I participated in my first book festival this past Saturday and it was wonderful! I sold four books, which is four more than I expected. What I also didn’t expect was finding a community of authors that were super supportive and eager to give advice–where to find other events, who to get in touch with about upcoming festivals, etc. I now have a renewed sense of excitement about my book (and its sequel!). I’ll admit, I’m really bad at promoting my work, and I have no budget to work with, but I sat down this past week and made 30 bookmarks (Google Slides, my trusty Canon printer, and my laminator), some notebooks, and an info board. A lot of authors had other things–flowers and banners, candy, trinkets for sale (adorable crochet dragons!!!!), and someone even had coffee, which made my heart super happy. But a lot of authors also had minimal decorations, so my table didn’t look too horribly out of place. I was super nervous going in, but had a really good day.

I guess that’s a type of bravery, too–especially when you’re an introvert like me. I was definitely out of my comfort zone at the beginning, but found myself fitting in very quickly. And for the first time in a while, I was really proud of myself.

Here’s to being brave, making new friends, and getting out of your comfort zone!

It’s been a minute since I’ve blogged, and to be honest, I haven’t been writing much lately, either. Imposter syndrome has taken over and I’m convinced that everything I’ve ever written is junk. Asking myself if I should write some other kind of book, something that would at least try to be more commercially acceptable; there’s still a part of me that wants to see my books on the shelf at the local bookstore. I even created an outline for a story–it was an interesting outline, but not a very riveting story. Meanwhile, I’ve been dealing with a less-than-savory day job, one that could have been wonderful if not for the toxic culture. It took up all my energy and put me into a depressed funk where all my creativity withered.

So–to today. I left that dreadful work environment and have been resting and relaxing for a few weeks (well, trying to, anyway), focusing on a healthier me, working on the sequel to Kandinsky. I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

It’s been an interesting year, during which I have barely written anything. Certainly not anything productive. I’ve focused on my day job and my daughter going to college and all of a sudden the year has gone and we’re staring at the holidays and that time of year when we all sit down and look at our accomplishments and make resolutions to do better.

My epiphany came a few weeks ago. I had started to write more, but was still primarily focused on my career job, as I have been for the last 20-odd years. It’s the easiest thing to do, really–I’m at the office 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, and I’ve always put all my energy into that. I’ve fought and scrapped and clawed my way up into leadership (in case you’re wondering if it’s difficult for a woman to climb the ladder, I can tell you with certainty that it is), and now I’m tired of the fight. So I got an 8-5, which is incredibly freeing, even though it’s an on-site job. I don’t normally work overtime, and the people I work with are very nice (a little quirky, but nice); I’m very blessed to have found this job. But as I always have, I’ve been killing myself to be perfect–anticipate things people will need before they do, be everything to everyone (which reminds me of a Tasha Layton song), and this just will not do anymore. I chose a job like this for a specific reason–so I could have a life again–but I haven’t been living it.

SO–as a result of several annoying conversations at work which I won’t go into, I’ve decided that I want to attack writing as a career instead of a hobby. It’s a very liberating decision. My day job is now my side hustle to make a living (playing the lottery having not paid off yet), and writing is where I put my focus. That being said, I’m ashamed of myself for not blogging or working on the book until now, but we all have to go through our unique processes, right? So I’ll be writing. It may not be good, and it may not lead to anything, but the point is to write more, you need to write more. This is my jumping-off point. I hope you stick around to see what happens next.

When I started writing this, it was about traveling to Tampa in the Spring of 2022. It turned into a book/movie review, which is really only pertinent to my book because this is also one of Rebecca’s favorite books. (We have the best taste in reading material). This all started because I wrote in my Little Women travel journal after making some observations getting through the airport to board my plane…(which is a different blog entry all together)…If you haven’t been exposed to the books or the movie, just know that there are SPOILERS in this entry!

May, 2022 (Traveling to Tampa)

I made a number of observations while I was going through the series of activities to get to the plane, and I wrote about it in a cute little travel journal that I bought at the Louisa May Alcott house–it has an illustration of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy with Marmee, and I love it.

If I haven’t told you yet, Little Women is my favorite book and I own several copies–one that my grandmother gave me when I was little (the illustrations are by Tasha Tudor and they’re gorgeous); I have the Annotated Little Women, which I’ve never read because it’s too heavy to hold up; I have a paperback copy from the Little Women movie (TV Movie with Maya Hawke and Emily Watson); I have the book from the latest Little Women movie (directed by Greta Gerwig), and of course I have the digital copy on my Nook.

I’ve seen almost all the movies–some wonderful, some truly awful (I’m talking to you, BBC). There are a few (1918, for example) that aren’t readily available, and some I couldn’t even stomach the thought of: Little Women in a modern setting (TV Movie, 2018) where their father is away in Afghanistan and Facetime replaces letters. No, thank you. Please, just stop trying to do modern-day Little Women–it just doesn’t work.

Another version that airs during the holidays is on the Hallmark Channel: The March Sisters at Christmas from 2021. This one is about a set of nearly grown women whining at their mother who wants to sell Orchard House because it’s too big to take care of. I think at one point, their mother even says something like, “You didn’t think you were going to live here forever, did you?” It also made Amy look like a snotty b____.(The portrayal of Amy in most of the movies is one of my biggest peeves–I expound on this later).

There are a few versions that I like (in varying degrees). My favorite is the 1994 version with Winona Ryder. I saw this in the movie theatre when it came out and ugly cried through the whole Beth dying part. I still feel like Ryder is the best Jo, but Saoirse Ronan is a very close second. The tone of the movies between 1994 and 2019 are completely different. 1994 is the closest to the book, and I love that about it. 2019 is all about strong women; Jo complains that everyone expects the woman to end up married at the end of the story, and that’s not the story she wants (for her book or her life). While the 2019 film is a little difficult to follow if you haven’t read the book, the energy of this film is different from the 1994 version, and I love both of them.

The other two versions I like are the 1949 version with June Allyson, and the 1978 TV Miniseries. (I know, there are parts about that one that are horrible). The 1949 version has Elizabeth Taylor as Amy (blonde and lovely–she really was such a stunning woman), Margaret O’Brian as Beth, Janet Leigh as Meg, and Peter Lawford as Laurie. This one glosses over the Beth dying thing–one day she’s there, the next day she’s not. All the movies handle Beth’s situation differently: 1994’s Claire Danes as Beth makes me cry every single time. The hardest one to get through was the TV Miniseries version from 2018. It was the most realistic view of her death, and it’s painful all the way to my bones and the ache stays with me for a few hours afterwards.

The 1978 miniseries was cast badly, with Susan Dey as Jo, Meredith Baxter as Meg, Eve Plum as Beth, and Ann Dusenberry as Amy. The biggest offense in this series is casting William Shatner as Professor Bhaer. I bought this version (DVD) and thought it would be a short movie; I started watching it at 8pm and figured I’d be asleep by 9:30. Of course, once I started watching I couldn’t stop, so I sat through the entire thing and cried at the end (in my defense, I was overly tired, and you try not crying at the end when they show that stupid bird.) There may have been some sobbing.

So–onto the portrayal of Amy March. The real “Amy” (Abigail May) of the Alcott family was actually an amazing artist and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and traveled and studied throughout Europe, exhibiting with other artists at a time when it was unusual for women painters to be acknowledged.

I totally think that Amy has been underrepresented in all the movies–even in the ones I liked. In the 1949 movie, she’s a little prissy, and then she’s older all of a sudden (with a thing for Laurie, as we discover as she’s about to leave to go overseas with Aunt March), and disappears until the end when they come back from Europe. She looks beautiful, of course, but then the one line that ruins everything for me is: “In Europe, one feels that dirt is so picturesque”. And Laurie thought that would be someone he would want to spend the rest of his life with? Sorry, no. The rest of the movies generally make her seem like a selfish brat and totally skip over the best parts of the story where we see her growing and maturing.

The other movies aren’t as egregious in their portrayal–1994’s version is pretty good, the mini-series from 2018 isn’t too bad. I do like that she recognizes early on when Laurie is visiting her at Aunt March’s house when Beth is sick. That’s the best part of the book–you see her trying to be a better person. It’s a gradual change, and I don’t think many films give it the time it deserves. I do like the Florence Pugh Amy the best–Gerwig’s Amy understands that there’s an expectation that she marry well to help her family, so you see her motivated by that fact. There’s also a better segue into her relationship with Laurie–you see her as a young girl having a crush on him to a grown woman trying to deal with the fact that she loves him, but he loves Jo. I love how Gerwig handles that.

After all of that, here are my Little Women film rankings from best to worst:

1. 1994, Winona Ryder version
2. 2019, Saiorse Ronan (a VERY close second)
3. 1949, June Allyson
4. 2018, Maya Hawke
5. 1978, Susan Dey (I know, but I can’t help but love the 70’s cheeziness)

Did this post get a little out of hand? Absolutely.

Next time, I’ll try to write the post I was going to write here, before it turned into a book/movie review. Rebecca and I are going to get a cup of hot tea, curl up in the lounge in the Residences, and read Little Women. Again.

“In Love’s Time” is the sixth work of historical fiction by Kate Breslin, and the fifth set during WW1. During the summer of 1918, Captain Marcus Weatherford continues his dangerous work for Britain, hoping to put an end to the war that has dragged on far too long; his latest secret mission to Russia involves the search for the Romanov tsarina and her son and a plot to assassinate Lenin. Although Natalya, the beautiful ballerina that accompanies him, is posing as his fiancé, Weatherford only has eyes for one woman: Clare Danner, a hospital orderly working to care for herself and her young daughter Daisy. Marcus knows that duty and love don’t mix and is torn between the two, especially after Clare witnesses something that convinces her that Marcus is in love with another. Clare herself is waging her own war against the family that wants to take her daughter away from her, and when Marcus is injured, all of their futures are at stake.

I will start with saying that I’ve been a reader of Ms. Breslin’s books since her first novel, “For Such a Time” was published in 2014, and every time she publishes a new one I know I’m going to be reading long into the night to finish it! I read “In Love’s Time” in one day, to the detriment of everything else (so technically, it’s her fault that my laundry isn’t done…), and I may be rereading it this week. The characters and places she creates are so real, I feel like I spent a whole day in WW1 England; I totally lost track of time and place and was completely immersed in the time period and swept up into the drama of their stories. (I may have cried at the end, just a little). I think one of my favorite aspects of her stories is that the characters aren’t overtly religious–you can tell that they are Christians and believers, but it doesn’t come off as preachy; Clare deals with jealousy and hatred and doubt just like I do, and is far from perfect, yet her faith sustains her. It reminds me that it’s okay for me to be perfectly imperfect, and inspires me to keep practicing my faith every day, even in the face of challenges. The reminder that there is a loving Savior that is with us through all our trials is woven through the entire story, and feels like a warm hug. It’s a story that everyone can enjoy and connect with.

This is a must-read, and if you haven’t read her other books, you should! https://katebreslin.com/

Just read an old blog post from the beginning of July, and see that I had the same problem then that I just wrote about in my recent post. So….not a lot has changed. Hmmmmph.

OK, I know we were just talking about writer’s block in the early part of last month. Writer’s block is a real thing, and it stuck with me for a while. It may have had something to do with the fact that all my energy was taken up with job searching (long story) and I had no time for fiction (which is, after all, a hobby for me at the moment).

Then I got a job, and went on vacation for a week to the beach, which is my happy place. (I’d like my happy place to be Paris–today’s Paris, not the Paris that Rebecca gets to see, but I can’t afford a Paris vacation once a year, so the beach it is…). I relaxed and saw new things and experienced something besides the four walls of my house and my creative brain got bigger. NOW my problem is that I have too many ideas, all rolling around in my head and I’m having trouble organizing all of them and getting them down on paper. The possibilities are endless, and I think that’s as much of an issue as not having any ideas at all. Rebecca could be still in World War 2–a time period with which we’re both very familiar–or she could go almost anywhere. My initial idea was to have her at Los Alamos while the US is building the atomic bomb (if you haven’t seen the TV Show Manhattan, I highly recommend it). What an interesting place to set a story! All the secrecy and the science, people living in close quarters, all these strangers coming together to accomplish a common goal…it was such an appealing venue, so full of mystery and glamour…

Until I started doing research on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I can’t even imagine the horror that people experienced. People who were just going about their mornings as usual, people who had no idea what was coming. A lot like September 11th, 2001. I read some eyewitness accounts of the horrors at Hiroshima, and suddenly, writing about it didn’t seem as palatable. Maybe I’m getting more sensitive as I get older, or maybe it’s just that the last three years have been filled with so much chaos, so much ugliness. Back when I first learned about WW2, we had no idea what war was like. Those of us born in the 70’s and 80’s were trained to hide under our desks because of the Cold War, but we didn’t understand –what actual war looked like–when our friends and relatives went to war and didn’t come back. There were a few skirmishes, but we lived largely in blissful ignorance until 9/11.

Recently, of course, we’ve had more than our fair share of ugliness, sadness, anger, frustration. My dad always use to say “The world’s going to hell”, and I used to nod and smile and say, “I think every generation thinks that about their own timeline–it’s really not that bad.” Lately, I’m beginning to think my dad was right. So to combat that, when I next take up my pen (or pick up my laptop) to write something, it’s either going to contain and express all that anger and frustration and ugliness…or it’s going to be something distracting and diverting (Bridgerton without all the sex?)–an escape from all the anger (because we all need those sometimes). OR, it may be both. (Because who says you can’t write two books at the same time?). I’ll keep you posted.

(*Note: I am not going to write another Bridgerton. It’s already been done very masterfully by Julia Quinn, and if you like historical fiction, it’s really fun to read and very well-written. I’m now making my way through the prequels.)