Memoirous

Nothing let’s people know you are of another generation when you tell them you’ve never been to a Trader Joes. One) in Chicago there wasn’t a Trader Joes in my neighborhood. I’m sure one is coming as Uptown is almost completely gentrified, but in my day, Aldis was more in the mode. We had 3 or 4 thrift stores. Two) What’s the big deal? It’s a grocery store, right? But, I might have missed the memo. It’s got stuff the other stores haven’t. Their own brand of exciting concoctions. Everything but the bagel chips, garlicky naan bread, ice cream novelties, frozen dumplings. My daughter and young Iranian friend simply swooned over the very idea. Every day they checked the progress at Facebook to see when the new store would open. Finally, opening day and I heard from so many people: my daughter, customers at the store where I work: It’s a madhouse! The parking lot is chaos! People emptying the store shelves! I waited on customers at Playmakers, trying on dozens of pairs of shoes who fina...

New work out now-Zen Garden, go to Rock and a Hard Place https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9CRNTPM I started with a true incident: the basement at the townhouse I first lived in in Okemos always smelled like weed. I suspected the neighbors of hotboxing. My laundry left to dry down there ended up smelling like skunk. The odor wafted up to my second-floor room. It was the kind of smell that was pervasive. The lease contract stipulated no smoking allowed. Anyway, that’s where the idea started and then went from there. Remnants of the pandemic remain in my psyche and that also makes an appearance—just a mention, because the family of the main grandmother character is all discombobulated and off balance. They need to get centered and grandma comes to help. In more ways than one.. Excitement and humor ensues. Check it out! Rock and a Hard Place https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9CRNTPM

I like to multi-task—such as watch TV and cross-stitch at the same time. The kind of cross-stitch I engage in is counted—not design stamped on cloth. I have a pattern that I transcribe in my mind and, using the symbols and the numbered DMC color thread, I cross-stitch on the fabric. Most people look at it and think it looks like algebra. Believe me: I flunked algebra, and it’s not. Anyway, I was looking for something to watch/not watch while I worked on a section (fox running across a moonlit snowy field) and found Cheap Irish Houses. The title had me at cheap. It was at Prime video. The show is about a highly exuberant realtor who shows clients old bungalows, cottages, farm houses in the Irish countryside or in villages. Yes, they are charming and have potential, and, on a historic level scratch our curiosity of how it might have been to live in one of these old buildings back in the day—say before electricity and indoor plumbing. Each episode focused on one couple or prospectiv...

  My short story, Zen Garden is out now at Rock and a Hard Place https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9CRNTPM The cover art is a bit like a corny horror mag—not sure why because the magazine mission statement is Rock and a Hard Place Press is an independent publisher of literary noir, crime and dark fiction.   It focuses on characters that are struggling in a world in which they may feel powerless.   We’re interested in narratives about poverty, mental and physical health challengers, individuals challenged by expectations, racism, bias, prejudice, coming to terms with their own sexual or gender identities, cultural challenges — all of the above, and what these characters do next.   The flagship publication of Rock and a Hard Place Press is Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, a literary noir journal that serves as “A Chronicle of Bad Decisions and Desperate People.” I submitted to Stone’s Throw, a subpublication. The story is a feel good Zen piece (peace). Not sure if ...

Lately I’ve been revisiting Song of Myself by the poet Walt Whitman. On one hand it’s hard to believe he composed this in the 1890s (circa) and on the other the language and spellings are archaic. Then there is the very idea: loafing, a lazy summer day spent inspecting a blade of grass, smelling fresh-mown hay, no to-do list or worry about the upcoming presidential election, no social media or 24-hour news cycle. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. The summer is half over, which sends me into a frenzy. I need to grill out, go to a concert in the park, hop on my bike, camp out, eat more ice cream!!! Whitman could care less about any of this. Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books...

I was a bit hesitant to publicize this recent short story publication— Because the more I thought about it, the more self-conscious I became that it blurred the boundary between real life and fiction. I know, I know we all have these thoughts, especially as creatives. At the same time readers are also sleuthing out connections between a writer and what might possibly be autobiography—or even not that sophisticated, they simply assume that someone is writing nonfiction when it is clearly fiction. For the writer: I remember at a Festival of Faith and Writing listening to Carlos Eire talk about how his book Waiting for Snow in Havana came into being. It was written as fiction, maybe in his mind a pretext to loosen him up and allow him to get words down on paper. Anyway, his editor asked how much of this is true, your life, and he answered all of it. They marketed it as memoir. At that same conference I also sat in on a talk about the novel Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski, who shared ...

We’re all a bit discombobulated after this weekend’s events. I have strong political beliefs, yet was shaken after the news of an attempted assassination upon President Trump. The subsequent analysis and reporting by the media reminded me of when my husband and I walked down the street for President Obama’s birthday celebration taking place at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. The place was crawling with security. Even more than a rural area, the crowded urban corner where the event was taking place was full of building, most towering over the ballroom. I saw positioned on all of them security detail. Law enforcement kept a perimeter. Obama’s helicopter landed at the lakefront and he was motored to the event. We saw the black car go by and maybe a glimpse of him going into the Aragon. Then went home. At this time I was working at our homeless shelter. I asked some of the residents if they caught the hoopla happening almost at our doorstep. They all answered that they stayed away th...

 Now is your best chance to find my MIDDLE GRADE novel, Beyond Paradise, available for HALF OFF at @Smashwords as part of their Annual Summer Sale! Find my book and many more at  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/chicagojane      all month!  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. From one reviewer Ann L. Conr...

Now is your best chance to find my book, 365 Affirmations for the Writer, available for HALF OFF at @Smashwords as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale! Find my book and many more at  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/chicagojane all month!  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. What reviewers are saying: Mary Jo G. 5 Stars If you are a writer in need of a little inspiration, this book is for you. The quotes are great, but I especially liked the bonus material which provided concrete exercises to spark my creativity. serafina 5 Stars Totally feeling inspired to wri...

Now is your best chance to find my book, Freeze Frame: How To Write Flash Memoir, available HALF OFF at @Smashwords as part of their Annual Summer! Find my book and many more at  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/chicagojane     all month!  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. What reviewers are saying: Mary Ellen Gambutti 5.0 stars Excellent# I have read this book twice, and highlighted extensively. As a new memoir writer who works in slice of life and brief moments, I find her approach helpful. Highly recommend to all writers of memoir. Enjoyable read! Karen Douglass 5.0 stars Free to Write Short Just recommended this book to my memoir-writing friends. She has freed me from the shackles of narrative and chronology.

Now is your best chance to find my book, Flash Memoir: Writing Prompts to Get You Flashing, available for HALF OFF at @Smashwords as part of their Annual Summer Sale! Find my book and many more at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/chicagojane   all month!  Flash Memoir: Writing Prompts to Get You Flashing We begin with a sudden memory, follow it to see where it leads. Yet so many of us tend to ignore these flashes. We think later yet later on we might have forgotten or lost the relevance of the moment, the urgency that led us there. I recommend a process I call write right now. In the amount of time it takes you to brush your teeth, you can jot down the memory and an outline which can be filled in later. 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. What reviewers are saying: StalkyReader 5.0 Stars While Jane Hertenstein’s book Flash Memoir is ostensibl...

It’s all about perspective I do this a lot. When running or biking and hitting a wall, I’ll often imagine that if only I was going west to east instead or, if doing a loop, counter instead of clockwise. It’s a case of the grass is greener on the other side. Many of us go through life thinking like this, and I’m also guilty. So yesterday I finally took myself up on the assumption that if I ran my route in the other direction it would be mostly downhill. Boy, was I wrong! There’s a new track through the woods being developed near me. It starts behind some apartments and winds through the woods, up and down hill. I like this kind of terrain because it breaks things up; flat can be very boring. Ups and downs gets the legs moving and forces me to regulate breathing. The downhill acts as a kind of recovery that, again, pumps me up. Keep in mind: I’m slow and old. Instead of turning left and heading down a hill to access the path behind the apartments, I went right, across the busy ...