Glimmers in the dark

a 50-state, 50-bookstore tour, a walk, the beginning of the end, and an impending arrival

Before we begin…

What is your relationship with the month of November? How’s this one going for you? If you made a list of the things that have filled your month so far, what would it look like? 

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“The house was very quiet, and the fog—we are in November now—pressed against the windows like an excluded ghost.” ― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”― Emily Dickinson

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash 

Help, I’m drowning in metaphors

I write to you this week with a scattered mind and a happy heart. Actually, my mind is not so much scattered as it is empty. I feel…between things, in waiting mode. Fertile ground waiting for seeds. I am awash in stupid metaphors and unable to see exactly where I’m heading with any of them. 

November usually marks a gauntlet of sorts for me, something I have to get through.  There is the time change. The sudden awareness that the year is almost over. The holidays loom. A general feeling that I am running out of time for writing, for living my life, everything. I would be lying if I said that this November did not come without a dark cold side that I can feel even here in San Diego. The world remains a complicated perilous place. 

Yet this month has also been illuminated by some of those “little daily miracles…matches struck unexpectedly in the dark” as Virginia Woolf once wrote so that years later I could use her words as inspiration for the entire Spark enterprise. 

Here is a list of some of those that shone brightest.

Cynthia Newberry Martin takes me for a walk…and then we had even more fun

I rediscovered the joy of walking and talking books with another writer thanks to Cynthia Newberry Martin who stayed with me while she was in town for one of her 50-state, 50-bookstore events. If you have a chance to go to one of these, do it. And if you are a writer looking for innovative ways to share your books with readers, this is something to know about. 

Instead of long readings or a standard interview or conversation, Cynthia joins forces with a local author and each reads a brief selection from the other’s books before reading a brief selection from their own. After each one, the author tells us why she picked it. Threads of connection that were invisible weave to make something brand new. We in the audience get to witness a conversation between books, not just their authors, a conversation that is lively, leads to unexpected places, and includes us in the audience. Cynthia and her novel The Art of Her Life paired up with Huda Al-Marashi and her memoir, First Comes Marriage, for her 24th event here in San Diego with The Art of Her Life at La Playa Books on November 4th to a capacity crowd that walked out buzzing. She and The Art of Her Life  will close out the year’s events with #26 on November 30 at New York’s Shakespeare & Co. where she will be joined by author Esther Cohen and her book, All of Us: Stories and Poems Along Route 17.

Cynthia is wide open to suggestions for bookstores and authors to partner with in the remaining 24 states she wants to visit before her tour ends. For a list of the states she’s been to so far and more on this project, head over to Cynthia’s Facebook page or her website for more details and her contact info. This is a way to put our support for indie bookstores and authors into action – by spreading the word and helping to make connections. 

The end is nearer, if not exactly near

Screenshot from my Scrivener project under old working title. Total word count: 686,322 most of them long-since trashed

Back in January of 2022, I shared with you what I’ve been using as the opening for my novel-in-progress. This week, much to my surprise, I arrived at the end of the current draft of the book. I believe that two more drafts will get me to something submittable for publication. I’ve been reading it over the past two days. It’s a mess but it’s a good mess. The darlings that must go have revealed themselves and that beginning might just be one of them. The questions that need to be answered are clearer. One of the characters who kept shifting on me has emerged much more clearly that I realized. Most of all, I want to dive back in. I want to stay with this now and that’s a good feeling because it has been a much longer process than I had expected and I have suffered from long, dispiriting periods of doubt. 

I wrote for What to read if…

I closed out October and kicked off November with a guest post over at Elizabeth Held’s

What To Read If

which was not only fun to do but connected me with some brand new readers (hello, hello, welcome!). If you missed it and like to read about strong Irish women, head on over and check out “What to read if…you binged “Bad Sisters.”

Whales, Rome stories: who knows why? 

I’ve been dipping in and out of different books, unable to settle on one. The other night I found myself rereading the opening pages and chapters of Moby Dick in the bath, a kind of celebration of excess. It was fascinating to reread the “Etymology” and “Extracts” that precede the famous opening line, “Call me Ishmael.” They showed his work, his thinking, and his refusal to leave a single gem out of this book. Apparently, no one told Melville he had to kill any darlings but the whale. I’m glad.  

Over the past two weeks, I’ve finished the first two stories in Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection, Racconti Romani (Roman Stories), the Italian version of her most recent book which explores the experience of outsiders at every level of Rome’s society. I am  well into the beginning of The Waiting World by

Andria Williams

– an historical novel that is connected with whales and the sea because it is a precious piece of ambergris that sets the whole story in motion. There is a whale on the cover:

So, two whale books and a slow, halting trip to Rome as I struggle to glean the heart of each of Lahiri’s stories without resorting to the translation. What does all this say about my state of mind or soul this week? Chissà? Who knows? I do know that I’ll be writing about these books in the near-ish future. Maybe we will all find out together. 

I’m always interested in what the books we choose (or the ones that choose us) can tell us about ourselves. Think about the books you picked up this month. What part of you did they feed? What books did you decide NOT to read right now, and why? 

Yes, I will be cooking and no, there will not be pumpkin pie…

Here is the real reason I am having trouble focusing: I am deliriously happy because my son will be coming to visit next week for the holiday along with my niece. I have not seen my kid in the flesh for close to two years. I’ve been walking around with a calm, happy feeling that nothing can destroy – not even the prospect of cooking the Thanksgiving meal. Turkey? Got it. Cranberries? Already in the fridge ready to be made into sauce. Sides? I'm looking hard at a recipe from Eleanor Ford’s Samarkind cookbook for Uighur Seven Spice pumpkin that looks delicious as well as this miso roasted cauliflower courtesy of

emily nunn

. As for dessert, I am reaching for my mother’s recipe – the one that my son and niece have eaten at her table to celebrate homecomings, birthdays, anniversaries or any other occasion made special by the presence of others we love: Charlotte Russe aka chocolate mousse in a bed of lady fingers, sopping with whipped cream. I’ve only made it once before all by myself and it tasted far better than it looked but, hey, I’m on a roll. What’s the worst that could happen? 

To the left: my mother’s handwritten recipe for Charlotte Russe. To the right: the binder that overflows with recipes like that one or just pulled from the universe and stuck in there. No one said I was organized.

And now you know why, next week, Spark will go dark

In order to savor every minute with my family, I will be taking next week off. Spark will return on December 2nd for the first of our last three issues of the year before taking off for the holidays. Start going through your lists of books read this year so you can share your top three. Come December, we will make our annual list of the top books read by all of us in 2023.

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Ciao for now! 

Gratefully yours,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…if only

If not for the leash, Lily would go to sea I think…

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”: 

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone  -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed. 

I can’t wait to see what you send!

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