Year-end Roundup, Stolen from my "other" blog. Hey, sue me.

From my "Other" blog. http://gpolisner.blogspot.com/2013/12/year-end-round-up-plus-sorry-ive-been.html:

Kissing goodbye another year.

I know, I know, I've been MIA from this blog.

The loudest complainer? My mother.

Okay, fine. The only complainer. But still. Nice to know someone is reading.

Something happened to me around September of this year: I ran out of words. Okay, fine. Not exactly ran out, but they weren't coming, here, there anywhere, and I wasn't about to force them.

Sure, I've written some, and done writing-related stuff (first and second pass pages for THE SUMMER OF LETTING GO were in there, I think, and I'm muddling through a new manuscript, still). But the words felt stuck. They still do.

I blame the confluence of a few things for taking my words away, both physically and emotionally:

1. My oldest son leaving for college;

2. my younger son having escalating heart issues which have gratefully been resolved (thank you Dr. Levchuch, Dr. Hoch and St. Francis Heart Hospital);

3. my editor rejecting not one but two manuscripts (I'm not gonna lie, sometimes the No's do get hard) and,

4. first and foremost, this:

This is Charlie. He's a jackapoo. And a handful.

We got that for my younger son at eight weeks. See #1 and #2 above.

At any rate, I've felt totally bereft of both time and words, or at least good, descriptive, evocative words that are worth sharing, and I figured no one here would really miss me.

That's my dad, sister and mom with me a few nights
ago. My cheeks are pink from martini. Oh well.

Alas, my mother does, and to tell you the truth, that's enough for me.

The words still don't feel "here," but I'm going to force them, and in doing so, this is going to end up feeling like one of those rambling Christmas chain letters (sorry, people who send them, you know who you are. . .)

Anyway, with blame (and thanks) to my mom, here's a year-end round up since last I posted:

My older son is doing well up at college. He's a talented musician and, most importantly to me, he's coming out of his shell -- this boy who wouldn't play his music for anyone in the comfort of his own home, let alone get up on stage, is actually playing open mic nights and singing in his quaint little college town.

a favorite shot of Son One.

Here's the thing, though: I don't know how he already got to be a college kid. I know, I know, this is a refrain from mothers everywhere, and until it happens to you, there is simply no way to explain how it feels. How your home both feels remarkably empty, and yet, somehow, almost cruelly, the air and space fill in. We adjust, I guess. But there's a price. Tiny holes in our heart, that never exactly repair. The years we have our children at home are way too fleeting. But then, so are, just, all the years.

Speaking of holes in one's heart, Son Two, as I mentioned, had some heart issues. To be specific, he had a super ventricular tachycardia (SVT) that required an ablation to fix it.

He's amazingly all better now, but scariest few days of my life. Let those be the worst of them. From your lips to blah, blah, blah. . .

Son Two with the dog, the week he came home with us.
Does a picture speak a thousand words? I dunno.

The crazy thing is, my next book -- THE SUMMER OF LETTING GO -- that comes out in March, has a boy with a heart issue in it. Son Two did NOT have a known heart issue when I wrote it. Second time I've written a manuscript where something has come true soon after. Life imitating art or coincidence? Don't know, but I'm not giving my teen characters any more health issues. I'll leave those to someone else.

As for the rest of us? My husband, David, sang a lot this year. He and his friend/guitarist David, performed their first paid gigs as David & David. These were some of the very best nights I had this year:

This right here is the number one thing that keeps me
drawn to him. The guy can sing. Note to marrieds:
pursue the things that bring you joy. Don't stop striving.

And me?

With my friend Annmarie, and the few stragglers of the West Neck Pod we've dubbed the Polar Pod, we swam in the open water through mid-November when the plummeting air and water temps and my son's medical stuff derailed us long enough to lose acclimation. With water temps down in the low thirties, fear we are totally done for the season.

Last year, the coldest I swam was around 37 degrees, this year did 35 degrees, so at least there was that.

Now, I'm back in the pool for the winter, anxiously waiting for spring.

As for writing stuff, as mentioned, am mid-way through a YA manuscript. Trudging is the best word I can find for that.

THE PULL OF GRAVITY movie continues to be both Pie-In-the Skyand in motion. A few things have made the pie seem more reachable, the fork extended, if you will. A week ago, I had lunch in the city with the director. If anyone can make this happen, he will. Crossing my fingers for the New Year.

And, THE SUMMER OF LETTING GO is out in advance copy and getting some really amazing early reader reviews.

It comes out in March. If you're local to Long Island, I'll be doing a launch party and reading here, at Book Revue in Huntington on the evening of March 25th. It's hard to compete with the likes of Cameron Diaz and Snookie (both appearing at Book Revue soon), so, if you're around, I'd love for you to come.

* forgot to add that the audio rights for SUMMER have sold. Will be available from Highbridge Audio in March, too! So excited!

And that's it, Mom. There you have it. What I've been up to since I posted last.

What's that you say? Tell you something you don't already know?

Meh. Make up something new and interesting yourself. Feel free to come post it here. As between the two of us, you are the far better storyteller. My books would be lost without you.

But truly, thanks for reading, and thanks for wanting to read more.

To anyone else who is reading -- to all of you: have a very happy, peaceful, healthy New Year.

I leave you with this link which is, IMHO, this week's imperative reading.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/we-broke-the-internet?src=soc_fcbks

The world is a'changing. Some good, some bad. Never stop using your voice.

See you all in 2014.

- gae

Honor, remembrance, and how time flies. . .

(me, left on the windowsill, my sister, right)
The day my dad returned from
Viet Nam (Mash Unit Chu Lai, '66 -'67)

Yesterday --

two weeks after Hurricane Sandy raged through here flooding, destroying, changing the landscape of New York/New Jersey/Connecticut forever

(not to mention knocking out our power for 11 cold and difficult days)

-- I spent a "normal" day in the city with my parents, my sister and her girlfriend (who is like a sister to me now).

It was an invigorating, special, throwback day to my childhood/teens/twenties.

Two plays (one really stellar one)and a delicious dinner, all the treat of my parents.



The occasion, my sister's 50th birthday.

The last time she was taller than I am . . .

I can read that over and over again, but still, it remains unfathomable.

My sister is fifty, and soon, I will follow.



. . . and, us, horsing around recently
in my father's gardens. . .

Beyond that, my older son is 17, and next year at this time, he will be long gone to college.

My dad with me at my birthday, last July.

My father, ever strong and youthful, turns 75 this March.

To see him, you would not believe it.

But there it is. 75.

It is Veteran's day, a day that always makes me want to honor, yes, all veterans, but especially my dad. But, for a writer, I am, once again, at a loss for truly meaningful words.

Nothing I write here will ever come close to explaining the strong but gentle, capable, loving, generous man he is.

Nothing.

There is no father who ever loved his daughters more, protected them better, was more loyal and true to his family.

We are so lucky that he returned from a year of hell in a MASH unit in Viet Nam to raise us.

He is anti-war.

He is a Veteran for Peace,

and yet it's hard to imagine him without that year that so much changed and shaped him.

Time flies.

Damn, how it flies.

I honor this man in his uniform,
in his hospital scrubs,
in his jumpsuits,
and leather pants,
in his (leather) speedo bathingsuit who taught me how to dive and swim.

This man who came to every single recital, every competition, every play, every honor and celebration that mattered in my life.

This man who stood over the dining room table admiring, as my sister and I made endless arts and crafts.

This man, who put other people's children through college when they could not.

This man who fixed badly crushed and broken bones with hands gentle enough to heal flowers, with the patience and skill that embodied Premum Non Nocere,

this man who has always known there is No Free Lunch, yet always offers one.

This man that can find my sister and me in a crowd,

in a dark room,

in a snowstorm,

in a hurricane,

in distress.

This man, who always kept us safe and warm,

and still does.

My dad is truly the closest person I've ever met to invincible.

And so he will always remain.


- gae

p.s. thank you to all the Veterans who have so bravely served our country. May there be no more wars. . . and only peace and love.

Sunday Shadowing on I-94 - Part 3: No love lost for Nick's Dad?

Colby Sharp & Jen Vincent pretending to fight over my book.

So, here's Sunday #3 in Jen and Colby's series on The Pull of Gravity. You can meet Jen and Colby, and read an introduction to the series, by clicking right here.

During week #1, Jen and Colby discussed Nick's relationship with the Scoot and the general themes of friendship in the story.

During week #2, they talked about Nick and Jaycee's romance.

This week -- oh boy! -- they talk about Nick's Dad.

By far, the Dad is the most controversial character in the book. He's the most obviously flawed -- outwardly and inwardly.

To me, he is also sympathetic. But not all of my readers agree.

For instance, while finding the dad's actions wrong, Colby struggled to relate a little:

"COLBY: If I lost my job as a teacher, I could totally see myself ending up like Nick’s dad. It would be so hard to lose your identity like he did. I’m not sure if I would gain 100 pounds or lose 100 pounds, but it would not be pretty."

 while, we had to, um, delete Jen's cusses:

"JEN: WAIT! I have to clarify something before we go on... (spoiler deleted from here but not from the actual post) . . . Because after that I can only think of him as a really big (use your imagnation). I know people make mistakes but some things are just wrong. I don’t see that as being Nick’s fault..."

And, both are great with me! Really! I love it! That's part of what makes reading so personal. We bring to it our own values, our ideas of what's right and wrong.

We also read things into the text that often aren't there. We make assumptions. We read these assumptions into the story as rote.

And, I love this too: that, as a writer, we don't know what a reader will bring. We take a reader as they come to us, and we must give them room to breathe. But it's an interesting thing to see play out. It makes each reader-writer experience we encounter richer and more unique.

Continued thanks to Jen Vincent at Teach Mentor Texts and Colby Sharp at Sharpread for the tremendous honor of this series.

- gae