Eben Reilly

ANNOUNCING: ZOMBIE GIRL...

2007-12-13T21:58:00.000-05:00

...My latest YA written in collaboration with Mel Glenn-- YA poet/novelist who has published
14 titles, most recently SPLIT IMAGE, 2005. (www.melglenn.com)

(As for Flatlanders' Vermont, Chris and I have decided to compile a Flatlander Questionnaire,
print and distribute 500 copies in Feb. 2008. If you're interested in participating in this literary project, send your email address to ebenreilly@aol.com to get your copy!)

ZOMBIE GIRL & the PEARL TATTOO
BY
Eben Reilly
With poems by
Mel Glenn

Zombie Girl: a poetic YA novel set in a locked down facility for teenage girls is haunted by the ghost they call Charlie. Though his identity eludes them, the girls feel Charlie’s presence each time the spectral letters C H A appear, an unseen finger scratching them into the frost on a bedroom window, in the flour on the kitchen counter or in the scouring powder sprinkled in the tub. Always while one of the girl watches: clearly Charlie wants to be known.

But not until an unwitting night guard shows up, the handsome college dropout Dana Drum, who begins a poetry exchange with resident Shannon Larkin, compulsive writer, liar and cutter, does Charlie find a poetic channel into all their lives.

A story of friends coming together in life and from beyond the grave, Zombie Girl, offers mystery and romance through poetry and other out of body experiences.

Margot's Movie and the Necessity of Many Lives

2007-11-15T06:41:00.000-05:00

Daily I am reminded of the major oversight of creation (evolution, whichever), but the single life per participant on earth is an ongoing problem.

Daily I'm faced with the talent of others and the amazing possibilities of collaboration.
Only to remind myself that I've already committed myself to this project w. Chris Brown,
completing WELLSPR?ING, a musical for children to submit to festivals w. composer Jeff Adler,
producing BLACK OUT with my students at ASA-- and taking the GRE's in Dec. to apply for
doctoral programs for 9.2009.

Anyway, reading the Flatlander responses byMargot Harrison, reviewer for SEVEN DAYS, Margot the Movie flashed before my eyes. What a great screenplay in her story of the city
kid transported with Prof. Mom to the North Country.

If the creater (ok evolution) had graced us with multiple lives, I'd finally sign up for that
Screen Play WRiting class at NYU and convince Margot-- also a novelist-- to recreate the story so we could bring Flatlanders to the big screen.

But with the few years we've got, we have to pass up on so much brilliance, those glinting neurons on the edge of consciousness that shimmer with promise, but then just fall like shooting stars between synapses.

Hey, what am I going on about-- hers will be a great story for Flatlanders' Vermont.

Thanks so much, Margot!
*****
I enjoyed meeting you, and I'm glad you're running with this idea. Sorry it took so long for me to respond. Things get pretty busy around here!1. When, from where and why did you move to Vermont?I was 11 and living in Manhattan, W. 116th, when my mom started getting part-time gigs up at Johnson State College (she was a pro musician then and taught flute). After some commuting via Amtrak, she decided to buy a car and move us up here for real.2. If your Move to Vermont were a movie, describe the opening scenes and images as the credits flash across the screen.A highway in 1979. A U-Haul. A little girl romping on a hillside covered with white pines. Oh, and the opening credits of Battlestar Galactica (original series), because when we moved to VT, we also got our first TV, which was quite a milestone in my life!3. List 5 first impressions of Vermont.Uh... green stuff. Ten-cent ice cream cones. Fuzzy pines and lots of ferns. Tons of churches for such a small town (they've since become part of the Vermont Studio Center!). Bears (fear of).4. Describe the first problem you encountered and how you coped or overcame it.Junior high school was the problem. A huge problem. Particularly gym class. I tried to overcome this by buying the proper clothes (chamois-pronounced-chammy shirts from the Woolen Mill, hiking boots with red laces), but I would not say I overcame it. More like grew up and fled it forever. I vowed never again to be in a situation where my worth was determined by my prowess at soccer and b-ball.5. Tell the most compelling story of those first weeks in Vermont...Finding my mom sitting by the creek outside our apartment complex when it was totally dark outside. She said she was meditating-- which was nothing unusual, this being the '70s and all. But in the city, you don't meditate outdoors, at night! In fact, for the first few weeks, I was terrified of the thick country dark, especially because there was this movie called Prophecy out that summer, about a rampaging monster in the rural woods. I didn't see it, but the THOUGHT sufficed. Anyway, at the time, I was floored by my mom's courage! But soon I was roaming the woods after dark, too.

First Flatlander Response

2007-10-18T09:43:00.000-05:00

If you're new to this project please read: Flatlanders' Vermont, and if you'd like to participate, please respond to Flatlanders' Questionnaire 1 (both below).

Celia Schneider of Castleton, a woman whose vibrant personailty seems indicative of many who left more profitable and many ways more predictable lives to re-root their faimilies-- and their own creative selves-- in the lush, rough, but more rewarding world-- in all ways but monetarily-- of Vermont.

Here's her first impressions:

1. When, from where and why did you move to Vermont? We moved to VT because my husband was a Forester and there were not a lot of jobs in that field in NJ. He also knew this area from coming to Lake Dunmore in the summers as a child. His family was also moving here as well.
2. If your Move to Vermont were a movie, describe the opening scenes and images as the credits flash across the screen. The first scene would be of a young woman excited and then in the very next moment that look of wondering what she got herself into. The next scene would be her crying.
3. List 5 first impressions of Vermont. Beautiful, peaceful, quiet, scary and overwhelming.
4. Describe the first problem you encountered and how you coped or overcame it. When we first moved here we lived in Brandon and I did not have a job at the time. I had been married a year and we moved into my -in-laws house. That says it all. I don’t remember any first problem, it was more adjusting to a new way a life.
5. Tell the most compelling story of those first weeks in Vermont-- could be as simple aswatching your kids hunt for tadpoles, drawing your first landscape, being befriended orostracized... whatever comes to mind most boldly. I’ll think about this one!

Celia, I'd be curious to hear more of those first months with the in-laws: where (or more on the temperament of the town), why, how long. Can you recount one incident that conveys that living situation and the cast of characters.We all play different roles in our families at different times: what was yours?

Thanks for responding, look forward to reading more of those early years!!
----- Original Message -----

Flatlanders' Questionnaire 1

2007-10-14T12:05:00.000-05:00

Thanks to all of you fellow flatlanders who showed enthusiasm for the project. (If you're new to this project, you can read the previous entry Flatlanders' Vermont.) While most of us
are solid individualists, who seemed to be making a very singular choice to leave our city lives to homestead in Vermont, in retrospect I see we came in a wave, all pushing northward for a saner life. Many of us are artists and educators, many of us parents, all of us have had unique experiences which I'm eager to have us share.

Each week I will post between 3-5 questions to mull over. Answer any or all in any order, and you can post your initial responses as comments (click on comments below his blog entry) or if you prefer you can email them to me at ebenreilly@aol.com.

This is our first leisurely phase-- just sharing our perceptions. Based on our responses we will devise a Flatlander Questionnaire which we'll print and distribute to any individual or family who then feels they'd like to contribute to the book.

1. When, from where and why did you move to Vermont?
2. If your Move to Vermont were a movie, describe the opening scenes and images as the credits flash across the screen.
3. List 5 first impressions of Vermont.
4. Describe the first problem you encountered and how you coped or overcame it.
5. Tell the most compelling story of those first weeks in Vermont-- could be as simple as
watching your kids hunt for tadpoles, drawing your first landscape, being befriended or
ostracized... whatever comes to mind most boldly.

FLATLANDERS' VERMONT

2007-10-10T06:20:00.000-05:00

On Saturday Moriah and I turned out of the driveway onto Route 30 North on our way to Burlington to meet Margot Harrison, the book/film reviewer for Seven Days, to be followed
by a stop in Waitsfield for a reading of Crosswords to be staged by the Valley Players of Waitsfield.

Following the curves in the road, enjoying the muted browns, greens and lackluster shades of yellow and orange-- a range of color I much prefer to the brash reds and golds of peak season-- I had a Vermont flashback of a hundred images of my own family's past decade in Vermont.

Coming when the twins were two and Ben five to literally escape the gun play in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn (and the screaming teachers at the woeful public school to which Ben had been assigned), we felt we had stepped back in time.

Our first stop was pancakes at the dimly lit and dusty cafe in Fairhaven, where back then all five of us fit into the narrow wooden booth. Later that morning we arrived at a friend's old farmhouse in Hubbardton, where Ben found his first salamander, and when a lightening storm burnt out our water pump, I bathed all three in the stream that ran outside our rickety bedroom windows.

And that was just the first clip of a full hour of Vermont footage in my brain.

Later speaking to Margot, whose mom had transplanted her own small family from Manhattan to Saint Johnsbury where she taught at the college, I became more convinced that there are
striking similarities to the experience of all Flatlanders. We came like immigrants set on changing our lives, and many of us raised our children-- making harsh financial compromises-- for the frugal, but better life we made here for our families.

So I told Margot about an idea for a book, which after compiling hundreds of interviews with friends and neighbors, would explore the similarities of our experiences, our Vermont.

Later when I spoke with my sister-in-law Julie Merwin, a writer herself, of my idea for the book, she had an idea of her own, a Flatlanders' Cookbook, to show the vast diversity of newcomers to this state. And then later in the day, when I ran the idea by my friend Chris Brown, artist/yoga teacher, she enthusiastically took up the challenge and will help design the questionnaire that by next week we will post on this blog and send off to our Flatlander friends and neighbors to begin our book: Flatlanders' Vermont.

I'm excited about the project and will write more of our literary adventure in coming weeks.
Hope you join us!

2%

2007-09-26T22:51:00.000-05:00

Dear Lotte,

In life as in publishing there is no luck-- only numbers. And for me it's 2%. If I send out 100 queries, I usually get 2 responses. Looking for an agent, I sent out 50, and got one fish on the hook: Sara of Harvey Klinger.

Two manuscripts later it's: I'm enthusiastic, but not that enthusiastic.

Guess I'd better send off the next 50 queries.

Or give up looking for an agent, and concentrate on setting up the non-profit. Here's my last 2 emails w. Trevor Lockwood of Braiswick Publishing. He's always given me good advice. The question now is to go non-profit or not to go non-profit-- and if the couple of writer/artists I've contacted would care to go with me??
_____________________________________________________________
Trevor--

To do it or not do it... that's the question.I've spent the month thinking, talking, planning, but now I have to decide whether or not to submit the application for innercities.org The big concern: will I turn into an art beauracrat?Tell me what you think. (You would have a paid position, so read on.)

Briefly:
Innercities.org: collaborative writing/art projects in the community.

Reason for Being: rebuilding the city the only way that matters... from the inside out!

Mode of Operating: Each year the Executive Director (me) and 3 collaborative writers choose a target group (teens, seniors, hospital/hospice residents, prisoners, shelter residents, etc) and create a writing project with that group (fiction, autobiography, drama, poetry, documentary, etc.) Having completed the writing project, the group will perform their work (reading, writing workshop, performance) in the community.

At the end of the year, all collaborative writing projects will be published in the Innercities.org Journal.

Staff: Executive Director: grant writing, coordination of all projects, filing end of year reports, general dirty work plus two community based-collaborative writing projects

Publisher/Graphic Designer: brochures, postcards, web-design and final publication

3 Collaborative Writers: design and present collaborative writing project in the community production of collaborative writing in the community (So far Brian, another instructor here that I mentioned might want to do theater workshops and a dramatic production. A student, Carol Buckley, would do memoir writing with seniors. I would assist Ben in doing a documentary: Notes on the Lower East Side, and continue working with my composer, Jeff, on the children's musical.)

This is my question to you as a seasoned professional with tons more experience than I have, will this ruin my writing life? I need the extra income, and I feel confident in the people who have voiced a desire to be involved. I have enough experience with grant writing, connections in the school system, and I think credentials in the arts to get this off the ground... but if I get it off the ground, does that mean I fly away... What would you do? If I do it, what do you think of your position (if you want it)?le me know what's up with you... miss your missives... eileen
_________
Eileen--

... As for 'job' - sounds just lovely - and I'm honored to be considered. I'd work hard to make it all work.

Never say 'No' to a dream. If you try and it fails, or doesn't meet your expectations - you will have learnt something. If it works - well, what's the IF - it will work.

Go for it - and if I can help - in any small way (website perhaps?) in the early days - just ask.

Trevor
******
It seems like a potentially exciting project-- and I do so love to collaborate. However,
innercities. org will certainly depend on putting together a team of writers. If by the end of the month, I find enough commitment to warrant the time and effort of applying for funding,
I'll send in the application to NYFA for fiscal sponsorship.

If not, well, great ideas beget great ideas. I'm sure I'll come up with the next collaborative writing project. Will keep you posted!

On the Verge of Seeking an Agent...

2007-08-19T10:28:00.000-05:00

To blog or not to blog. That's been my ongoing question about this web page. Unlike most bloggers I feel no need to grab the mike to address the crowd. And although I sometimes glance down at the modest number of hits this page has had, and pretend that someone out there is listening, I am well aware that I'm singing in the shower.

But singing in the shower is the only place I dare to sing.

Except for once when Ben was little, barely three, sitting at the kitchen table across from me while I peeled carrots, closed my eyes and broke into a doleful Irish ballad. Having little kids gives one plenty of freedom to do things like sing out of the shower. Anyway, when I opened my eyes and returned to my peeling, Ben looked at me and said, "That was beautiful."

A moment never to be forgotten as I will never again in my life hear such a heartfelt ( and wrong) critique of my voice.

Right now I've decided to take a risk and sing out of the shower and send off two manuscripts
one YA Novel: End of an Irish War and one Middle Grade Reader : First Kiss at Mantis Cafe to prospective agents. I suppose that why I am reiminiscing about unconditional approval: bracing myself for the avalanche of rejections.

However, as I learned with WOLF, all it takes is one admirer. It's been a while since I put any work out into the field: wish me luck.

News from the Mad River Valley

2007-07-21T14:48:00.000-05:00

Just stopped by my publishers website: http://www.braiswick.com/ and found this posted.
Thanks Trevor for saving the article: I would have missed it, and you know how authors love the occasional coverage!

(I post it now primarily because cyber space seems to be forever. I recently panicked when I'd realized in our last of 5 moves in the last 18 months, I'd lost some reviews from my first novel.
The beauty of blog-- I'll know where to look next time!)

The Valley REPORTER
Serving the Mad River Area Since 1971

07/06/2007
Vermont Playwrights Award Winner Announced
The Valley Players announces the winner of the 2007 Vermont Playwrights Award: Return to West Raven by Eben Reilly of Bomoseen, Vermont.

The play takes place in a southern Vermont town where Adam Pierce, up from NYC for the summer, encounters his Gulf War dad's ghost among the wrecked cars and vans that litter his uncle's back acres. Sapped by the lethargy and sickness of Gulf War Syndrome and driven to despair by the government's refusal to acknowledge his disease, Richard Pierce had driven his VW Rabbit under the wheels of an oncoming tractor trailer truck when his son, Adam, was only five. Adam only now begins to understand that it was no accident and only now can he reconcile his life without his father and attempt to restore his wrecked life.

Eben Reilly lives in a netherworld of fiction and drama playing out in her head as she shuttles between her home in Castleton, Vermont, and her livelihood in New York City where she teaches for ASA Institute and CUNY. Having earned an MFA in playwriting at Brooklyn College in the late 1980s, she detoured into marriage and technical writing, primarily grants, proposals and press releases for public sculptor and husband Robert Ressler. When Reilly moved to Vermont with her husband to raise their three children, then two, three and five, she began freelancing children's stories and poems, segueing into young adult fiction as her children reached their own adolescence. However, life has a way of circling back, and with Return to West Raven the author has returned to drama, recently completing her second play entitled Bodies Whose Bodies.

Return to West Raven is the 21st play to receive the Vermont Playwrights Award, which was established in 1982 to promote the theater arts and to encourage and support the creation of original plays by residents of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Winning playwrights receive a cash prize of $1,000 and the possibility of production. The award is supported by the Audrey Mixer Endowment Fund, which was formed in memory of one of the Valley Players' most talented actresses by her husband, Richard Mixer.

Deadline for submissions of plays is February 1 of each year.More information on the Valley Players may be found on the web at www.valleyplayers.com.

Back

It's Official?

2007-07-19T19:02:00.000-05:00

Receiving that phone call last month to hear I'd won the VT Playwright's Award, I felt a mixture of giddy excitement and looming suspicion. Maybe it's never having won something before,
but a dark gloomy doubt seemed to set in: but did I really?

Perhaps it stemmed from having worked in public art with my husband Rob who on one occasion won a commission, only to find out a week or two later that his proposal for a sculpture had been trumped in the end by a runner-up.

Committees can be like that.

Arbitrary purveyors of joy and disappointment.

Of course I visited the Valley Players website every few days to see if theyhad announced my
win. Of course whenever I didn't see the news posted, that nagging suspicion returned: yeah, but did I really.

Not even the press release convinced me. But this short article in 7 Days, the Burlington equivalent of the Village Voice, has finally allayed my fears.

Yeah, I guess I really did.

(Might be time to pick up my mail in Bomoseen to cash my winning check and buy a lap top.)

SEVEN DAYS
VERMONT’S ALTERNATIVE WEB WEEKLY

Young-Adult Writer Wins Vermont Playwrights Award
by Margot Harrison
DRAMA (07.04.07)

In Bomoseen writer Eben Reilly’s young-adult novel Wolf, a dad and his teenage son bond over their love of heavy metal. Thing is, Dad is dead and haunting a van in a southern Vermont back yard, which pulses with the strains of his favorite AC/DC tunes. And Son has been shipped off to his uncle’s rural home after an embarrassing incident involving his mood-altering prescription meds. It’s a fresh take on the old father-son bonding theme, that’s for sure. And a dramatic adaptation of the novel, titled Return to West Raven, just won Reilly the 21st Vermont Playwrights Award.

The award is bestowed by the Valley Players, Waitsfield’s community theater, and comes with a $1000 cash prize and the “possibility of production,” according to a press release. Eben Reilly is the pen name of Eileen Ressler, who hails from an artistic family — her husband is sculptor Rob Ressler, who created Brooklyn’s 9/11 memorial. Ressler earned an MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College two decades ago. She’s published Wolf and another novel for young adults with Braiswick, an independent, print-on-demand publisher in the U.K. Ressler chose her pseudonym in part to reflect the “imaginative contribution” of her teenage son Ben, whom she describes in an email as “my Google on all pop-cultural questions regarding rock [and] metal and [on] details regarding hand guns, lighters and alcohol. He doesn’t smoke, shoot or drink to excess, but he did seem to know how [to] load a Colt SAA and how many herbs go into Jägermeister.”

Ben also vetted Wolf’’s dialogue: “He has an ear for authenticity, insisting, ‘Mom, guys curse more,’” says Ressler. The collaboration works — Wolf takes on some hot-button issues without sounding condescending. Gulf Wars, past and present, also feature in the father-son relationship. Ressler says she and the Valley Players have discussed the possibility of staging a reading of Return to West Raven. For now, she’s completing new plays and shuttling back and forth between Vermont and New York City, where she teaches writing at CUNY and other schools. Meanwhile, she writes, her husband is contributing outdoor art to Franconia Park in Minnesota, “where he plans to sculpt a 15-foot arch of fish in August.” How long till their three kids start publishing? Send a LETTER TO THE EDITOR

____
Thank you, Valley Players... thank you, Margot. And good luck to all in your artistic
endeavors!

Summer Celebrations: VT and NY

2007-07-05T19:44:00.000-05:00

Mother's Day, Father's Day who needs them?

Sears, certainly, great for lawn mower and Lazy Boy sales. At Macy's on the Saturday before M-Day the line ran past cosmetics into men's wear and nearly out the door onto Fulton Street during the 50% off most jewelry sale. Hallmark always makes out for the poetically impaired, and statistically restaurants do best on M-Day while sales of grills and charcoal peak on Dad's day.

Like I said, who needs them?

But this year, without planning it, I found myself seated at a picnic table-- well, a plank of wood balanced across two saw horses, surrounded by the wives and children of 3 of the best fathers I know: my husband sculptor Rob, devoted to our 3 kids who with him share a liking for smoked meats, crude humor and silly voices-- and a sometimes hard to deal with independence of mind. Tom Merwin: fireman, painter, also a lover of smoked meats, who has raised his son Matt to love and respect nature and art, a twofold vision both share, Tom in painting, Matt in film making. And Mike Brown: musician/ teacher who has not only passed on his musical genes to his son, drummer Dave Brown, but also drummed into him the importance of discipline in practice and hardcore commitment to the craft.

It hit me as I balanced a chocolate sheet cake leftover from one guest's graduation and a trifle
jiggling in a bowl by my British coloured sister-in law and a cake by Chris Brown. (I don't bake and am blessed by friends and family who do.) I was crossing through Rob's studio where the door opened onto the gravely yard where the lifting cloud of rib-smoke refracted the evening light that glinted off my brother Tom's silver buzz cut and the gleam of all those faces, shiney with the grease of many ribs and lamb chops.

Wow!

How beautiful they all were in this shiney, greasy transcedent way.

And this was the holiday I had hoped to avoid.

(Now tomorrow I'll be back to tell you of a Blue Moon celebration in Brooklyn and the three amazing women who grace the top floor of a five story walk-up in Carrol Gardens with their own transcendent beauty.)

Okay, it's taken a couple of days to get back to finish this blog, primarily due to our move to yet another sublet, this time in Crown Heights, while the hovel by the graveyard is being transformed into a home.

On the night of the Blue Moon, which only showed itself briefly as a tangerine smudge modestly covering up behind sheer grey clouds, Sheela Woolford had a roof top party. And what a roof it was: a 360 degree reminder of all the reasons one might still tough it out to live in NYC. Despite insane rents and the stress of juggling jobs to pay them, the city still has long tree lined streets in Brooklyn, with stoops for those of us who still don't have airconditioning to sit until late hours like our parents of a generation ago and chat with neighbors as they come and go on a summer night. And in the distance the sparkling city. From Sheela's roof you can see it all. The close-up friendly down below view of Carrol Gardens, the elegant expanse of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and the still glittering promise of Manahattan.

Sheela our host writes. She recently accepted a sabbatical to finish her first novel. Also to her creation credits she can boast two stunning daughter: Lelah and Sarah who like the circular landscape that surrounded us from where we sat on their rooftop are both as solid and friendly as the Brooklyn street down below us, and as sparkling with promise as the NYC horizon by night beneath a Blue Moon.

Sitting with my friend, admiring her daughters as well as the silhouettes of my own twin teens against that Blue Moon sky studded with antennas and dotted with Dishes-- I thought this in fact was mother's day. Well, more like a mother's moment-- one of those blissful epiphanies when you see the loveliness of your own creative efforts.

Like living in New York these days, being a parent is so difficult, so expensive, so nearly impossible.

But sitting on Sheela's roof that I night I felt a wave of certainty: well worth it!

Queens School of Inquiry

2007-06-18T13:17:00.000-05:00

Just when I feared teaching for the test had driven creative thought from all public schools, I
ran head long into QSI, Queens School of Inquiry. My friend and colleague from Brooklyn College, Illana Block, had directed me to the school, encouraging me to submit a proposal for a
college immersion program. Being immersed myself in Sophocles these days, having written a one act adaptation of ANTIGONE, I proposed that I introduce a class of 80 vivacious (and sometimes loquacious) seventh graders to my all time favorite angry teen. Not only did the kids
take to Antigone immediately, they enjoyed meeting her ill fated family, as well as raising
provocative questions about the nature of fate and free will.

If any of my College Immersion students or their equally vivacious teachers stop by, I do hope you blog back!

This is an excerpt of an article by one of the program's masterminds, Mary Beth Schaeffer-- for any of my academic friends who balked at the idea of integrating 7th graders into college life!

****

COLLEGE IMMERSION WEEK AT QUEENS COLLEGE

It was not only summer session at Queens College—it was also College Immersion week for the seventh grade at the QSI. On Monday, nervous and excited students kept close to their teachers’ elbows and bumped into each other as they consulted maps and schedules. By Friday, the maps were gone and QSI students were kings of the campus, chatting on their way to class, laughing with friends, finding their way to bathrooms and classrooms with practiced ease.
There were some courses that all three QSI classes shared: Greek Drama, Library, Physical Education and Classroom. The daily two-hour college courses were much smaller, with 8-12 students in each: these classes will be discussed in next week’s update. I will have a better understanding of how students fared in their smaller classes after they present their projects to the sixth grade on Monday and I read their reflections and tally up the results of the course surveys.

Antigone: Fate or Free Will?
Award-winning playwright Eileen Ressler opened up our week with a stunning hour and a half introduction to the Greek theater, Oedipus, Antigone, and the concepts of Fate, Destiny and Free Will. Using a combination of lecture, question/answer, writing, performance, quizzes and a showing of scenes from Jean Anouilh’s rendition of Antigone, Professor Ressler captured students’ interest and generated questions from them that stunned even their teachers: for example, our students wondered, “How can you change your destiny if you don’t know the actions that might lead to it?” and “Why do authority figures [in Greek Drama] attract trouble?” and “Can you change destiny?”

*******
Thanks again QSI!

Review of Cemetery Club

2007-06-05T08:05:00.000-05:00

When Jennifer Howard told me that she was performing in Cememtery Club with the Valley Players of Waitsfield, Vermont, a drama about 3 widows who regularly visit, and sometimes polish the tombstones, of their dead husbands at a Jewish cemetery in Queens, I was struck by the irony. Here I would be traveling a full 8 hours from the tiny house where we crash in Queens, the house where our backyard looks out on those very graves! (One of whose otherworldly Jewish residents is no less than the great Harry Houdini.)

Yuhp, all of life's a stage.

Here's a review of last Sunday's matinee performance.

***
Cemetery Club
by Ivan Meschell
Directed by Tom Badowski

The sameness of Vermont accounts for its beauty. The same green mountains, giving way to the same green fields giving way to the cookie cutter cows and the picture postcard barns, some standing, some slouching, but all distinctively Vermont.
Living in Vermont, I've come to count on the regularity of long winters that run a month or so too long, giving way to mud season and then the long awaited lush green summers, berry picking, giving way to apples and the storage of a few bushels to get us at least through September and the mad headlong rush back into brief autumn and another too long winter, but much beloved (by skiers, snowboarders, writers and recluses alike) winter.
But it's the sameness that makes the sudden surprises so unexpected.
Yes, I had traveled from our home in Castelton to Burlington and beyond many times, but never having strayed off the main roads, I was exhilerated by the dips and curves of Route 17, where a ride I anticipated would take ten to fifteen minutes, verged on an hour as we twisted and turned our way to Waitsfield.
That's where the surprise occurred.
In a squat brick building circa 1850 three actresses defied their own Vermont accents to reproduce a New York City twang, and spoke with the rapid fire one-liners that author Ivan Meschell had invented for the three Jewish widows kibitzing and kvetching on an overstuffed sofa.
Who knew?
Dramatically another surprise stalked the audience when this quick witted repartee turned serious, and the actresses portrayed the poignancy, frustrations and rage of aging.
So unexpected was the shift that the audience was still laughing as Lucille, an aging femme fatale ( or so she likes to pretend) delivers the harsh truth of aging, lonliness and lies as way a method acting approach to survival.
From the wisecracking Lucille, actress Joyce Crabtree, wrings out genuine pathos, and when at the end of the play she leaves the graveside of her diminishing social circle, one feels deeply the heaviness of the solitude we all must face.
In the same unexpected way, Doris played by Andrea Kisler also took the audience by surprise with her own fit of anger when with a drink splashed in Lucille's face, she defies any image of her as a hand wringing widow to be ignored. Similiarly Ida, played by Jennifer Howard, does not allow the audience to dismiss her as one more over the hill old lady, when poignantlyshe reveals her own deep needs as a woman who chooses not old age, but ongoing life.
(Sam the butcher, has a tough job fending off the advances of the widows, but played by the shuffling Kirk Lilley, one can imagine the charm of his vulnerability. )
So much for sameness.
(And so I do plan to return to the home of the Valley Players for more of the same, vital community theater that both entertains and provokes.)

Vermont Playwrights Award

2007-05-23T14:43:00.000-05:00

Here's an endorsement for Peter Miller's book (review below). Last year when I first flipped through Author!Screenwriter! he got me thinking about being a turn-coat. I knew I wasn't ready to write a screenplay, but maybe I could cross over to the stage. With that in mind I adapted WOLF into two plays and submitted the first for the Vermont Playwrights Award. ThenI did what we writers do best, well, after writing...

I waited.

This morning I got the call.

"Is this Eben? Good news. You won."

Thank you, Vermont's Valley Players of Waitsfield. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming production of Cemetery Club and again at the 6/10th Board Meeting. (Mind if I bring champagne?)

Applause for Author!Screenwriter!

2007-05-15T10:45:00.000-05:00

Foolishly I put off reading this book too long. Read this review and then click your way over to Amazon to order. (When you're ready to send a query to Peter Miller's Agency, mention you've read his book. Every writer appreciates acknowledgement!)

How's a Writer Like an Ex-con?
By Eben Reilly

When David, a felon twice convicted, approached me, he looked embarrassed. “Before this class I didn’t know what a resume was.” “Well,” I said, “You don’t know what you don’t know until somebody who does know, tells you.”
Then I read Author!Screenwriter! by Peter Miller, and like my ex-con student I felt humbled by what I hadn’t known, but grateful for the inside information that just might get me as a writer off the streets. Having written children literature for over ten years, freelancing stories, poems and publishing two YA novels with a quirky, independent British publisher, I thought I knew about being a writer: but you don’t know, what you don’t know until somebody who does know tells you.
And Peter Miller knows. The President of PMA Literary and Film Management, Inc. and Literary Lion, Inc, Peter has successfully managed over 1,000 books worldwide, including eleven New York Times bestsellers, and hundreds of film and television properties. Despite the stress on his agency that receives over 300 queries a week, a business that spans the desks of film producers in Los Angeles and publishers in New York City, a bridge he’s helped many authors cross, Peter Miller has time, interest and enthusiasm for writers.
Besides being informative Author!Screenwriter! reads well. Not one of these pedantic authors who list the do’s and don’ts of publishing like a guide to professional etiquette, Peter has great stories to tell to back up his advice.
Before reading his savvy guide on “How to Succeed as a Writer in New York and Hollywood”, I had never heard of an elevator pitch. That’s a description so brief and so compelling that if fate has been kind enough to toss you into an elevator with an editor or agent of note, you’ve sold them on your book by the time the doors part on the ground floor.
An elevator pitch sold Peter on the Nymphos of Rocky Flats by Mario Acevedo. Mario cornered him on the way upstairs at a Rocky Mountain Writers Conference in Colorado with a pitch so convincing that within three weeks Peter had the manuscript on his desk in New York City, and within another week he brokered a three book deal with Harper Collins.
Not all of Peter’s stories, however, are fairy tales.
Another new concept for me was the literary auction. That’s when an agent designates a date and a time for the end of the sale of a manuscript. Peter submitted a manuscript to 14 publishers to respond in two weeks with a ground floor offer of 50,000. There were no offers. But another lesson to be learned at the hand of the master: tenacity pays. The author went back, fine-tuned the manuscript, and Peter found the right match for the book with a British based publisher.
Similarly, each section of Author!Screenwriter! : Get Published; Get Produced and Proposals That Get the Deal Done offers writers not more stagnant advice, but direction. A knowing guide Peter invites writers to cross a bridge: for prose writers to think about screenplays and for screenplay writers to think in prose. And like a knowing guide, Peter gives the information that will help you look less like a greenhorn and more like a seasoned professional when you get there.

On True Blue, Chagall, Vigo Mortensen and the Significance of Odd Encounters

2007-05-12T14:39:00.000-05:00

As a child I squeezed out a dab of oil paint from a tube of cobalt blue: it glistened, and I cried. That dab of blue, so unexpectedly beautiful in the palm of my hand, still remains in my mind as a touchstone for every other blue: a length of fabric, a swathe of sky, the pinpoint petals of those tiny blue wildflowers at the swampy edge of Lake Bomoseen. (Once I looked up their Latin name, but I can't recall it now-- only that fragile, vivid blue.)

But no blue has ever seemed to be true blue since that encounter with that dab of a paint.
(Except the paintings of Chagall with his levitating lovers and livestock. In Chagall I've seen true blue. )

Like those paintings I love the oddly unreal encounters or near encouters that happen (or did they?) in life.

Recently Teddy, my djembe skinning son, got a sewing machine. He is a man who moves through media. At nine he was obsessed with cutting and welding steel, at ten sheep and cow skins--we actually bought one from a slaughter house for $20 which ended up festering on a rooftop. Recently he wanted something more easily acquired: fabric.

Then I remembered passing the fabric shop I used to go to as a girl with my mother-- four store fronts across and deep with a chaos of bolts of cottons, silks, courdoroys-- every conceviable kind. So I traveled over an hour by train with him and Momo back to that street in Brooklyn-- only to learn from a passerby that it had been closed for years.

I didn't believe him.

I had seen it.

I had seen it from a car one night as we drove down that street returning from a ride to Shore Road-- but in fact I hadn't.

Or had I?

Once as a boy my brother a Tom, a painter, told a nun at St.Ephrem school that ships had sailed in and were docked at the 69th Street Pier. Now because no ships docked at the rickety 69th Street pier in Bay Ridge, strong enough only to secure the crab catch cages that local fisherman moored to its rickety pilings, the nun told my dad, and my dad grilled Tom for lying. Finally he caved in and said he had lied just to end the interrogation. But even as a man he told me that as a boy he felt certain the ships had arrived.

Odd encounters intrigue me as well.

A few weeks back I woke and recalled I had brushed up against Vigo Mortensen, the actor. I figured it was really a dream about Dr. Berryhill, our family doctor in Vermont who bares a striking resemblance to Vigo-- and the dream was probably my unconcious warning me to get health insurance.

Okay, a mundane scrap of a dream.

But two days later Teddy told me that Vigo had visited the shop of Mgbana, where he skins drums, to drop off his own son's djembe.

And then a few weeks later when his son returned to pick up the djembe, Teddy handed him
WOLF and said, "My mom's a writer."

And it's that odd encounter of my son Teddy with Vigo's son that I'm enjoying thinking about.
Primarly because Teddy thought highly enough of my talent to say to the son of a great artist--
"My mom's a writer."

That odd encounter and Teddy's endorsement of my talent, has me glowing today. I'm not big on Mother's Day-- too many are nursing dying children who could be fed and cared for by a fraction of the cost of our current wars-- but that odd encounter and Teddy's words really are a great gift.

Too all my friends with kids, male and female moms: Enjoy the day!

Briggs & Carriage

2007-02-15T15:16:00.000-05:00

Yes, it's an early invitation, but I just want to make sure that our friends in Vermont keep the evening of Thursday March 29th open as Ben & I will be reading & signing WOLF at Briggs & Carriage, the quintessential bookshop!, in Brandon. If you haven't had the pleasure of visiting this cozy, oldworld shop (not to mention enjoying an expresso between books). you can check out their site and other events at www.briggscarriage.com

(And thanks again for all the kind feedback on the novel-- there's a recent interview posted at
our publisher's site: www.braiswick.com. Hope to see you next month in Brandon!)

Welcome New Writers!

2007-01-20T16:01:00.000-05:00

Over the past month I've been pleased to have several new writers bravely post their first passages publicly.
I've also heard from several students who have visited the blog, but did not post. I do hope in future they overcome their timidity and post some of their responses, questions, and possibly first attempts.

To blog or not to blog is a simple question. If it's just me warbling away into cyber space: NOT. But if this is a blogsite where others can feel safe and free to warble along: let's blog.

Di's Beginning

2007-01-14T09:44:00.000-05:00

Eben Reilly

Di is a bright, articulate, funny friend who would amuse us both as we stood before the deli counter at Prunier's, the local grocer in Castleton VT, with her insights into the ordinary ridiculousness of life.

She's always spoken of having a book knocking around in her head and surprised me with a fictional response to both our questions: 1) How do you feel about your name? 2) How does a writer a begin a book?

Well, a word begets a sentence, and a sentence begets a page. and well in biblical terms you know how that goes...

Good luck, Di, with having begun your own.

*****

Yes, where do I begin. Just a nugget. The week has been big and bulbous to get around, but here I am on Saturday morning, stealing some moments....The Skates and the Teeth

"Oh man, I keep hitting that infected thing on my finger. I godda stop ripping off hangnails with my teeth."

Yolanda scanned the kitchen counter for her glasses. The glasses weren't there, or maybe they were, maybe they were under something. On Tuesday they were under something, but this was Thursday.

"Oh man, where are they, where was I....I godda go...."

The car had that cold front seat feeling, unforgiving and immutable. This was Vermont in January. Nobody has garages anyway. Her belongings on the seat next to her rattled around, each one trying to beat the other one at the game of "Who's going to fall over the other side of the passenger seat first?" Yolanda was, however, coddling her coffee cup. In comparison, it didn't matter whether she had remembered the keys, purse or cell phone. The coffee was her friend. The coffee really loved her. And she loved the coffee with her whole heart too. Sounds like addiction. Psychological maybe, but her coffee cared that she had a soul. It gave her a moment to find it, a precious portal to God. And Yolanda found her soul, with the encouragement of the gentle, humble, creamy brew. The flavor made her cry.

The splatter of gravel into low lying orbits over the driveway, belied the passions of the woman at the wheel.

"...wish I could get a good squeal out of them. One of these days, I have to let loose. Nah, I don't want to hit the mailbox.""

Yolanda headed up the very short stretch to make a left and head for the highway. As she rounded the turn, she knew her coffee meditation could begin. Route 4 was not stressful. Route 4 allowed her to think her thoughts, and spread out on a beach blanket.

"I'm not a Yolanda. Why did they name me Yolanda? Everyone thinks I'm from Spain or Cuba. My ancestors are from England, Switzerland, and Scotland. Yolanda is somebody else's name.... Everyone calls me Yo anyway. "Hey yo, Yo!" That was always a hoot too. Yo. Who wants to be called Yo! It's the verb for playing with a yo yo. I can't stand it. And I let people call me Yo without saying, Hey, my name is Yolanda! I'm pathetic, I don't want to trouble people to have to say my whole name?"

The coffee was only gone, a little, but she was lost in the insight of the moment. She cherished it. A pungently fragrant gardenia. The fog was lifting off of Birdseye Mountain, but the endless gray, almost seamless between sky and treeline almost enveloped the thought. Yolanda held on tightly, almost crushing the gardenia....

This is the beginning of my story. Nathaniel got up. Brad's at a training and PEBE is at a friend's. I lost my focus, but it will come back. Anyway, this is what is flying around in my mind. It is in relation to last week's question, but I'm slow. I'll keep writing, later today.

Love, Di

POV Sheela

2007-01-07T08:47:00.000-05:00

Here's some advise by Sheela Hastings Wolford in response to Keisha's question: how do I begin my autobiography?

Perhaps I can best explain my approach my stating what a person SHOULDN'T do, since I have more experience there.

1) Don't think every word has to be magic.
2) Don't think you should scrap the whole thing and start over.
3) Don't hold back on real events (even if it's going to get your family mad).
4) Don't put the paper down and give up.
5) Don't expect it to flow out perfectly the first time.

Now, let me try, as I am trying now at the age of 51, to approach how to start:

1) Give thanks that you have the gift of writing and you have not rejected it.
2) Take a long walk every day and let your ideas "moodle" their way to you.
3) Read at some point every day.
4) Stay aware of your work as you are doing other work and JOT it down when it comes to you.
5) Speak honestly in the moment.
6) Do a free write at the beginning or morning pages to censor the critic in your head.
7) Don't show anyone until you are FINISHED. (This is the Stephen King approach and I believe in him.)
8) Rewrite, revise after you've let your Ideal Reader (someone you trust as a writer and reader) read it. Listen to their comments.
9) Edit and rework as much as YOU THINK it needs it.
10) Now look for an agent.

Lastly, a few semesters ago, I followed another teacher's lesson plan for memoir writing and in it she gave a lesson developed by a Native American and I found this exercise very helpful. Here it is:

Take your life and divide it into four equal parts of your age. For example, if you are 25, divide your life from birth to six, six to 12, 12 to 18, and 18 to 25. These are the four seasons of your life. Within each of those seasons start writing. You can ask yourself pointed questions and answer each in those periods and then pull out the story for your autobiography. I agree with Jude in thinking about the MOST important events that mark your life. Maybe the seasons can be the bone structure he writes about.

Whatever you do, do it with gusto and heart. If you don't have the heart to write about your life, no one will want to read it. Finally, when you get bored and start rambling, shut the notebook or file and take a walk.

It's moodling time.

Keisha's Question

2007-01-05T19:20:00.000-05:00

Keisha--

Thanks so much for stopping by the site. I'm alerting my other writers of you your question: how do I begin my autobiography?

I'm "moodling" over your question and will post my response in a day or so. (BTW "Moodling" is a word I learned today from another writer who learned it from a mentor: Moodling to mull over your thoughts in preparation for writing-- an important part of the work of the writer which to non-writers looks like you're sitting around doing nothing. Next time a non-writer types accuses of laziness, daydreaming or general sloth, reply politely, but firmly, "I'm moodling. Back off and let me think."

Reading of WOLF

2007-01-05T07:17:00.000-05:00

A quick thank you to the students downtown Brooklyn who attended the first reading of WOLF. I appreciate the warm reception and enjoyed our lively exchange.
A number of you have expressed an interest in writing, please feel free to share your work with me at any stage.

(That also goes for Keisha at ASA College whose writer's question for the week is simple, but
profound: how do you begin?)

RE:solutions

2006-12-30T13:10:00.000-05:00

Like the vast, unwritten continent that our forebears found when they followed the elk across Beringia,cyber space offers abundance and pursuit.

Abundance for shoppers, scholars, lonely hearts, entrepeneurs and pirates, but also for us writers cyber space offers the possibility of pursuit of wild, roving imagination. Which brings me to my re:solution for the New Year:

To create a space where new writers feel safe to set down their words, follow a line of thought through uncharted territory, meet other literary pilgirms along the way.

This idea came from an exchange with Diana, a good friend and creative thinker from Vermont, who revealed that she too has a book knocking about in her head. I suggested to Diana and another budding author from Brooklyn that we limber up for our larger literary treks by writing in response to a question posed by one of us each week.

Others are free to read and post, with only the stipulation that if you do publish your thoughts on this blog, read and respond to the posts of other writers.

The first question of the New Year sprung from a cyber conversation with Diana of Vermont: How do you feel about your name?

Reader Responses

2006-12-26T04:56:00.000-05:00

I received some warm responses to CRIB. (Several friends have told me politely, but pointedly: I don't blog. I didn't either until Trevor set this one up last year, and even then after a fairly lonesome month of posting I wandered off for a while.)
However, via blog or email,thank you for the kind words. And, yes, this story is part of a larger collection Tales of Brooklyn that I wrote in the course of the decade we lived fulltime in Vermont.
And thank you to Helen Jahan, the only Heavy Metal student in my "Arts and Education" course at Brooklyn College for taking the time to read WOLF and critique:
(Grades are already in, so I accepted the kind words
as well as the criticism as evenhanded!)
The book is amazing i must say. i love the way you draw the readers in with the descriptions.. while i was reading it i felt like i was in it it felt so real. I loved the starting lines where Adam starts off with "I'm not a geek, I'm not a jock, I'm not a goth. I'm just a guy"... this automatically drew me in; It captured my attention more. But then when i was got into the part with the conversation with the girl i did feel a bit dry but the rest of the book made up for it. The relationship between the uncle and him is amazing and funny in away because they both seems stubborn at times and does not want to show their true feelings, at least that the impression i got. i was surprised when i read the part when he met his dad in a ghost form....which was shocking and sad at the same time. i felt really bad for him. The ending was a bit predictable but its understandable because this book reaches more out to the teen generation. over all this is an extraordinary book. i am glad i was able to read it...I was able to connect to the musicians that were mentioned here so therefore I'm sure all the teen out there would feel the same. thank you very much for letting me read this book....it was a perfect get away from reality!!!

Happy holidays!

CRIB, a Christmas Story

2006-12-24T07:45:00.000-05:00

I wrote this story one Christmas Eve while working the overnight shift at Sand Hill, a lockdown facility for adolescent girls in Vermont. As the Overnighter I sat in the plump chair at the top of staircase, gave permission to use the bathroom,Midol and cough drops as needed, but most importantly just stayed awake,logging in on the computer to report on the previous fifteen minutes. That night not a teenager was stirring, and so I wrote "Crib". The highest praise I ever earned for a piece of writing came from one of the girls at Sand Hill after one of our ELA classes. She listened to the story impassively, then slipped me a note that said, "I liked it. SShh,it made me cry."

Crib

Willie walked. Willie always walked, or if he wasn’t walking, he was standing in the doorway of the building next to the thriftshop on the corner of Classon and Myrtle, the only doorway where those who passed never told him to leave. The doorway where nobody ever snarled: move it, or if I see you here again, I’m calling the cops.
Instead the people who eased past would say: excuse me, and sometimes even, how y’doin or s'up? But Willie never answered. He'd just nod and move out of their way.
When he wedged himself into the frame to get out of the wind, the smell of pine from the woven branches that encircled his head roused him from his early morning stupor. Willie scratched the back of his neck and looked up at the edge of the sky along the rooftops that turned from ash gray to white gray. Above the laundry lines a downward gust of wind blew a garbage bag to earth where it wrapped itself around the base of the streetlamp. Willie remembered it was Thursday and that he would need the bag to pick up the empties from the in front of the old lady’s house on Walworth Street. So he shuffled over to the pole and grabbed the bag that he stuffed into the deep satin pocket of the coat,loose and black that flapped like a flag in the wind. He returned to the doorway where he stamped his feet on the concrete slab and rubbed his bare, coarse hands.
When the door opened, he moved aside. He recognized the woman by the row of silver rings that lined her ear and glinted in the early morning sun as she stepped out onto Myrtle Avenue. The wind swirled bits of cellophane and candy wrappers around her feet.
“You want to stand inside?” she asked,holding the door open.
Willie peered down the long corridor. He felt the invisible wall of heat that radiated from the baseboards and moved outward,but shook his head.
“You sure?” she asked again before pulling the door shut behind her and turning the key twice. “My boyfriend’s working in the studio today. He won’t mind. It’s wicked cold.”
Willie nodded his head first yes and then no. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he headed back down Myrtle Avenue. He felt a gnawing in his stomach and wished that he had something to eat and that he had said something to the girl.
“You sure?” he mumbled to himself. “It’s wicked cold.”
Willie dragged his feet to keep his boots without laces from slipping off, leaving two long trails of gray in the cushion of fresh snow that covered the cement. He passed the red and yellow lights that blinked along the awning of the bodega just as a man stepped our of the store with the smell of frying bacon following him out the door. He held a tall lidded cup in one hand and shifted the long sandwich wrapped in wax paper under his left elbow as he crossed to the curb to place the key in the door of his blue pick-up truck.
Willie saw by the Budweiser clock in the window that it was almost seven and picked up his pace toward Walworth Street.
“It’s wicked cold,” he mumbled to himself.
He approached the squat row of red brick houses where the old lady pushed open the rusted gate. She clasped her flannel robe with one hand and with the other dragged the last dented trashcan to the curb.
“Morning, Willie,” she said, “should be a good couple a bucks here today.”
She lifted a lid from the bin of crushed Coke cans and green bottles under a layer of gnawed chicken bones.
“Gee, I hate it when folks throw trash on your bottles.”
Willie shrugged, and then picking off the remains of the wings still red with hot sauce, he flung them over his shoulder onto the street. He then took the bag from his pocket and fumbled to pull apart its vinyl sides with his numb fingers.
“I have trouble with those too,” she said, taking the bag from Willie and rubbing the top seam between her palms before pulling it open with the tips of her fingers. “It’s the arthritis,you know.But today it’s not too bad.”
Willie tossed the cans and bottles into the bag.
“If you don’t mind, Willie,” the old woman said, her gnarled fingers gripping the railing as she climbed the steps. “I could use a hand.”
Leaning down low, Willie grabbed the last few beer bottles, and then followed the footprints of the old woman’s galoshes up the stoop. He stopped at the open door.
“Come in,” she called from the far end of the wallpapered corridor before sliding open an old-fashioned maple door.
Willie waited near the iron coils of the radiator that hissed and spat from the silver valve at its side.
“Can y’help me carry this down?” she asked, pulling a crib on wheels from the bedroom. “I’m hopin' somebody might come along who could use it.”
Willie nodded. Grasping the railing, he lifted and carried his end down the stoop and together they set the crib on the sidewalk.
“How about a couple a my muffins? I just baked ‘em.”
Willie nodded and sat himself down on a concrete step and watched the white haired woman duck into the alcove below the stairs. He sat hunched with his arms crossed over his knees and studied the crib. He admired the decal on its headboard, three rings of tiny blue blowers. He liked the lacy pillow on which lay a fleecy black lamb with an embroidered pink nose.
A van rolled up to the curb. Its windows were darkly tinted and on the side door was painted in script: Church of the Incoming Saints. The window slid down and the smooth skinned face of the driver leaned out.
“Wh’d’a’y’rob a daycare?”
Willie stared back dully at the talking face.
“The crib, where’d y’get it?”
Willie shrugged.
“I ought’a just take it, but I’ll give y’two bucks for it.”
Willie shrugged again, then pointed to the old woman who came out of the house, carrying a tin pie plate with two grainy yellow muffins and a steaming cup of coffee which she handed to Willie who wrapped his cold hands around the hot ceramic and closed his eyes to feel the steam on his lids.
“Morning,” she said to the short, balding man, sleekly bulging under a knee length leather coat.
He slid like a seal from a rock as he moved from the seat of the van to the sidewalk.
“Hello, ma’am,” he replied, in a much softer tone than he had used with Willie. “By any chance, is that your crib?”
“Was my grandson’s, but he’s long grown out of it.”
“I’d like it for my daughter, she’s due any day now. That is if y’don’t need it.”
“We’re not expecting any more babies in this family. My youngest in Queens just turned forty seven.”
“Well, then I guess I’ll take it off your hands,” he said pushing the crib toward the curb.
Willie wolfed down the second corn muffin, then licked the tip of his index finger so that the crumbs on the tine would stick to it. Meanwhile the man slid open the door and, lifting the crib over the snow bank, set it down on the beige carpet that lined the floor of the van.
“Thanks, lady,” he said before sidling back up into the driver’s seat.
“You’re more than welcome. Just glad t’see it go t’somebody could use it.”
Tilting back his cup, Willie sipped down the last sweet drop as the van drove off. He placed the cup on the empty tin plate and handed it to the woman.
“Well, I got work t’do, she said, heading back into the house. “See y’next week, Willie.”
Willie half smiled as he rose and brushed the soft snow off the back of his coat. Bottles and cans clattered in the sack he tossed over his shoulder while like some urban Santa he slid in his loose boots back toward Myrtle Avenue.
Passing the bodega on the corner, he glanced again at the Budweiser clock in the window. He saw that he had two more hours before the supermarket where he could redeem his collection for cash would be open. On the dumpster he noticed a stack of outdated newspapers bound with twine. The twine was loose enough that he could peel off pages of the Daily News to crumple and tuck in fistfuls under his shirt. He then picked up his bag and made his way toward the playground on Classon Avenue to sleep on a bench until nine.

***********************************************************************
The alarm rang at seven. Gloria reached down and yanked the plug from the wall, dimly wondering what she would wear. To get out of bed she had to roll onto her right side and slowly push herself up into a sitting position. She lifted her feet into view so she could examine her swollen ankles. She groaned and let them drop back heavily to the floor.
Her tee shirt crept over her belly and the stretchy front panel of her pants seemed about to pop.
“C’mon, Gloria, you’re gonna be late,” her aunt scolded as she climbed the stairs.
Gloria crossed to her dresser and stood on tiptoes to see her full torso in the mirror.
“I’m not going.”
“Gloria, you gotta go,” replied her aunt who stood in the doorway, her hand on her chest, breathing heavily with the exertion of her climb.
“I feel sick. I can’t go,” Gloria lied.
The queasiness that had kept her home the first two months had passed. Now she just felt sick at the sight of herself in her clothes, extra-large shirts that clung to the globe of her once flat stomach.
“You sure you’re not lying to me?”
Gloria’s eyes became filmy and her lower lip quivered. She spluttered and then the deluge of tears poured down her cheeks.
“I hate myself. Look at me, I look like a blimp. What am I going to do? I’m so scared.”
Gloria’s aunt stretched her short arms as far as they could reach around her niece.
“Baby, it’s gonna be alright, everything’s gonna be alright.”
“But look at me! I’m ugly!”
“You’re not ugly, you’re beautiful.”
“Yeah, right,” said Gloria, grimacing at her image in the mirror.
“Well,. sure you look ugly when you make a face like that.”
Gloria’s aunt pulled up the faded stretched-out shirt to reveal her rounded belly, firm and smooth as an acorn. She ran her pudgy hand over her niece’s taut skin when suddenly the surface undulated with a movement in response from below.
Gloria smiled.
“Do you see how beautiful you are?” she asked, gazing at Gloria’s beaming reflection in the mirror. “ Not that I’m sayin’ it ain’t gonna be hard, and that I don’t wish this was something for you to deal with later on. But this is the way it is, and we’re gonna make it work, okay?”
Gloria sniffled and nodded.
“Now you stop feeling sorry for yourself and come down to breakfast.”
Gloria followed her aunt down to the kitchen where on a blue plate she had stacked three waffles, piled high with strawberries and topped with a swirl of cream.
“You’re the best,” Gloria said, pulling her chair way back from the table.
“Now make sure you finish every drop a that milk,” her aunt scolded as she drained her own cup of tea before rinsing it out at the sink. “I gotta be at work by nine. What are you doin’ this morning?”
“I dunno.”
Her aunt took a ten and two fives from her wallet and set them down next to Gloria’s plate.
“Why don’t you go downtown and buy a little something for the baby?”
“That’d be nice.”
Her aunt set four more singles down on the table.
“And here’s carfare, I don’t want you walking downtown, okay?”
“I promise,” she said through a mouthful of waffle.
************************************
On the slats of the wooden bench in the playground, crumpled newspaper rustling around him, Willie slept. And as he slept he dreamt he was a boy again in the fields behind his grandmother’s house where with a long knife he cut himself a piece of sugar cane, and with its raw sweetness, other memories filled him with a vague warmth.
Then the electronic bells tolled. From the speakers atop the aluminum sided church across the street blared the tones of “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem,” retrieving Willie from his tropical island dream back to the cold, damp playground in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn.
Stiff from having lain huddled for two hours on the bench, Willie slowly unfolded his knees from his chest. The soft snow that had fallen at dawn was now soupy and brown. He reached under the bench for his cans and bottles, but the bag was gone.
Once Willie had woken to the sound of clattering cans as two dogs fought over a chicken bone at the bottom of his ripped bag. But this time it had not been marauding dogs. Someone had taken it.
Shoulders slumped Willie shuffled by the see-saws, out of the park and toward the high stooped houses of Classon Avenue.
********************************************
Gloria took her uncle’s goose down vest from the hook in the hall and zipped it up over the jacket that she could no longer close. She stepped out onto the porch and shivered with the cold. Classon Avenue was brown with dingy slush and not even the sight of the Christmas decorations in front of the houses cheered her.
Every year since she was big enough to carry the plastic figures from the house to the patch of yard outside the ground floor windows, it had been Gloria’s job to set up the nativity scene. And ever since she was a little girl, she delighted in wrapping her arms around the kneeling Joseph and carrying him from the basement and setting him down in the plywood stable, and then going back for Mary and then the shepherds and the sheep, and then waiting for midnight Christmas Eve to bring them the baby Jesus who she would tuck into the straw-filled milk crate.
This year though Gloria had no interest in Christmas, so her aunt had to set up the scene without her while her uncle had to remember to plug in the lights each night.
Gripping the iron rail tightly, Gloria felt each step carefully with the toe of her boot before placing weight on her foot. A slight girl who had always moved quickly and never with caution, Gloria now found herself eight months pregnant and unable to see the ground beneath her or the extension chord that her uncle had run from the manager up the stairs and into the hall outlet.
When she reached the bottom step, her boot slid under it and she lurched forward. In that moment she felt the dread of hitting the cement and gasped,just as two hands reached out and firmly clamped her arm.
Gloria regained her balance and braced herself against the fence, but the stranger still grasped her arm tightly.
He wore a loose black coat that flapped in the wind. His boots had no laces, and he smelt like garbage.
“I’m okay, really,” Gloria said, pulling away from his bony grip.
He let go and murmured, “I’m okay, really,” before slogging off down the street.
Gloria waited until the stranger was out of sight.
***************************************
Willie turned the corner from Classon Avenue onto Myrtle where a jagged wind pelted his face. Ducking into his doorway next to the thrift shop, he stomped his feet and blew into his raw cupped hands.
When the teenage girl came around the corner, he watched.She stood at the bus stop with her shoulders hunched up to her ears and her cheeks buried in the pillowy black vest she wore over her jacket.
When after a few minutes the bus did not come, she turned to survey the store behind her. The shelves of its window were neatly arranged with boxes of costume jewelry, rows of used books and bins of old record albums and assorted toys and gadgets.
From his doorway Willie observed how the girl’s head popped up past her collar and her eyes gleamed. There on the sidewalk in front of the shop were larger items for sale: a row of battered bikes, five bar stools and a crib—a white crib decorated with three ringlets of tiny blue flowers. The owner of the shop came out untangling a string of small lights that he wrapped around the handlebars of the bicycles.
“How much y’want for the crib?” the girl asked.
“Fifty dolluhs.”
“I can give y’twunny.”
“Twunny, w’a’yuh kiddin’ me? I paid double that myself.”
With a shrug the girl headed back toward the curb.
“Wait,” the man in the leather coat called after her. “Gimme twunny an’ I’ll hold it f’you.”
“Twunny just t’hold it?”
“Okay, ten,” the man said.
Gloria wasn’t sure where she’d get the other forty dollars, but she wanted the crib, so she reached into the pocket of the vest and unfolded the bills her aunt had given her.
“Come back by tomorr’a,” he said, nodding toward a shelf in the window where a stuffed animal was perched on a lacy pillow, “an’ I’ll throw in the teddy bear.”
“It’s a lamb,” said Gloria handing him the ten as the B54 rolled up to the bus stop.
“Whatever,” said the man, tucking the bill into his bulging wallet.
Willie watched from the doorway as Gloria waddled over to get on the bus.
The accordion doors folded behind her and slush splattered from the beneath the wheels as the B54 pulled off down Myrtle Avenue. The shopkeeper tucked the wallet back into his pocket as a tall woman with a fur hat stopped and examined the crib.
“Looks new,” she commented.
“Yeah, never been used,” the shopkeeper lied. “It’s a factory second, just got a couple a scratches on the side.”
“How much?”
“Fifty bucks.”
“I’ll give you thirty.”
“Thirty five n’you got a deal.”
“You take Master Card?”
“Sure, c’mon.”
With her high heels click clacking the woman followed him inside.
Willie crossed over to the thrift shop doorway and peered down the dim aisle where the two stood at the counter. Silently he moved toward the crib, slid his finger around the tails and pushed.
Once out of range of the thrift shop window, Willie broke into a jog, his sloshing steps accompanied by the squealing wheels of the crib.
And as Willie ran, he smiled to himself at the thought of the girl and the old woman and the shopkeeper all at once. He thought of how the girl would smile when she found the crib outside her door, and he remembered the old woman’s words, “I was hopin’ somebody’d come along who could use it.” Then Willie laughed to himself at the thought of the shopkeeper’s face when he’d come out on the sidewalk and see that the crib was gone.
Then a hand clapped down on his shoulder.
“Yo, where y’goin’ w’the crib?”
Willie froze. He wanted to say he didn’t’ take it, but all he could do was to point at himself and nod his head furiously up and down.
“Okay, okay, it’s yours. So wha’d’y’want for it?”
Willie’s cheek twitched. He stared at the man who he vaguely recognized from the neighborhood, but he couldn’t recall whether his face meant trouble or not.
“I’ll give y’ten bucks for it.”
Willie hesitated. He still could see a blurry picture in his mind of the girl’s face. He still wanted to roll the crib over to that stoop where she had stumbled that morning and wait for her.
But from the diner on the corner the smell of grilled meat filled his nostrils and lightened his head. Dimly he recalled his stolen bag of cans and bottles.
“C’mon, y’want it or not,” the man said holding out a ten dollar bill. “I don’t got all day.”
Willie took the money and watched the man roll the crib over to a blue pick-up truck, take down the tailgate and load the crib onto the back. Before the truck pulled away from the curb, Willie was hurrying over to the diner where he pushed open the glass door and was momentarily overwhelmed by the spicy aromas.
“C’mon in or get out, but don’t stand there with the door open. I’m freezing,” shouted the woman at the cash register.
Willie stepped onto to the tiled floor. He went to sit at one of the booths with the red cushioned seats, but the waitress shot him a threatening look and nodded her head toward the counter.
Timidly Willie sat himself down on a stool and stared at the menu the waitress slammed down before him. He pointed toward a picture of a cheeseburger and a basket of fries.
“You got money?”
After Willie opened his hand, she scribbled down his order and took the crumbled ten dollar bill from his palm. She rang up the order and placed his change on the rubber mat, then she leaned into the long narrow window behind her and clipped the yellow slip to the wire over the grill.
“Burger deluxe,” she called to the cook. “And put a rush on it.”
Willie lifted his feet from the railing at the counter and felt his stool turn slowly to the left. As he spun, he surveyed the food being eaten by the customers seated at the booths along the window.
There was the gleaming platter of pork chops and mashed potatoes accompanied by a saucer of bright green peas; a plate of spaghetti bordered by meatballs and speckled with cheese; a steaming bowl of soup and a toasted English muffin glistening with melted butter. The sight of ice cubes bobbing in a tall glass of Coke-a-cola made Willie thirsty.
He was about to order a large Coke for himself when rotating back toward the counter, he saw the pinched face of the surly waitress. Instead of setting down flatware on a place mat, she slid his burger off the white plate and into a styrofoam container, jerking her head in the direction of the door.
Willie noticed three bristly hairs on her pointy chin and wanted to say that he was supposed to get fries, but when the cook hunched down on his side of the cut away window to leer out at him, Willie set his eyes on the linoleum tiles and moved toward the door, evading the stares of the diners who watched his scuffling exit.
On the street Willie tucked the container under his shirt next to his skin as he walked with long strides back to his doorway. He glanced about to be sure none of the stray dogs that roamed the neighborhood had followed him, then took out the white container and popped it open. Wrapping his numb fingers around the warm bun, he dropped the container to the ground as his teeth sank into the soft yellow bread. He felt the crunch of the bacon and the silkiness of the melted cheese as the hot meat crumbled in his mouth. Barely taking a breath he devoured the burger and for a moment felt full. But then the hunger assailed him again. Willie reached through the hole in his pocket, into the lining of his coat searching for his change, two dimes and a five dollar bill—enough for a second burger.
But then Willie felt a growing discomfort. It was a pressure around the rim of his head like a tightening steel band, and in his stomach he felt a queasiness that made him think that maybe the beef had been bad or that he had eaten it too quickly. But Willie knew something else was bothering him. Simultaneously he pictured the pregnant girl on Classon Avenue and a second burger.
Willie moved from the doorway in the direction of the diner. But he stopped before the thrift shop. There in the window on the shelf beside an open box of silverware, he saw a fleecy black lamb with a tiny pink nose on a lacy pillow.
Willie moved toward the door, but then when he stepped onto the mat, he was startled by the sound of a buzzer. The shopkeeper who was seated on a barstool with his short legs dangling toward the floor, jumped down and hurried toward Willie, flicking his hand from the wrist.
“Out a’here, out, out.”
The mat continued to buzz as Willie stood his ground and held out the five-dollar bill in his hand.
“Well, wha’d’a y’want?” he asked gruffly.
Willie pointed toward the fleecey lamb. The man snapped the bill from Willie’s hand, careful not to touch his skin.
“Take it an’ get outta here,” he said adding the bill to the stack in his wallet, returning to his stool by the cash register.
Willie gently slid his hands beneath the pillow and moved back toward the door, his eyes set on the lamb. The mat buzzed beneath him, and he wanted to ask for a bag.
“Wha’d y’waitin’ for, I told y’t’get out a here.”
Outside flints of hail rained down on the Avenue. For a moment Willie stood beneath the open awning.
“What, you deaf?” the shopkeeper barked out the door. “Now get out a here!”
Balancing the gift on one hand, he tucked it below his shirt while his other gripped his flapping coat over it. He walked over to the curb where he stood and watched a B54 coming down the avenue. As the light changed and the bus crossed the intersection, the driver honked, but Willie didn’t move. The bus stopped in front of Willie who peered through the wet, silvery windshield. The bus’ double doors unfolded and a flood of teenagers washed onto the sidewalk, shoving and laughing and cursing at one another. Willie stepped onto the bus and looked down the aisle.
“You getting’ on or what?” the driver asked with irritation.
Willie shook his head and backed off the bus. He hurried across the street to the playground, hugging the lamb close to his chest. He pulled back the slit in the chain length fence and ducked into the park where he squeezed himself into the doorway beneath the eaves of the small brick building that housed the locked lavatories. Willie kept his eye on the bus stop, feeling a rush of excitement every time a B54 approached and an ebbing sense of disappointment when the girl did not appear.
Afternoon wavered into evening and bus after bus came and went. Careful not to crush the gift,Willie squatted down and leaned his head against the brick, nodding off into a state of semi-sleep, every few minutes shaking himself awake to keep watch.
*******************************

Pins and needles pricked her toes, and her swollen ankles throbbed from the long walk from downtown, but Gloria was happy carrying the big blue tub home. She didn’t regret having added her busfare to her ten-dollar budget to buy the tub, molded in the shape of a tugboat. It was cumbersome to carry, but she delighted in the thought of her baby splashing in it and laughing at the sound of the red rubber horn on its wheel.
As Gloria was passing beneath the bare sycamores that lined Fort Green Park, pellets of ice began to ricochet off the hoods of the parked cars. She held the tub upside-down over her head and kept walking past the steel roll gates splattered with graffiti, the vacant lots strewn with tires, coils of barbed wire, shattered glass and broken strollers. Grand Street, Steuben, Ryerson, Hall—she counted each block as she moved slowly, but steadily down Myrtle Avenue.
By the time Gloria approached Classon, she felt the heaviness of her belly pressing downward and the ache that radiated up her legs and across her lower back. She had to sit down. She entered the playground through a slash in the chain link fence and sat down heavily on a bench. She set the tub beside her and leaned back, placing her hands around the dome on her lap and for a moment shut her eyes, not caring that the hail had turned into rain, the cold droplets running down her cheeks.
Suddenly from beneath her half-shut lids, she saw a movement by the door of the men’s bathroom. She opened her eyes and thought at first the wind had stirred a heap of garbage, but then the heap of garbage rose, and she saw it was a man.
Gloria grabbed the tub and hurried across the playground past the swings and back out onto the street. As she turned the corner she felt relieved that her own stoop was in sight, but when she glanced over her shoulder, she saw the man from the playground was following her. More alarming was that his bent arm was concealed under his coat where something bulged from beneath. Gloria quickened her pace, her heart beating more wildly as she heard a volley of not so distant gunshots.
Nearing her house, she saw that every window was dark. No one was home. Exhausted and fearful, she gripped the railing and climbed the steps as the dark figure stood watching her ascent. She knew that as she fumbled with the keys, he could easily overtake her.
Then a car horn blared.
“Hey, cupcake!”
Gloria turned and saw the dark figure shuffle away just as her uncle pulled up to the curb in his pick-up truck that shimmered a silvery blue in the falling rain.
“Check this out,” he called, stepping out of the cab and around to the back of the truck where he lowered the tailgate. He lifted the crib onto the sidewalk, the street lamp shining down on it like a spotlight. Gloria looked on in amazement.
“My crib, how’d you get it?”
“Let’s just say I got my connections,” he said as he carried the crib up the steps and into the hallway where he flipped on the switch and lit up the Nativity scene below.
For a moment Gloria admired the swirling white and blue curves of Mary’s robe and the way Joseph’s hands clasped each other and rested peacefully on his bent knee.
“C’mon in and close the door,” her uncle called from inside.
“I’m comin’,” she replied, but then she noticed that the straw filled milk crate was no longer empty. In it lay a little stuffed black lamb on a white lacy pillow. Carefully she moved down the steps toward the manger. She froze when from the alley stepped the stranger.
She opened her mouth to call out for her uncle, but no sound came. Then the dark figure moved closer, his big buttonless coat, flapping over its thin body, the light from the nativity casting a glow on the visitor who stared down at his worn boots.
And in that light Gloria saw a young man, not much older than herself, the same stranger who had caught her arm and broke her fall that morning. She looked more closely and could see that his eyes conveyed no danger—just a meager hope as he stood looking down at the lamb.
“Cupcake, you okay?” he uncle called from the doorway.
“Fine,” said Gloria as the young man backed away from the yard.
“Merry Christmas,” Gloria said to him as she headed back up the stairs.
Willie smiled and shook with an odd quiver.
“Merry Christmas,” he murmured, trying to keep the sound of her voice in his mind as he shuffled down the street, around the corner and back to his doorway by the thrift shop.
“Merry Christmas,” he said to himself. “Merry Christmas.”
People passed with their heads tucked down into their coats as they hurried home down Myrtle Avenue.
“Merry Christmas,” Willie kept repeating, smiling more broadly each time a stranger replied.
“Merry Christmas.”
Then from the crowd of passing strangers emerged the girl who lived in this building, the one from the morning with the row of silver rings down her ear. Raindrops glistened against the metal on her face and zigzagged down her cheeks.
“Hi,” she said, pressing the bell in the doorframe.
“Merry Christmas,” Willie said again.
“Merry Christmas to you, too,” she replied.
A tall, broad shouldered man opened the door. He wore a black tank top splattered with paint and around his muscular arm was tattooed a ring of thorns. He smiled and bent his head to the side to dip down and kiss the young woman’s neck.
“Merry Chrismas,” Willie said again.
“Hey, Merry Christmas,” he replied.
His girlfriend whispered something in his ear.
“Sure, why not?” he replied.
“You want to come in and have something to eat?” she asked Willie.
Willie froze and his smile faded. He stared at the couple who stood framed in the doorway. He looked behind himself to see if someone else was there, someone they were speaking to. But no one was there.
“I’m serious, man,” he said. “I just made some awesome soup.”
“C’mon,” urged the girl. “Just for a little while.”
Willie struggled to form the sounds in his mouth, his eyes squinting beneath his furrow brow.
“Sure, why not” he heard himself say.
Then as he followed the couple down the hall into their apartment filled with guests, it felt so good he just kept saying, “Sure, why not.”
While Willie moved through the crowd, people kept saying merry Christmas, man, merry Christmas, so Willie just kept saying merry Christmas, man, merry Christmas back. And Willie felt again the vague warmth from the dream he had that afternoon on the bench in the playground, only this time he was awake.
"Merry Christmas, man, merry Christmas."

POV Jessica

2006-12-22T19:37:00.000-05:00

Recently a young journalist came to our wreck of a house on the edge of the cemetery to interview Ben and me about our collaboration.

Before she arrived, I recalled Caryl Churchill, the British playwright, sharing how she resented those journalists who would come to her home for an interview and end up commenting in their column about the dirty dishes in her sink: a good writer/slovenly housekeeper sort of angle. (Not that I put myself in Churchill's league; as a dramatist she's been first rate for decades. I saw TOP GIRLS 4x's when it played Joe Papp's public theater a lifetime, well maybe only 20 years ago; but I too have dirty dishes.)

I looked down at the splintery floor with patches of half torn up linoleum; up at the dangling web of electrical wires hanging from the ceiling from which hung the cheap chandelier dangerously close to eye level; I inhaled deeply to smell the moldering house and thought this could get ugly.

But Jessica didn't raise an eyebrow, only mentioning that the cemetery just beyond our chain link fence had inspired our current novel in progress,A Grave Digger's House.

Thank you, Jessica.

I love a woman who loves her job, and Jessica feels
happy with hers as a feature writer, but does have
aspirations-- though little time to write fiction.

Here's what she wrote:

Writing definitely can be a lonely task. Often the case is that no one else can really help you get thoughts out of your mind and onto the page, since at times it is hard enough for you to do it yourself. To explain what you want to say to another person can be a difficult thing. And, in the case of writer’s block, it tends to just be up to you to figure out a way to get beyond it.

I personally find it difficult to collaborate, in part because of scheduling and also because it can be hard to blend two different styles of writing and thinking. Even so, it also seems like something that would be fun to do at some point.

However, as lonely as it can be, it is certainly very rewarding. It’s a great feeling to see the pages of a notebook fill up with your own creative thoughts. I just wish I had more time to work on it!

POV Margot

2006-12-22T08:01:00.000-05:00

I enjoy this blog-- a cyber space where we can unfurl some of the wounded up ideas all of us writers have in our heads about our craft. In our day to day lives we assume other personas and for most of us we can't go around waving a flag that says "writer" because
Most people will wave back a flag that says "so what?"
But here blogging all those writer thoughts can freely flap in the wind.
And then amazingly I log on and other writers' thoughts are flapping alongside the ones I ran up the flagpost.
A very pleasant sight.

This from Margot:
I have many thoughts about writing, but then, I'm not published as a fiction writer (yet). I'm not sure I could ever collaborate on a novel, because my mind works in strange ways and I'm a control freak. But I've certainly spun a tale with other people, and it's great fun. My sister and I collaborate on her cable access show and occasionally on her blog (I can't figure out links, but it's deadbeatdirt on Blogger). She does all the heavy lifting (ie, video editing), and we come up with ideas and partial scripts together. It reminds me of the March sisters in Little Women who would put on plays-- that was always my ideal!

But back to writing. Right now I'm thinking a lot about the process of selling my novel. Yes, selling it. It sounds crass, but I don't think there's a way around it. My dad is an avant-garde composer who makes his living teaching at a university, so I always thought it was enough to be an "artist" and you'd make money somehow. I found out the hard way this doesn't work, or only for the lucky few!

Not that I think I can make money from my writing; I'd be happy just to see it in print, in a store. So I'm polishing my query and practicing writing a "hook" Every day I visit Miss Snark the literary agent's blog, where she savages the hooks of unpublished writers like me. (I didn't submit mine--not brave enough yet!) Miss Snark and I don't really see eye to eye in our literary tastes (except for loving Thomas Pynchon), but she's taught me a lot via the blog about how agents work and think. I no longer see them as distant or scary, but as bored, capricious, biased people like me. Now, the question is, how can I hit the right one on the right day?

Mel's comments on revision were great. The only tip I know is this: Put it in a drawer for a few months. Don't let yourself read your ms. until you can see it with a fresh eye. When I do this, I find myself making changes that actually work.

2:53 PM

Two Thumbs Up

2006-12-20T16:44:00.000-05:00

Several writer friends viewed and gave two thumbs up on the Peter Miller PODcast described in yesterday's blog.

To see the interview with this humane, intuitive and yet successful agent, go to:

www.pmalitfilm.com
Click on: Breaking News; click on: PODcast.

Peter Miller PODcast

2006-12-19T06:08:00.000-05:00

I just viewed the most remarkable PODcast-- granted it was my first, but I doubt I will ever see a more remarkable interview.

Peter Miller of PMA Literary and Film Agency defies every cliche in my head about agents. Never having met an actual agent, there are many: agents are aloof, agents are inaccessible, agents are snobs...

Peter Miller has soul.

You must watch it, just to rekindle hope that the business of books is not solely in the hands of moneycrunchers.
They're also in the hands of Peter Miller,

Check it out:
Thanks Eileen & Ben,

Note a recent PodCast with me below as a P.S. which I hope you can view. If the link doesn't work, go to my website and click on Breaking News - Podcast.

Happy Holidays and great success in 2007,

Peter Miller, President

On the (Complicated) Nature of POD

2006-12-18T17:41:00.000-05:00

From: audrey@writerschatroom.com
To: ebenreilly@aol.com
Sent: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 11:56 AM
Subject: Re: New Novel by Mom & Son Team

Hi,

Sheela Wolford had contacted me with info about your book too. Sorry for the delay, but I've been inundated with guest suggestions lately.

I'm a bit confused here. Sheela said you live in NY, but you're published in the UK? Is Braiswick a traditional publisher or subsidy? I can't seem to find anything about them listed anywhere, other than their own site. Are your books in book stores in the US?

I just need to know where you could fit into our group. :)

Good luck with your book! I wish I could write with my son. But we are like night and day. I don't understand the worlds he writes about, and he thinks mine are boring. Maybe someday.

Audrey

--------------------------------------------
The Writer's Chatroom
Education and Support for Writers
http://writerschatroom.com

Audrey--
I must have gotten my chatrooms crossed. My editor at Braiswick, Trevor Lockwood, had put me in touch w. several-- but I do recall Sheela kindly making a connection, which must be you!

As for Braiswick, yes, in popular terminology it is an "independent", in fact very independent. This is the second novel of ours Braiswick has published, primarily out of the kindness of its founder/editor's heart.

Back in 2004 our first novel spent 7 months in the hands of the Executive Editor at Harper Collins, Rosemary Brosnan, who had actually requested the ms. based on her review of sample chapters. When after much
reassurance from a colleague who had successfully published several titles w. HC (Mel Glenn www.melglenn.com coauthor of my 3rd novel Zombie Girl & the Blue Tattoo), she declined, I was (as we all our initially) crushed.

That novel had been turned down previously due to its "Wiccan overtones," so I researched New Age & Wiccan publishers and met up with Trevor Lockwood of Braiswick, based in Felixstowe England. He loved the book and offered to publish it-- and then subsequently published WOLF.

In this day and age, what's an author to do? You flirt w. "traditional" publishers, get a wink or even a fast kiss, but when they're gone, do you sit around pining, hoping, pursuing?Or do you accept the attention
of an "independent publisher"?

I did-- and despite the shortcomings of the relationship: no distributor, no chain store, limited publicity and sales, I don't regret it. Ben and I have enjoyed book signings, workshops, interviews-- even a couple of good local reviews in Vermont (where we live some of the time.) Braiswick has also set up webpages, blogs, printed postcards-- and even run an ad in REVOLVER, the heavy metal magazine for Jan. & Feb.

And so there is no short answer when it comes to discussing POD-- it's a complicated, but in my case,
happy affair.

And, yes, collaborating w. Ben is tremendously fun. Before we began WOLF I didn't even know AC/DC let alone a single Heavy Metal song.

(BTW: PMA Lit& Film Agency in NYC offered to read WOLF-- a long shot, but the fact that it's a digitally published novel doesn't seem to be deterring at least this initial interest.)

So-- sorry for the longwinded email, but that really is the short version-- what do you write? Will have
to stop by your chatroom-- only recently met Sheela and am very much enjoying our literay dialoge.
all the best--
Eben

Chat with Audrey

2006-12-18T17:16:00.001-05:00

Recently a good friend suggested I check out Audrey's chatroom at http://writerschatroom.com.

Never having been to a chatroom, I was reluctant. I remember a story told to me by an aging ex-showgirl, circa 1940, about her friend, a nun in full regalia who after many years left the order. The aging ex-showgirl took the nun out with friends for "cocktails". The nun in street clothes, tried hard to fit in, but when a man in their company said, "Doesn't she ever talk?" She burst into tears.

Granted a chatroom provides more anonymity than a bar,
but I really didn't know what to say in a chatroom.

So, I wrote to Audrey, and she wrote back.

And an interesting chat of its own emerged.

(Maybe chatrooms are fun. Try Audrey's first!)

Chat with Audrey

2006-12-18T17:16:00.000-05:00

Mel Glenn & others on Revision

2006-12-17T12:25:00.000-05:00

Eben Reilly

2006-12-17T12:01:00.000-05:00

Blogging can be a lonely business.

Sitting on a beach, jotting down notes to stuff into bottles to fling out past the waves. (Hey, how does anyone do that anyway? Don't the bottles just come back to shore?)

Which is how blogging can feel: tossing out ideas that arrive back at your own feet.

Except when like-minded writers respond.

Mel Glenn has been a steady, acclaimed author of 14 volumes of YA poetry/fiction. (Most recently Split Image:
see www.melglenn.com ) His opinions about literature and how we make it come from hard won success in (even for seasoned writers) a tough industry.

Here are Mel's thoughts on today's blog:

"The writing process? It is torturous. I love what Dorothy Parker said - "I love having written," or as Mark Twain said - "All writing is rewriting." Cutting is always more difficult than adding. It's like cutting off a part of your arm or telling a child of your to get out of the house. It is a pain in the ass - I hate it, but it is necessary. Right now I am working on a manuscript for which the original idea must have come to me five years ago, and I can't tell you how many times I have rewritten the manuscript. I am selfish; I do not like to share, so I can't collaborate. I love my characters; I hate my characters. They are always in my head to the point where I do not dwell in real time as much as I reside in literary time. Rewriting is a pain in the ass."
*************************************************

Thanks, Mel! Anybody else care to fling out a message in a bottle our way?

Collaborating With Ben

2006-12-17T10:45:00.000-05:00

The most frequent question I've been asked at readings and by friends who have read Daughter Dedannan or Wolf is how exactly Ben and I write our books together. First I must address a fallacy: writing happens with pen in hand or fingertips tapping the keyboard.

False.

The physical act of writing is recording the vast neurological journey that the writer has already traversed.

At least that's the way it's always been for me. I might be struck by an image, invent a character and walk around for months, trampling down a path in my brain with a storyline. These are the travels Ben accompanies me on. I'll say, remember that idea I had for that story? What if? He'll say, how about? And so it goes for days, weeks and sometimes months before I even attempt to chart our course on paper.

It's also a form of entertainment. Right now I have two such journeys going on in my head. One with Ben where we frequently walk and talk about Grave Digger's House, our next novel. "What if?" I'll say. "How about?" he'll respond.
Similarly, my younger son Teddy and I have spent almost a year waiting for buses and trains, drawing on napkins in diners following the tail of Sail-- a unicycling rat who rides his tiny, home forged wheel through the tunnels and down the tracks of the NYC subway.

This for us is fun.

What our ancestors did to pass the time in the cave. Or around the turf fire. Or at the kitchen table when money was scarce, life hard and the need for storytelling immense. Long before before DVDs, cable, and Blockbuster, long before
radio and silent flicks,long before comic books and magazines, hey, long before Guttenberg we humans have reveled in the stories of our own making.

This as I said is how Ben and I initially collaborate.

Just tossing back and forth an idea,like a parent and a kid in the yard toss a ball back and forth. Only better because the ball is magically changed with each toss. Color, movement, flashing lights, we marvel as the idea becomes more vivid and alive.

Then I am the one who gladly sits before a notebook or PC for hours on end, further pursuing that original story. At that point I write a page or chapter then shout to Ben to come from another room and barrage him with the questions essential to the verisimilitude of our tale. In the case of WOLF: what song would Adam be listening to; what guitarists would he like; what alcohol would Shane drink; what kind of handgun would Luce find in the van; what classic rock albums would Adam's father have stored away in the wooden crate?

Our collaboration is a dialogue that then shifts with revisions-- when I read a chapter and Ben critiques:
guys curse more; Shane would feel worse if he were hung over; that's not how you spell Megadeath, it's Medadeth.

Ben never writes, yet he directs these stories through our ongoing dialogue.

A dialogue which colors even the drabbest days of my life with the bright lights of intuition and the landscapes of our imaginings.

So if you and a loved one haven't yet walked these roads, I suggest you try. Hey, maybe you too have a novel in the making!

Eben Reilly

2006-12-15T20:21:00.000-05:00

When you pass a new novel into the hands of a reader, there's a moment of terror. Like your mouth being an inch away from another mouth it's never kissed. Will it be well received? Will it be welcome? Will it be kissed back?

And so with WOLF.

But amazingly from the middleaged classical pianist (who nabbed the book from his wife, my daughter's high school teacher) to the security guard at my job--
everyone loves WOLF.

I'm amazed.

Readers email me, call me, corner me at work to retell me parts of my own book like they had written it!

I'm very grateful to you all for your warm welcoming
response.

Also, thanks to Jessica Lyon for her kind and cordial article in this week's Queens Courier. (Curious? Check out: www.queenscourier.com click on ARTS: that's me and Ben in the photo.)

from Adam Pierce

2006-12-13T08:07:00.001-05:00

I'm not a geek, I'm not a jock, I'm not a goth.
I'm just a guy.
I don't even like to write much.
But Luce says this would be good for me.
I've tried Ridalin, Seraquil and Lexapro and they were all
supposed to make me feel better, but they didn't. So now I'll
try Luce.
And, no, Luce isn't my girlfriend. She's Angie's girlfriend
or at least she was until Angie moved out. She's still pretty
broken-hearted about it.
That's why she was on the train that day to Vermont.
This is how I remember it.
The water must have been moving, but from where I was
sitting by the window on the Ethan Allen Express, the
Hudson River looked motionless; flat and gray with a thick
mist on its surface, the same haze that had settled in the
micrometers between my brain and skull.
In other words I felt like crap...

Meet Adam Pierce on his way to a summer in Vermont-- and a YA novel that tells the truth about being young, over-medicated and slowly aware that all you'd been told about your dead dad was a cover-up, and all that you thought you knew about yourself a lie. A story of ghosts encountered and spirits set free.

Dear friends--

Braiswick, my too good for words independent (very independent) publisher
in Felixstowe England, has just released my second YA title, again written
through close consultation with my teenage source, Ben Ressler.
Please take a moment to check out WOLF on the braiswick homepage and let me
know what you think!

from Adam Pierce

2006-12-13T08:07:00.000-05:00

BTW4

2006-02-18T10:16:00.000-05:00

BTW... yesterday I met with over 200 teens in two different schools to talk not only about how my son Ben and I wrote Daughter Dedannan, but to remind you all to take your own artistic impulses seriously. You'll be surprised how far you can go! Many of you shared your interest in writing with me: journals, comic books, mysteries, poetry, song lyrics, stories! There's a wealth of talent out there. Thanks for a fun day & keep writing!

BTW3

2006-02-02T12:50:00.000-05:00

BTW thanks to all my student-writers in Castleton where I teach,who not only enthusiastically received the idea for this poetry blog, but offered ideas for future themes. Here's 3 that they suggested: Love (a classic); Betrayal (in all its insidious forms)and Anger at the System.

Now remember, this month's theme is My Favorite Things (which can be anything from dancing in a club w. your friends till dawn or writing poetry alone in your room-- whatever turns you on!). Save poems on the 3 other themes listed for future months,
but, hey, in the meantime you can be composing poems for all of them!

Happy Writing, Eben

BTW 2

2006-02-01T08:22:00.000-05:00

BTW, did I mention yesterday that your poetry blogs will be read not only by me and other teen poets, but by my editor at Braiswick as well. Braiswick is my publisher in
Suffolk, England, and my idea, although I haven't told him yet, is to inspire all of you to write your best poems, so that at the end of 2006 we compile our best work in an anthology entitled BTW.

So remember-- writing your best poetry means re-writing. Not every poem is a"dime"" but with some effort every poem can be!

BTW

2006-01-31T09:13:00.000-05:00

BTW, by the way, this blog spot is not solely intended for the writings of Eben Reilly. It is my wish to open this space for teen writers as well. Each month I will be posting a new theme and inviting teen writers to submit their poetry on that them and inviting other writers to comment. The only 2 stipulations are that poetry relate to the theme and be well written-- that means re-written, for as every writer knows the difference between an amateur and the professional is that the amateur writes it once and says, "I'm done," while the professional keeps revising. (But also knows when to quit and share the work with the world!) Considering its February, muck season in Vermont, and many writers/artists I know are feeling the affects of lack of light, I propose the theme for this month be: My Favorite Things. (What gives you a lift when you're feeling down: time spent with friends: including canines and horses; physical activities: running a couple of miles, swimming, sitting under a tree in summer; books, poetry, guitar, heavy metal... The list is as long as poets are different.) I look jforward to reading your poetry! (I suggest you invent a pen-name for yourself-- be creative!)

Eben Reilly: Back to Brooklyn

2006-01-31T08:43:00.000-05:00

Eben Reilly is considering going back to Brooklyn. Can you believe that?

OK, first steps first. Does anyone know anyone who would like to buy some acreage at Bomoseen, VT. This is good land, with road frontage, not far from great skiing, with a gorgeous lake just half a mile away.

And (the best bit) you'll still have Eben Reilly as your neigbor.

Back to Brooklyn

2005-12-01T09:48:00.000-05:00

After two years of researching Irish mythology, legend, history and social habits
of the ancients, I am feeling a tug on my other roots firmly planted, not exactly in America, but a sort of country all it's own: Brooklyn.
More specifically Brooklyn of the 1950's and 6o's.

Right now I'm working on a YA book entitled: Public Art and The Butcher Boy
which documents the rise of one artist from the saw dusted floor of his father's butcher shop to semi-local fame (but very little fortune) as a public artist in NYC. (An actual biography of sculptor Rob Ressler whose most recent work is Beacon, a 25' bronze, the 9/11 Memorial for Brooklyn.) Well into chapter one
I now realize, that the story also profiles our beloved borough.

And as we all know-- details are everything. So, if you're from Brooklyn, or simply have an affinity (or passion) for the place, I'd like to hear from you.

Did you grow up (or spend time in) Brooklyn in the 50's or 60's? What neighborhood? What do you recall most vividly?

Thx for sharing!

Thx to Braiswick

2005-11-21T19:00:00.000-05:00

As a new author, well as an author who had been writing & free lancing children's literature for a decade but was a neophyte to book publishing,
I owe a big, big thank you to Trevor Lockwood of Braiswick at By Design.
Given the current log jam in conventional publishing, at least here in the States, I had begun my collection of laudatory rejection letters that said good writing, but not what we're doing right now. (When in fact publishers are taking on authors who won't see their books in print for another 2 or 3 years.) Braiswick liked what I wrote, how I wrote it, gave me direction & freedom at the same time and helped my first YA novel see the light of day before I was too demoralized by the search for a publisher to actually enjoy holding my first book in my hands. (With two more titles lined up for 2006 & 2007, I feel a tremendous surge of energy that conventional publishers simply wouldn't encourage or support. Thx. again Braiswick!)

Daughter Dedannan and the Cauldron of Undry

2005-11-21T11:19:00.000-05:00

This is a story filled with Irish banshees and wild boars and Celtic warriors, where the Dedannan tribe, early settlers on shores of the emerald isle travel through the history of Ireland. Fantasy mixed with sociological detail will appeal to a young adult audience looking for more.

The idea for the book began when my 12-year-old son Ben Ressler of Castleton, Vermont, USA told his mom, writer Eileen Ressler, a story filled with Irish banshees and wild boars and Celtic warriors.

So I researched our family history, starting with 1905 when my grandmother Kitty Reilly left the family homestead in Cavan, Ireland.

I kept probing until a whole world of ancient custom and mythology opened up. Two years later I had completed this novel about the mythical Dedannan tribe who, according to legend, were among the first to settle on shores of the emerald isle.

Entwining fantasy with precise sociological detail about ancient Ireland, the novel was first written for a young adult audience but will draw in any reader with a taste for Irish myth or history.

Hope you like it - you can buy it from Amazon or from me