First up, novel workshop. I’ve been to these before, but this time there was a new method, moving from traditional Clarion workshop round-robin critique rules to more targeted comments about the marketability of the novels and spiffing up the proposal packages so that they really shone. It rocked. I found the whole experience eye-opening and very useful. And such a treat to read so many really great books.

I took The Heart of the World to this workshop. So well-received. And then mailed to editors, one of whom requested the full manuscript so far. Good stuff.

Next up, a couple of days off, which I mostly spent reading the first round of stories sent in for the second workshop and walking on the beach. Great reading, strenuous walking on that loop down to the beach and around to the inlet near Mo’s, then back up through the neighborhood via the Hill of Hell. Sunshine even graced us some.

And then the anthology workshop with Dean and Denise Little. This one, too, went as usual above and beyond my expectations as far as learning and networking. I wrote my first ever noir for the overnight short story at this workshop. What a blast! And I got to read and learn from the excellent overnight batch of stories and all of Denise’s and Dean’s comments.

Both my first and second story are out to markets.

Add to all this mix a shopping trip to North by Northwest Books and my first trip to Mo’s (no chowder for me unfortunately because of the glutens, but it smelled heavenly; and Mo’s surprised me with a bang-up bowl of chili) and lots of time with so many other professional writers and editors, and you have a recipe for amazingness.

So. Reading back over what I’ve just written, it strikes me that there is no real way to describe what I get out of these workshops and what it’s like to experience them. Because I’ve written about the logistics and mechanics, and that doesn’t include the way it feels to be among people who write professionally, who love it, who love story, who love learning. Or how it feels to completely immerse myself in writing and writing culture for at least a week. Or how it feels to bump up my craft and business knowledge in a way that fuels my work once I return home. You just have to have been there.

I’m betting you have a similar experience that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t been there. Feel free to substitute words and phrases.

I take “vacation time” from work to do all this, usually a couple of times a year. Everyone, including me, knows that it’s not a real vacation. Not in a million years. I work my butt off. I get very little rest. It doesn’t matter, though. What does matter? Doing what I love. That feeds me in a different way than sunning on the beach or curling up in front a peat fire on a rainy Irish night. Without all those different kinds of nourishment, I feel like a starving woman.

Do what you love. Find a way. That’s my prescription.

Oh, I know — those aren’t the only choices. But they’re the ones I’ve adopted. That said, here’s my short list of things to be thankful for this holiday season, in no particular order.

Family and friends. There are so many wonderful people in my life who I feel blessed to know. There’s nothing as precious as time spent with someone you love. In person is best. Phone or virtual is good, too. I have so many friends hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Writing time. Four glorious days off for Thanksgiving weekend. 6,500 glorious words. Over the 300 page mark on the book and into the last 100 page light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel sprint. The coolest thing by far is figuring everything out at the same time my characters do.

Dance. Four glorious days off also means three mornings spent at the Nia studio — one with a mix of music honoring one of the founders of Nia, Carlos Rosas, and two instances of Sting’s Brand New Day, which choreography and music makes my whole self sing. Through thick and thin, during times when I felt comfortable and sometimes worried in my own skin, Nia has nourished me, body and soul.

Food, Glorious Food! ‘Tis the season to be baking, fa la la la, la la la la. Fig cookies, banana bread with chocolate chips and crystallized ginger, and sometime this coming week: gingerbread. I love the feel of dough in my hands, the warm, spicy, sweet smells wafting from the oven to fill the whole house, the dance of flavors on the tongue. Many thanks to Gluten Free Girl for a website of glorious gluten free recipes, ripe for the making.

Story. For great books and movies and stories spoken from the mouths of friends. This weekend, I’ve been New Moon-ed, which I liked just fine, and the company was awesome, too. Really love spending time in the Bella-and-Edward ‘verse. I’ve also been reminded of my great love of all things Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Monk, NCIS, and of course Sons of Anarchy. On deck: the honkin’ huge novel on my coffee table, just itching to be opened and read. Could this book be by Stephen King? Why, yes, Virginia. It is.

Song. I had the good luck (and the determination) to see U2 this year after many years of having missed them when they came to town. Definitely worth the wait. A giant shot in the arm full of love and hope and general shiny goodness. Tomorrow night, I have the privilege of going with a very good friend on a birthday adventure to include Jackson Browne. Doctor, my eyes will be full of Jackson Browne-ness and my ears will be full of lovely tunes.

Sunset Walks. Sunset walks on the block with the Doggie Ranger. Evening breeze rustling the leaves of the oaks, ashes, sycamores, holly, palms, golden raintrees, sweetgums, and magnolias. Crows gliding through the air, calling out to the world. And the way everything must smell really interesting, what with all the times we simply MUST STOP to smell the (fill in the blank).

Love. Needs no description.

Also:
Tea
Hot Chocolate
Christmas fairy lights
Flickering candlelight
Cider
A fuzzy scarf
and
Muppet Bohemian Rhapsody

Mama!

I offer you this bit of warmth on a cold, rainy day.

Sliante!

Muse opened the show around 7:30 and played for 45 minutes. I hadn’t heard their stuff before and I felt pleasantly surprised by how much I liked them. Also, would you please lower the decibels? If the sound is so loud that it’s muddy, it’s not doing you any favors. kthanks, now I can go buy your tunes.

Shortly after 9:00, strains of Bowie’s “Space Oddity” filled the stadium and U2 took the stage for a 2 hour and 20 minute wild ride. The sound? Excellent, even in Section 508 (one section shy of nosebleed). The sight? Amazing. Their 360 “claw” stage allowed everyone have great seats, even the folks in back of the stage, and they played to everyone, roaming moving bridges and a second circular strip of stage placed out in the middle of the crowd.

I could talk about the set list — and I’ll post it below for the interested — but I want to try to talk about something I’ve had a hard time explaining to people who’ve never seen U2 live. There is a difference between experiencing a song on CD and experiencing one live with lots of bands. With U2, that difference is vast.

I wrote somewhere else about the vibe of a U2 show that makes me want to dance dance dance and that it has nothing to do with Bono’s charisma, or that Bono’s charisma doesn’t affect that dancing vibe. That’s actually not true. The guy has enormous charisma, and it’s very effective. He also runs his energy like a priest.

When I look at him at a live show, I see that his column of roots/energy is both extremely concentrated and three times Bono-size. He’s blasting it through at light-speed. With his voice, yes, and also with the rest of him. That sort of thing is probably true of all sorts of other front men or other musicians. What captivates me about what Bono does in particular is that he channels this energy with and through spirit, love, and hope, and the way energy that connects with those qualities in the audience. Edge, Adam, and Larry are all doing this, too, in a way that weaves seamlessly with Bono’s effort. Great amounts of energy, moved in the spirit of expansion and an honoring of our common humanity. Last night was that, complete with the raising of a stadium-sized blast to lift up Aung San Suu Kyi.

(By which mention, if you assumed that there were politics discussed at the show, there were. It’s U2.)

I’ve been to plenty of live shows and have never felt anything quite like what they do. I love their songs, sure. *And* this feeling of their live shows is what made me really fall in love. It’s a religious experience. It’s church, when church is both immanent and transcendent.

I spent nearly the entire concert dancing with the vibe and the music. I laughed. I cried. (Yeah, I’m like that.)

If that’s your sort of thing, give some thought to catching them live.

Set List:

Breathe
Get on Your Boots
Magnificent
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day/Here Comes the Sun
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For/Stand By Me
Stuck In A Moment
No Line on the Horizon
Elevation
Your Blue Room
Until The End of the World
The Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight (as a house mix)
Sunday Bloody Sunday
MLK
Walk On
One
Amazing Grace/Where The Streets Have No Name
Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

Special thanks goes out to the friends with whom I attended the show. Y’all rock.

Special where-are-the-toothpicks-to-hold-open-my-eyelids thanks goes to our seemingly brilliant transportation plan. We took the train to the show. Couldn’t have been better. On the other hand, a thousand other people had that same idea and the lines for the train after the concert were just plain unbearable. We ended up walking a mile to the next train stop and waiting for half an hour for a train with room for more people.

Out of the arena: 11:45 PM. Home: 2 AM. Bed: 2:45 AM. Up: Once at 4:30 and again for good at 6:30 AM.

I’m exhausted and it was worth every cup of tea I’m having to drink today.

A few days ago, my BFF and I drove to Austin to attend Starr’s memorial. Such a different animal than the sorts of memorials and funerals I’ve attended before. There was genuine mourning, sure. And there was also much celebration of Starr’s life. Who she was, the lessons she lived and taught so well by example to all of us, distilled in the messages of her music and in the hearts of everyone present.

It had been a long, long time — in some cases, years — since I’d seen some of the people I reconnected with there. Every hug, every moment spent standing in front of the fire with our arms around each other brought home that this was the way to honor Starr. With love. With community. Always connected, no matter how far we may drift from each other in these individual lives we’re living.

I exchanged many a sad glance. I laughed. I sang out loud when her band, The Lovers, played their set after many, many stories told by family and friends. And I cried, though not as much as I had cried already. It felt important to remember everything and everyone. What is remembered lives on in us. Or, for short, what is remembered lives.

In the religion of my birth, remembering is important. Remembering to keep the holy days, lighting a Yarzheit candle on the anniversary of a loved one’s passing, holding close the essence of thoughts and deeds and love given and received. In this way is memory made to be a blessing to all who live.

All of this remembering — or, better yet — re-membering, as if the whole world and everyone in it were shattered and longed to be whole once more — is not mere rote. It would be nothing without feeling, without emotion.

Over the lunch hour today, I finished reading Melissa Marr’s Fragile Eternity. Warning: Vague spoiler alert. I felt more captivated by the last third of the book than any of its other parts, which is not to say those weren’t good but that the last third touched me in special way because of an unexpected weaving of emotion into the steady, unchanging threads of order. End warning.

What does it mean to bring emotion into the warp and weft of order? How does a person who prides him- or herself on equanimity deal with the ebb and flow of the heart? What is the right balance between logic and feeling? How does it shift and change? Slowly, steadily? So quickly that we give ourselves whiplash? Somewhere in between?

There is a time for more and for less, a time for sharp and bright and dark and explosive. There’s a place for gentleness, for gratitude. There’s magic in all of it — the kind of awe and wonder that goes along with being present, right now, in all of our humanity — however it feels.

The point is to feel.

I am especially grateful for the movie having been set in Austin and for glimpses of places I love, like Lucy in Disguise. I used to spend tons of time in in Austin but have fallen off driving so much to be there. This has been good for my home life and for my writing, since if my butt is not in the chair and my fingers aren’t on the keyboard, no writing happens. Regardless, I miss my friends there. And last night, virtually in Austin, I felt a lot of communion with them.

A good number of us will be together later this week to honor one of us who passed away on Friday after a battle with cancer. Starr was one of those people who brighten the lives of everyone they meet. She not only pursued her dreams, she made them happen.

She sang beautifully with her band, The Lovers. She started a headdress company so that others could wear her fantastic creations. I don’t think, in the entire time I knew her, that I ever saw her without something fabulous in her hair. She also helped found an arts nonprofit. Art was so important to her. Her creativity was a living, breathing force of nature.

Of all the amazing things she did, the one that sticks with me most is the story of a song she wrote with the Lovers after dreaming of John Lennon one night. The song is called “Let Yourself Be Loved,” and it speaks for itself. If you follow the link above for her band, it will take you to their MySpace page, and you can listen there.

Sitting in that movie last night, I felt a lot of communion with my Austin friends; it’s been a long time since we’ve all been together. Leaving the theater, the friend I went with and I had the same thought at the same time: Starr would’ve dug the hell out of this flick for the fun of it, the freakiness of it, and for its message displayed on the tee shirts handed out at the screening.

Be Your Own Hero.

Rest well, Starr. We love you.

I’ve not practiced Judaism in many, many years, so it was a strange thing to experience a sudden desire to invite my family over for dinner on Rosh Hashanah. I don’t think we’ve had one of those in a decade or so.

Time’s not the only difference, either. All but one of us are gluten-intolerant. That meant some changes to traditional family recipes — most importantly, the kugel.

My family’s kugel recipe is the plain salt and pepper kind, savory rather than sweet. It calls for a large package of egg noodles, said egg noodles apparently unfindable in the short space of a week. I mean, I found some online made from corn, but the idea of corn kugel just didn’t do it for me. And I’ve heard that a body can find GF egg noodles around Passover, but Passover was a wee bit ago. So, the settling for Tinkyada fettucine. It worked out really well.

I always forget how much work cooking a holiday meal actually is. I started in the kitchen at around 2:00 and dinner didn’t materialize on people’s plates until 7:30. Roasted chicken (thanks to Top Chef’s Elia for her “proud chicken” recipe), the GF noodle kugel, and an apple cake that would’ve been better off for having used either smaller or fewer apples, but that tasted right good with Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream. (On the other hand, it’s pretty hard to screw up Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla.)

After all the hard work, it was a fun evening. The rest of the weekend? Bittersweet.

I drove to Austin on Saturday with the primary purpose of seeing my friend who has been ill for some months with cancer. Because of a communication snafu, the seeing didn’t happen. There were hugs and lovely conversations and walks in the sunshine with other friends, and many prayers were said. Prayers continue to be welcome.

May the Gods bless and keep my friend, and bless and keep her family and loved ones. She is the kind of person who has brought enormous joy and love and delight to everyone in her life. She is a blessing.

Dear blessing, I send you love and apples and honey, sweetness and warm, gentle hugs.

In happy wire news, there’s an off-Broadway revival of Angels in America in the works. I’ve only ever seen the fabulous HBO version, and it would be even more fabulous if I could see a touring version of the off-Broadway production here.

The play reminds me of my friend Roy Oakes, may he rest in peace and joy, because it was his oft-stated favorite. I met Roy the year I started writing — he and I took a beginning fiction writing class together and were the only two invited by the instructor to join her advanced class. I remember both of us standing outside her front door on our first “advanced” evening, terrified that we wouldn’t fit in or that no one would like our work. And of course it turned out neither of us had a reason to worry.

Roy eventually moved to Taos, New Mexico. Visiting him was my first real vacation. I met great friends of his. It snowed. We ate Stilton (well, *he* ate the Stilton) and drank port and fed cookies to the Corgis in his living room, feet bare with the radiating heat warming our toes.  I fell in love with Taos so hard he had to push me into the van that would take me and my luggage back to Albuquerque. You have responsibilities, he said. You can’t stay here.  True, but I kept on coming around when I could.

When his favorite play was slotted to be shown on HBO, I ordered the channel (which I don’t normally keep) just so I could see it. I thought of him often while I watched.

I ordered the soundtrack and played it incessantly while I wrote for the next year or so, and it became the soundtrack to one of my novels, Skin and Bone. I thought of Roy often then, too.

And here I sit, thinking about my friend some more. What a blessing he was and is.