The last week was a blur of activity: We moved Watchfire to its snug winter slip in Boat Haven Marina and have already gotten caught up with shopping and laundry and the most necessary of our ongoing boat projects.
I had a flurry of marketing appearances, the peak one being my first in-person event, held at the Port Townsend Library in the Carnegie Reading room with its book-filled shelves, wooden tables, and overstuffed chairs. The event was efficiently run and well attended, and my talk and slideshow was kindly received.
At least two attendees were disappointed I didn’t have books on hand to sell and sign, but my promo copies were all used for promotion, and now Honeymoon at Sea can be found at Imprint Bookstore downtown on Water Street and at the bookstore on the second floor of Aldrich’s in uptown. The library also has a copy in stock but it was already checked out, by an unknown library patron, which truly made my day. As a kid raised on weekly trips to public libraries, this was an incredible gift to receive.
Now on to the book reviews.
I am subscribed to Jami Attenberg’s Substack, Craft Talk, and have followed her #1000WordsofSummer almost since its inception, writing good chunks of my new memoir and my current WIP during those two week stretches each summer since 2020. So I pretty much knew what this book was going to be: a lively collection of essays about writing craft, motivation, and inspiration by Jami and other talented and exciting writers. It is all that but it is much more; the book, 1000 Words: A Writer's Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round available for pre-order now, was a revelation.
The pieces written by the other authors are quite excellent, but it is the interplay between those essays and those by Jami herself that make the book such a valuable resource. This is a book for beginning writers, sure, but also for those of us who know all the practical advice (some of us even write that advice!) but who need to hear it from different points of view, using different metaphors and imagery. As with all the best “how-to” writing, it is the way someone writes something tried and true that can make it resonate anew.
I also appreciated the book’s diversity of voices, not just the spectrum of emerging writers to more well-known authors, but people of so many different identities and races that make this book feel so much like the wider artistic community I dream of existing within. I belong to a writers’ group whose members come in a wide variety of skin colors, are gay and straight, married and not, and who range from very religious to atheistic. We not only get along, we love and support each other like family. That caring family of writers is what this book feels like.
This is a book to have on your bookshelf for life, one you will pick up to get that boost for beginning your day’s proposed writing, or to propel your work to new heights during revisions and rewrites. It’s a book chock-full of reminders: of why you have chosen this path in life, how you can live the life you chose in new and brave ways, and why writing—and all art—is important to the world. Yes, community can save us. It will save us. It must.
Speaking of great books on writing, many of you may already know Judy Reeves, author of Writing Alone, Writing Together, A Writer’s Book of Days, Wild Women, Wild Voices and the kits and cards that support and expand upon those works. Judy is also well known to many of us as a writing teacher, and, in her words, a “provocateur.” To learn more about Judy, you can listen to the wonderfully wide-ranging conversation she recently had with Adam Greenfield on The Written Scene Podcast.
The good news for those who don’t yet know Judy Reeves—and for those of us who want to know her even better—is that her new book When Your Heart Says Go: My Year of Traveling Beyond Loss and Loneliness can be pre-ordered now in all the usual places, including here at bookshop.org and comes out October 10th. The memoir, like mine, concerns a woman traveling outside of the US during 1990, a huge transitional year in both our lives, and the similarities don’t end there; her book was also born from lines scribbled in a daily journal and the end result was many years in the making.
I was one of the book’s editors and, during that process, Judy became an even dearer friend, but that personal connection doesn’t keep me from being able to judge the book on its merits. Having edited hundreds of manuscripts, I can always tell when one is extraordinary, with the ability to transport its readers, to open their minds and touch their hearts; When Your Heart Says Go is one of that special breed.
The author was on a year-long round-the-world journey, but she summons her day-to-day life in the iconic and exotic locations with such clear evocative prose that readers will feel swept up and carried along, as I was again during a recent reread. I sipped espresso and shopped for books in Paris, munched freshly baked strudel in Salzburg, shivered in a Leningrad graveyard, and soaked up the sun on Greek beaches.
But for all the book’s beautiful settings, it transcends travelogue to become a writer’s origin story. For along the way, Judy Reeves was in the process of discovering who she’d been, revealed through the prism of who she’d loved—from her parents to her children to her husband Tom, the love of her life, lost to cancer just three short years before this trip. Equally important, she is discovering who she is meant to be going forward, and what a calling fate has in store for her, should she be willing to step up and accept that mission.
When Your Heart Says Go is a trip worth taking—book your tickets today and I wish you bon voyage.
hasta pronto!
Well, WOW!!! Thank you for all your generous words about me and my book, Jennifer. Your review goes beyond the beyond! I am especially honored because I know your sensibilities and standards as a reader, a writer, and an editor. I can't even... when it comes to expressing my gratitude. And I love that our books travel some of the same territory during the same time period. So much gratitude...
Thank you.
Oh and yes! to Jamie Attenberg's upcoming book too. I too am a subscriber to her #1000words...