Printers Row magic 2015!!

The magic started early at this year's Printers Row Lit Fest! Okay, getting up at four in the morning in order to drive to Chicago early enough to unload books and supplies at the Chicago Writers Association tent instead of carting them from the parking lot was ghastly. BUT!!!! What a marvelous day from the get-go! The first adventure started upon arrival, with the discovery that somehow there were no black tablecloths provided to cover the beat-up folding tables that authors set up books and displays on. Gasp!

As we stood there and wondered what to do next, "Havana Lost" author Libby Fischer Hellman looked around us and noticed that the posh "beaux art" Hotel Blake stood literally across the street from the CWA tent. Libby and I have followed each other's literary adventures for years on Facebook and by CWA emails, but had never actually met in person before. She had a splendid "eureka" moment regarding the possibility of renting some tablecloths from the hotel, and enlisted me for the procurement detail. She pitched our plight to the hotel staff at the front desk, and I threw in a "and we'll donate our books to the hotel library too" offer for good measure.

Five minutes later, a stack of elegant white tablecloths arrived to save the day, and she and I and "No Turning Back" author Dan Burns gratefully handed off signed copies of our books. The rest of the day proved to be just as fun. Even the weather was great, sunny and not too hot, and the wind didn't pick up and knock over my large poster until I was nearly ready to leave. (In earlier years I've been known to duct-tape the poster to the tent supports...)

I shared a table for several hours with author Jessica Cage, who writes paranormal fiction featuring werewolves.

You couldn't find two sets of subject matter or writing styles more different, but we reached total accord on the fact we thought the "Dark Shadows" movie remake with Johnny Depp was AWFUL! I sold nearly every copy of "When the Shoe Fits" that  brought along, which is always a nice development. Then, when my four hours were up, I turned my "it's got great 'chi'!" section of the table over to my friend David Berner, who was there with his books "There's a Hamster in the Dashboard" and "Any Road Will Take You There." 

Later on, I had coffee at Printers Row with my friend Ann, and then crossed to Chicago's west side for an annual post-Printers Row dinner with my friend Paula. Both women have been incredibly supportive and encouraging of my writing since I started blogging back in 2007, and I am thankful every day to have good friends who nudge me along to see bigger vistas than I do on my own.

Once more, Printers Row Lit Fest proved to be the most fun I have as an author all year. So glad to have the connection! I'm already planning to be there next year, with one new book...or perhaps two! 

"Tagged" in a BLOG TOUR!!

At this age—let’s just say “over thirty”—you don’t get too many invitations to play a game of “tag.” You remember those! Running across summer lawns and darting around trees and bushes, trying to outrun your buddies to get to the “free” zone before someone caught you and then you were IT. But being invited to join a virtual “blog tour” has been just as much fun for this grown-up author…and didn't even require breaking a sweat! That’s what happened recently, just in time to promote my new book, When the Shoe Fits…Essays of Love, Life and Second Chances. This would be my “best of” collection of essays from my first three books, and includes riffs on turbo-dating, power tools, shoes, motherhood, and the view from the back of a Harley. I got “tagged” for the tour by author Catherine Fitzpatrick, author of Going on Nine, a YA novel that’s a “coming of age” story set in St. Louis in 1956.

While Catherine and I haven’t met YET, the wonderful thing about the world wide web is how you can get to know folks anyway. I’d describe Catherine as a “dame,” in the sense that Lauren Bacall was a “dame”—accomplished, incredibly smart, talented and FUNNY! As a kick-ass journalist, Catherine was in Manhattan to cover New York Fashion Week for Wisconsin’s largest newspaper on September 11, 2001. At first word of the terrorist attacks, she rushed to Ground Zero and filed award-winning eyewitness reports. A front page of the newspaper edition containing one of her 9/11 dispatches is among those memorialized in Washington D.C.’s Newseum. Now she writes fiction, and she and her husband will be exiting the Midwest soon for a new life in Florida.

THANK YOU CATHERINE for inviting me into this tour! 

NOW THE BLOG TOUR AUTHOR QUESTIONS...

“What am I working on”—several things at once! But at this exact moment, I’m under the gun in the next two weeks to create an exhibit catalog for “Resting Places,” a joint art show between moi and artist Erico Ortiz that opens October 4, 2014 at Inspiration Studios in West Allis, Wisconsin near Milwaukee. I’ve developed a minor obsession with taking photographs in small rural cemeteries, and the show will feature twenty-one of my graveyard photos matched up with Erico’s abstract and impressionistic paintings inspired by nature.

After that, I’ll pick up where I left off in writing (1) a YA novel that contains NO vampires, werewolves, mermaids or dystopian societies, (2) a first-in-a-series suspense novel featuring a female prosecuting attorney (go figure!), and (3) a children’s book revolving around a kitten and…oh, I need to keep some things secret!

“How does my work differ from others in its genre?” Well, the genre for all my books up to now would be considered a mashup of slice-of-life essays and memoir. Some are about the happy stuff, others about the heartaches, and all are about what we take away from those things. I can’t remember who he was quoting when I interviewed him many years ago, but Bill Moyers told me that we all look at the world through the lens of our own experience. So while I often say that I write about things that are common experiences—joy, love, motherhood, divorce, reinvention, death, chocolate and shoes—it’s MY cracked lens you’re seeing them through! I've been compared to Erma Bombeck, Ernest Hemingway, and Carrie Bradshaw from "Sex and the City." Go figure! I'm still trying to figure out the Hemingway thing...

But one thing…there are many extremely gifted writers who peel everything back to the bone when they’re writing their memoirs, and lay bare a lot of ugly and painfull stuff. I tend to focus more on the positives, or at least to draw a forgiving screen across some of the worst. I don't want my readers to wince. Though once in a while they may want to grab a hankie...

“Why do I write what I do?” That’s an interesting question! I have often joked that with these essay collections, I was an “accidental author.” My life as a professional writer started when I was about 21 and began writing for the Milwaukee Sentinel daily newspaper as a stringer. Then I worked for the larger Milwaukee Journal on staff for a while, and turned to freelance magazine when I started a family. Then, years later, the horseback riding accident that broke my back and put me in a body cast for a while turned me toward law school and I thought writing was behind me.

Then the writing itch came back a few years later, and I started working on that novel about the female prosecutor. I got about eight chapters written, but then kept getting interrupted by serial family emergencies, some of which were taking me out of town on a regular basis. The novel got set aside, naturally. But some friends dragged/pushed/pulled me into starting my “Running with Stilettos” blog. I found I could sit and write short stuff, and it kept the top of my head from flying off.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the emergencies are behind me and I can once again pick up a project that requires a long-running train of thought!

“How does my writing process work?” Ha ha ha ha…catch as catch can!! When the kids (who are now all grown up and out of the nest) were small, I would write when they were napping. Or,  if I was really cramming for a deadline, I’d get up at four in the morning to finish a project. Waiting for inspiration to strike while an editor somewhere was tapping her foot on the floor was never a luxury I could afford. Now, years later, I still feel like I’m fitting it in around the edges of everything else—work, commute, pets, yard work, connecting with my children. BUT…if something has to come out, sometimes I’ll just drop everything and write notes on anything that’s within reach. Like the back of a manila envelope in the car. Or  the “notes” section of my iPhone. And I get a lot of inspiration from nature, which I get a slow-motion tour of every day while I’m walking Lucky and The Meatball in the woods.

And NOW, to pass the torch to three other accomplished writers who I am privileged to know and recommend! First at bat…
  

Angela Lam Turpin, a self-described “California girl” who spends her days

working in real estate and finance and the hours before dawn writing literary short stories,

paranormal romance, crime thrillers, and effervescent women's fiction better known as chick-lit. Her short stories explore the depths of human emotion from hope to despair, and the heroines in her novels fight the challenges of their lives with pluck and courage.  (The literary apples don’t fall far from the tree, since Angela is one of the most resilient people I know!) She is best known for her wry humor, realistic plots, and engaging characters. Her latest book is The Human Act and Other Stories, a collection of short stories that explore sexual identity, poverty, romantic love, parenthood, eating disorders, infidelity, and family relationships, effortlessly carrying the reader from the inner city to suburbia.
 

Next up,  David W. Berner, a Chicago-area college professor and broadcaster who I first encountered when we were both reading essays to a crowd at The Beauty Bar on
Chicago’s near North side on a Sunday night. David’s first book, "Accidental Lessons," is a memoir drawn from his mid-life decision to spend a challenging year as a public school teacher with kids would could politely be called “at risk” and the profound lessons he drew from it. His most recent book, Any Road Will Take You There: A Journey of Fathers and Sons, is drawn from his 5,000 mile road trip with his teenaged sons as they retrace Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” adventures.  I’ve always been a big fan of time spent in a car with my own children, and the emotional tributaries that reveal themselves when the rubber meets the road.
   

And finally, there’s Holly Sullivan McClure, who I first met in the enchanted environs of St. Simons Island, Georgia several years ago when I attended my first Scribblers Retreat Writers' Conference as a guest speaker. Holly could be the dictionary definition of “eclectic,” inasmuch as she is an author, a story-teller, a literary agent, a writing coach,

and an ordained priest in the Celtic Christian Church! Raised by storytellers, preachers, and bluegrass musicians, she is a child of the Smoky Mountains with a Cherokee mom and a father whose people came from the Scottish Highlands, Holly draws on her heritage for inspiration. In her latest book, The Vessel of Scion, warrior priests

protect an ancient blood line from an enemy determined to eradicate it from the world. Faith and reality collide as final prophecies come to pass, and two children hold the key to whether good or evil will win out.

Now Angela, David and Holly, officially you guys are “IT”!

Printers Row Lit Fest 2013

I'm fond of saying that my one-day-a-year visit to sell books at the Printers Row Lit Fest is the most fun I can have as an author and not get arrested, and this year was no exception.

Photo by Rachel Madorsky

Once again, as I have since 2008, I had booked a slot for a day in the tent provided by the

Illinois Woman's Press Association for their author members.  The Lit Fest tent sales officially run from ten in the morning until six at night, but over the years I've learned that (1) people actually start cruising through looking at books from about eight thirty in the morning onward, and (2) competition can be pretty intense to get one of the tables that line up facing the sidewalks rather than the other tents.

So this year's adventure found me on the road from Wisconsin at a quarter to six in the morning, hoping to beat the rush. I got there so early, I think the "rush" was still home, asleep!  No crowds, no sitting in a long line to unload books at the tent, I was actually the first person at the IWPA tent, period. Even the tablecloths were still sitting there, all folded up, waiting to be spread out.  I took my pick of the tables, and let the morning unfold.

All set up before 8:30!!
 

As a writer, yes, I love to sell books at events like this. But boy, that is just a small part of the fun. There's the people-watching.  And the "dog watching," as occasionally folks strolled by with well-behaved canine companions.  There were a pair of silky, long-haired Dachshunds; and a big yellow lab; and a pair of Cairn terriers.  I even got to pet a beautiful, tiny, perfectly groomed Yorkshire Terrier, who was introduced as the "big brother" to a six-month-old baby in a stroller.

The weather was perfect for a change. It is an annual tradition for me to find myself fleeing from Lit Fest earlier than I'd like as rain starts to pour or tornados threaten the city, wrapping my books in plastic and racing to the car to keep them from getting wet. But there were blue skies the entire time, and no rain anywhere. I stayed nearly two hours longer than usual before I finally packed up and met fellow Wisconsin author Gale Borger for a cup of coffee to keep me awake for the drive home.


With Gale Borger

However, this being my home town of Chicago, "the Windy City," certain weather adjustments had to be made. I'd come equipped with a roll of duct tape...but the wind still proved to be a challenge. Luckily, Art Brauer had brought some bungee cords to keep things in place.

The IWPA tent was set up near a French chanteur softly singing as he strummed his guitar nearby, and my table faced the historic and beautiful Franklin Building on Dearborn Street. It was an altogether charming location!


Above the Franklin Building entrance



What a gorgeous front door!

 

The view down Dearborn Street

And, best of all, was just the chance to talk about writing and life with the folks who slowed and then stopped to visit. Some were published authors, some wanted to be writers, some were just looking for a good book to read or buy for a friend. Many life stories and tales of marriages and career journeys and setbacks and turning points were swapped on this delightful warm summer afternoon. One young man stopped by to thank me for the advice I'd given him a couple of years ago at a "live lit" event we were both reading at, which was to join the Chicago Writers Association. (I then enthusiastically passed that advice on to every young or "new" writer who stopped to chat for the rest of the day.) A gal closer to my age stopped to visit and to tell me that after listening to me chatter about blogging several years ago in a panel discussion about social media put on by the IWPA, she'd started her own blog. Some readers even dropped by just to tell me they'd enjoyed reading the books they bought from me at last year's Lit Fest.

I learned about an art fair in Michigan; was instructed on the value of providing memorable "giveaways" or trinkets at book fairs; and swapped stories of on-line dating with the author of MatchDotBomb, an entire memoir about her experiences in testing the meet-and-greet waters at mid-life after the death of her husband.

With Francine Pappadis Friedman

And wonderfully and fortuitously, I'd been trying to find some reading-based non-profit organization to donate a box of my earlier-edition books to, and discovered that the path from my parked car to the IWPA tent led right past the display for Open Books Ltd., a literacy promotion group based in Chicago. No need to run to the post office and address and mail the box, I went back to the car for the box of books and handed it off in person!

 



 

I'm not quite done with the Lit Fest yet. I got back home so late and exhausted last night that everything I brought with still needs unloading from the car. Books, cards, poster, ribbons, duct tape. (Though I did eat all the M&Ms...) But the memories of this year's Fest are sweet, and cherished, and enervating.  Can't wait until next year!!