Congratulations on your new book! We’re anxious to hear what it’s about.

BH: Thank you, Don. A Victim Of Desperation is a novel based on a woman’s experience in human trafficking, her perseverance to escape, and her determination to move forward afterward.

DL: What inspired the creation of the book?

BH: I was at a two-day book signing. I sat at my table on the first day and a woman, who was selling her products across the way, walked over to my table and introduced herself. We talked for a few minutes before she returned to her booth. The next day I went to her booth to see what she was selling. We started chatting. Our conversation led from one subject to another, and before long the topic of human trafficking came up. She started telling me about the time she was human trafficked. After revealing her experience, she confessed she had never told anyone else about her experience. Even her children didn’t know about it.

We parted ways that day, but her personal story haunted my mind for months. I was able to make contact with her through Facebook and asked for her permission to write a story based on her experience with the hope of preventing others from falling into the entrapment of human trafficking.

DL: Could you talk about your writing process? Did it differ from the way you’ve written your other works? Did the pandemic affect the writing or launch?

BH: To write this novel, I worked closely with the “victim,” who is known as “Jessica” in the book. She was forthcoming with her experience. Many conversations and emails between us helped to make the story come together. I usually outline my novels because I like to know where I am writing to, but this novel told itself through Jessica, who is a very strong, determined character.

I believe the overall theme is perseverance. The novel differed from the way I normally write because it is based on a true event. I usually write fiction: picture books for children, pre-teen, young adult historical romance, and metaphysical/visionary. With the confinement of the pandemic, I was able to focus on the book to complete it on a timely basis. However, I have delayed the publication with the hope of holding the launch of the book at a bookstore in May.

DL: What was the best part of/most fun about writing this book?

BH: I truly enjoyed working with Jessica. We laughed a lot and, as our topic of conversation would often stray, we found a common ground for many of today’s issues. I am thankful for the day our paths crossed and she allowed me to share her story with everyone. She is an amazing person.

DL: What was the most challenging part of writing this book?

BH: The most challenging part of writing this book was trying to make it as accurate as possible. I want the reader to feel the emotions she experienced and the environment she endured. I’m certain Jessica grew tired of the detailed question I posed. However, I think she enjoyed sharing her story.

DL: How can readers purchase it or get a signed copy?

BH: My books are always in stock at Fenton’s Open Book in Fenton, MI, and R&B Used Books in Grand Blanc, MI. They may also be ordered through any independent bookstore and online (Bookshop.org, Amazon.com). I will be holding a book launch signing at R&B Used Books on Saturday, May 15, 2021, from noon to 3:00 (COVID restrictions apply).

Readers interested in this or other of my works can visit my website: http://www.BrendaHasseBooks.com

DL: Sounds great. Thanks for much for joining us this week, Brenda. Any final thoughts you would like to share?

BH: The first and last chapter of A Victim Of Desperation conveys a technique used by human traffickers today. I hope with the publication of this book, many will recognize the devious scheme and avoid becoming their victim. I have a friend whose son was a Michigan State Police officer, who worked with the FBI, to bust the first two big human trafficking cases in our state. He said the hot spots are Genessee County in Swartz Creek, Davison, and Grand Blanc. He confirmed the technique I described in the first and last chapters.