Memoirous

That’s generally what we say, shorthand for the Shorty. We refer to him without name almost in the third person. How’s the baby? meaning: Did you get sleep last night? What’s the baby doing? Or, what I’m really asking: Is he being cute or destructive?—his two main modes. Yesterday the baby turned two. Born the end of December, his birthday and Christmas will always compete for prestige, excitement, for gift haul. We want both to win. Anyway, the baby got his first big-boy haircut and it immediately aged him, made him taller, made me reconsider the board book for maybe an iPhone. He looked like he needed a drink rather than a bottle, which is his secret vice. It didn’t help that he was wearing a Henley shirt and jeans like some MSU student down the street when I first saw him after the haircut. I wanted him to stay a baby while also at the same time I wanted to sit down and have a conversation with him, find out what he’s been thinking about these past couple of years. I was tor...

Get started writing in the new year GO TO https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/588463 to get this book for $1.99. Sale ends today! 365 Affirmations for the Writer Writing is a journey. Every time we sit down to begin a piece or write the first chapter or the first line we are venturing into uncharted territory. 365 Affirmations for the Writer is about listening to those who have gone before us and letting them guide us with their insight, their own trials. By reading what others have said, we can survey the path before us, count the cost, and plunge ahead.

  Go to: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/725948   to get this book for FREE The sale period will run December 15, 2022 - January 1, 2023. Flash Memoir: Writing Prompts to Get You Flashing By  Jane Hertenstein We begin with a sudden memory, follow it to see where it leads. Yet so many of us tend to ignore these flashes.Using a process I call write right now, I help the writer to harvest the urgency of sudden memories.The prompts in this book are designed to spur memories, to get you writing. I’ll also direct you to resources, authors to read and study, and places to submit.  Less Suddenly we remember, triggered by a familiar smell, the taste of a cookie, the touch of soft skin. Flash, and we are back in the past. Memories. They are elusive, mysterious, with a mind of their own. If only we could harness them and turn them into memoir. Now you can. In the amount of time it takes to brush your teeth, you can jot down a memory to be later expanded upon or used in se...

GO TO https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/109713 to get this book for $1.99  Beyond Paradise YA novel Louise Keller travels with her missionary family to the Philippines on the eve of Pearl Harbor. At first the country seems like paradise, but soon Louise and her family are captured by the Japanese and forced to live in internment camps.  "How would you like to go to paradise?" asks Louise Keller's father, a Baptist minister who has accepted a position as a missionary on the small island of Panay. Fourteen-year-old Louise, a writer of poetry who chafes at small-town life, is eager for the change. But the new experiences Louise has dreamed of soon turn nightmarish: when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, the war, which had seemed so far away, rapidly threatens their island existence. This unusual first novel is based on true accounts of the imprisonment of American citizens in Japanese detention camps in the Philippines during World War II.

 I got an acceptance in early December from a journal that posts on Facebook called Ancient Paths. I was slated for Christmas Eve, The small prose poem has to do with waiting not just for the arrival or birth of Jesus but about waiting for the arrival home of loved ones. I composed the poem when Grace was in college (or perhaps off somewhere). The sudden appearance of youth, of someone who left lights on, stayed up most of the night, who ate at unregulated hours--a whole shambles to my routine and schedule, my house rules, whatever--and then gone, the place empty of life and now sad. To read the poem go to  Waiting for Christmas by Jane Hertenstein At Christmas every light comes on, in the basement where my daughter home from college retrieves ice cream . . .

 GO TO https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/104973 to get this book for $1.99 Orphan Girl: The Memoir of a Chicago Bag Lady Tens of thousands of homeless people walk the streets, forgotten, yet each with their own story to tell. Marie James, a 69-year-old bag lady, and a frequent guest at an inner-city mission in Chicago, sat with Jane Hertenstein through the summer of 1995 and recorded this shocking and moving story of life filled with sorrow, loss, mental instability, and hope. 

Not necessarily snowbound, more like surrounded. Outside it is still falling and there is about a foot on the ground. I’ve cleared the decks numerous times—and yet within minutes they are coated again. I awake to fondant smooth mounds banked against my Tiny House door. My heater has held up. In fact, I keep it at about 62 and still my feet are warm in wool socks and my L.L. Bean slippers. I could be a cozy advertisement for a cute Vermont cabin—snowbound. Not bounded by the snow—in fact, freed by it. Freed from work, routine, the necessities of life. It is too cold and breezy to do much outside, except shovel. I stay warm moving and lifting the snow, dashing back and forth between the Tiny House and the main house in my slippers, tracking in delicate patterns of snow pasted to the slipper tread. My daughter is tired of me tracking in snow. So am I. My door mat inside the French doors to my place is awash with boots, shoes, and the aforementioned slippers. Awash with unbounded, unbr...

When I arrived home Thursday night from work, I wasn’t sure if I’d go back on Friday. I stayed up and listened up in my loft for the winds to begin, but heard nothing. The next morning I got up and yes there was snow on the deck—about 4 inches—yet I knew that wasn’t the full extent as reports were saying the wind would pick up and temps continue to drop. All I knew was: 1. I had no car and 2. No key for work. It all depended upon a ride from a workmate—so he eventually texted me that he wasn’t going in (he lived much further out). Great! I had the unplanned day to myself and snacks! I might have cleared the deck a couple of times on Friday and made hot soup. Saturday, Christmas Eve day we were supposed to report to work for “last-minute” sales. Supposedly the storm was to be over. But, lo and behold, the decks were FULL of snow. Maybe another 6 inches had fallen during the night. The wind and cold were extreme. It certainly didn’t seem over. I waited for a text from my daughter. Be...

Sitting here in my chair on the precipice of a blizzard or cycle bomb, I’m actually at this moment very cozy. We’re a few days away from Christmas and yesterday I went to the grocery. Surprisingly, the aisles were clear. Earlier my son-in-law had said Meijer’s was crazy, but I shop at Aldis and, though the clerk said they’d been busy, the whole thing was very straight forward and I was in and out. In reality it seems like the forecast of a blizzard is taking the place of the actual weather. I can assure you that all the pre-blizzard food shopping will be eaten up before the thing gets here. Nevertheless, I sit in my Tiny House and await the predicted 45 mph winds and blasts of snow. My only real question is: Will there be time off work or will I have to struggle to get there? --Stay tuned!

 GO TO https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/588463  to get this book for $1.99 365 Affirmations for the Writer Writing is a journey. Every time we sit down to begin a piece or write the first chapter or the first line we are venturing into uncharted territory. 365 Affirmations for the Writer is about listening to those who have gone before us and letting them guide us with their insight, their own trials. By reading what others have said, we can survey the path before us, count the cost, and plunge ahead.

 GO TO https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/588470 to get this book for $1.49 Freeze Frame: How to Write Flash Memoir By  Jane Hertenstein Many of us are looking to write memories—either in the form of literary memoir or simply to record family history. This how-to book looks at memoir in small, bite-size pieces, helping the writer to isolate or freeze-frame a moment and then distill it onto paper.  Less Many of us are looking to write memories—either in the form of literary memoir or simply to record family history. This how-to book looks at memoir in small, bite-size pieces, helping the writer to isolate or freeze-frame a moment and then distill it onto paper. Available ebook formats:  epub   mobi   pdf   rtf   lrf   pdb   txt   html

Go to: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/725948  to get this book for FREE The sale period will run December 15, 2022 - January 1, 2023. Flash Memoir: Writing Prompts to Get You Flashing By  Jane Hertenstein We begin with a sudden memory, follow it to see where it leads. Yet so many of us tend to ignore these flashes.Using a process I call write right now, I help the writer to harvest the urgency of sudden memories.The prompts in this book are designed to spur memories, to get you writing. I’ll also direct you to resources, authors to read and study, and places to submit.  Less Suddenly we remember, triggered by a familiar smell, the taste of a cookie, the touch of soft skin. Flash, and we are back in the past. Memories. They are elusive, mysterious, with a mind of their own. If only we could harness them and turn them into memoir. Now you can. In the amount of time it takes to brush your teeth, you can jot down a memory to be later expanded upon or used in sequence w...

It has occurred to me that many writers cannot help but point out either in the text of their book or in the acknowledgements how the pandemic impacted their work. I hold this thought with also something else I heard/read on a forum: Publishers are not looking for books on the pandemic. Uh, okay. But it was global, everyone on the planet was affected by it in one way or another. How can one not mention it, at least in passing? I’m struck by how people can recall exactly where they were when the lockdowns came. At dinner the other night a couple mentioned their favorite breakfast spot in Traverse City—and how since the lockdown they haven’t been back. They had the date memorized: March 20. I can remember what I was doing when the program I was listening to on the radio was interrupted by a special announcement from the Illinois Governor that all schools, restaurants, etc would shut down. I was in the middle of waxing my floor. A bit of spring house cleaning. Good thing—I wouldn’t be lea...

Also a Poet Ada Calhoun Grove Press, 2022 I’d recently been doing internet research into a quote I love: I’m out on a limb, and it is the arm of God. Frank O’Hara. This quote perfectly expresses how I feel when I begin a bike tour. It’s crazy to think frumpy me on my little bike crossing the country will actually make it. Soooo many things can end such a trip, like getting struck and killed by a car—or killed period by psychopaths, alligators, bears—you see where this road leads, down a hole of NO. It’s why most people don’t go or seek adventure; there are too many things to be afraid of. Out on a limb—check. The hand of God—yes. We are putting ourselves into the hands of destiny, seeing where it leads. Into the hands of a God who loves, who cares, where even I matter. It is an attitude of vulnerability, but also openness. Which describes Frank O’Hara and his attitude toward life. Thus, in my research of the quote, I discovered an article by Ada Calhoun (https://www.nytimes...

Writing is a journey. Every time we sit down to begin a piece or write the first chapter or the first line we are venturing into uncharted territory. We never know how it is going to turn out. Oh, we have a certain idea, like most pioneers or explorers. But, these journeys can take detours; we have to react to circumstances and often go with our gut. 365 Affirmations for theWriter is about listening to those who have gone before us and letting them guide us with their insight, their own trials. They know the terrain, how harsh it can be; they know where we can find water, shade, and rest along the way. By reading what others have said, we can survey the path before us, count the cost, and plunge ahead. My motivation for compiling 365 Affirmationsfor the Writer is to offer light along the way. From day to day, week to week, we are getting further inside our writing, further down the path. The book is 365 days of inspiration—quotes from writers and writing prompts. Here is a what you mi...

Writing is a journey. Every time we sit down to begin a piece or write the first chapter or the first line we are venturing into uncharted territory. We never know how it is going to turn out. Oh, we have a certain idea, like most pioneers or explorers. But, these journeys can take detours; we have to react to circumstances and often go with our gut. 365 Affirmations for the Writer is about listening to those who have gone before us and letting them guide us with their insight, their own trials. They know the terrain, how harsh it can be; they know where we can find water, shade, and rest along the way. By reading what others have said, we can survey the path before us, count the cost, and plunge ahead. My motivation for compiling 365 Affirmations for the Writer is to offer light along the way. From day to day, week to week, we are getting further inside our writing, further down the path. The book is 365 days of inspiration—quotes from writers and writing prompts. Here is a what you m...

Lately I’ve been asking myself: Whatever happened to Chicago Jane? I lived in Chicago from 1982 to 2020. Thirty-eight years! When I first moved there I had to make peace with the piles of litter on the streets, with drunks sleeping (at first I thought they were dead) in doorways or crumpled up on the sidewalk, with all the concrete and pollution-faded facades on buildings. There was very little grass—even in parks. It had been trampled and ground away. Everywhere was gray or dirt brown. At times, even the sky was colorless, clouded over or in some way obscured. I had to get used to living with less light, less sun, less nature. I think that’s why I loved cycling so much—it was a chance to get away and see things outside of the city. Don’t get me wrong: I loved living in a culturally vibrant and diverse place. Chicago is a great place for art of all sorts. Just a bus ride away was landmark museums full of art, science, and all sorts of curiosities. I certainly made use of FREE d...

This time every year I am reminded of James Schuyler's December--where even the most jaded or the atheist is summoned into the sublime, where we stand in awe of the season--and what it means. “December” by James Schuyler Il va neiger dans quelques jours FRANCIS JAMMES The giant Norway spruce from Podunk, its lower branches bound, this morning was reared into place at Rockefeller Center. I thought I saw a cold blue dusty light sough in its boughs the way other years the wind thrashing at the giant ornaments recalled other years and Christmas trees more homey. Each December! I always think I hate “the over-commercialized event” and then bells ring, or tiny light bulbs wink above the entrance to Bonwit Teller or Katherine going on five wants to look at all the empty sample gift-wrapped boxes up Fifth Avenue in swank shops and how can I help falling in love? A calm secret exultation of the spirit that tastes like Sealtest eggnog, made from milk solids, Vanillin, artificial rum flavorin...

Recently on PBS ln American Experience there has aired a two-part series on the taking of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and what became the American Hostage Crisis that lasted 444 days. Pretty much the course of American policy in Iran since then has been stuck. Very little has changed diplomatically. That period of time was the background for my novel Cloud of Witnesses about a boy growing up in rural poverty in southern Ohio. What, you may ask, has the Iranian Revolution got to do with Athens, Ohio. Well, I was a student then at Ohio University and there were many internationals on campus and from there I spun out a story about an unlikely friendship between 2 boys coming to terms with their own feelings of being an outsider. One was an exile within his own family and the other was truly learning that he wouldn’t be able to go back, that home was out of reach. I tend to start first with an idea and then flesh it out with story. Sort of like a philosophical challenge or...

On Sunday, my day off, I did all the necessary stuff: laundry, dishes, etc but I also was outside in the cold bright and early just taking in the sunrise and snow, when I trundled to the shed for Christmas decorations. It’s been a number of years since I put up a tree—just doesn’t seem worth it—but, yet, I continue to hang around me the orbs, glass fangles and dangles, and tape Christmas cards to the walls. I’m overwhelmed by the love each object represents that I want to remember those who have remembered me. Thus, over SEVERAL hours I carefully went through my bin. In Chicago I had a schematic in my head where everything went, now it is new territory and I had no idea where things might go or work best. Several bigger framed pieces had to vacate a hook or nail and my nature shelf sacrificed space, so that in the end I have a cozy Tiny House ready for Christmas—complete with a poinsettia! First, playing with my theme of blues against the far facing wall, I stretched a piece of h...