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Forever Pregnant
When I was teaching 10th grade English in a nouveau riche Long Island suburb, while I was going for a degree in social work and then a three year certificate in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and writing for me in study halls, late at night and Saturdays, I did not grasp the energy expended as I was driven to succeed — intellectually. I have never been driven by the holy dollar, a defense against the feeling that I could not cut it in business, a legacy of watching my father being a failure in most everything he did. Success for me was…
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I’m Looking out my Window and at This moment
When I read recent reviews of Down to a Sunless Sea I feel not a few of them are so skewed that I cannot imagine what is going on in the reviewers’ minds. “Mortise and Tenon” which is essentially about a controlled and repressed young boy now leads a reviewer to say that he may turn out to be a serial killer.One reviewer repeatedly used “anal” and “oral” in a bizarre interpretation of “Herbie” that I felt subliminally she was competing with me as a therapist. A lousy shrink uses those words with a client. If you wish to see a…
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Chit-Chat
I just put up “Query for Down to a Sunless Sea” under Pages. It has served me well, for some reason. Perhaps my credits, after all these years, are substantial. In any case it is working. Rip off the structure for your own purposes. Received a new review at http://j-kaye-book-blog.blogspot.com. Jane’s introduction has been helpful; I detected some time back that when you send out a book for review throw in as much pr material as you can. The reviewers are so jammed with tasks that phrases or mini-paragraphs help them get the Zeistgeist of the book and the review…
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Query Letter for Down to a Sunless Sea
Dear Editor: I am querying you as to a possible review of Down to a Sunless Sea. This short story collection presents a variety of styles, providing a different reading experience — poetic, journalistic, nostalgic, wrlyly humorous and even macabre. “Herbie” was listed in Martha Foley’s The Best American Short Stories of 1974. I was in good company that year — Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, and I.B. Singer, among others. Nine of these stories have been published in the “little” magazines over the years, the most recent in 2007 in France, La Fenetre. The range is wide, yet the…