Chronicles of an Ordinary Woman

2011-12-12T21:53:00.000-08:00

Nahid Rachlin giving a workshop in Assissi, Italy

She is a great friend, wonderful teacher, and wonderful writer!!

Linda Rader Overman's Letters Between Us on Nook

2011-12-08T20:04:00.000-08:00

Letters Between Us is available on Nook!!

Linda Rader Overman and Pictures on the Wall of My Life needs to more obvious

2011-11-15T07:03:00.001-08:00

So I am marketing my latest novel, Pictures on the Wall of My Life, and my query letter gets the usual thanks, but no thanks on the first round. Then there are those agents/publishers who are interested in taking a look at more, 5 pages, a chapter, 25 pages, 50 pages, the entire manuscript. And I dutifully send out one at a time and wait for a response so as not to have multiple submissions. But then, I think, well at least they are willing to check it out. And I have gotten over that first hurdle with an agent here or there. But then I get this kind of rejection:

"I think you’re a talented and original writer. That makes it all the harder to say that I’m not confident that I can find a publisher for you in the current difficult market for literary fiction. Editors seem exceedingly cautious right now about acquiring anything but the most obvious fiction."

Hmmmpffff...so perhaps I should follow Quentin Rowan's plagiarizing approach, when he wrote what Little Brown promoted as the new classic spy novel, just steal from about 13 other classic spy novels as Jeremy Duns discovered and revealed in his blog, The Debrief.

This was not the first time Little Brown boasted of an amazing new brilliant work...anyone remember Harvard undergraduate Kaavya Viswanathan ’08, “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” that contained several passages strikingly similar to two books by Megan F. McCafferty—the 2001 novel “Sloppy Firsts” and the 2003 novel “Second Helpings.” ?????

I suppose I should be "that original" rather than write from a place of my own original thought as my fictional memoir Pictures on the Wall of My Life is. Maybe I should have just "borrowed" everything like Quentin Rowan (aka QR Markham) has.

It seems that since my talented and original idea is just not that obvious I need to appropriate work from others...to even get noticed. There should be a special place in hell for writers who plagiarize.

Why does this make me so damn mad?

Linda Rader Overman is proud of her daughter

2011-08-30T18:03:00.000-07:00

Watch this clip from "Hell's Kitchen" which aired 8/29, at 11:44 in to the segment the chefs go shopping at Ted Baker, the boutique our daughter Deva used to work at on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hiils. And she helped style the chefs...she is wearing a short white skirt...it is great fun to see our Deva on TV! Yahoo!

Hell's Kitchen episode 12 Part 1 from Season 9 with our daughter Deva is it!

Linda Rader Overman honors her publisher along with state of Texas

2011-08-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

A salute to Susan Bright publisher of a 35-year-old issue-based literary publishing house which has published 350 titles presenting the work of almost 500 national and international writers. Susan devoted time, dedication and energy in publishing my first novel, Letters Between Us, but sadly and tragically met her untimely death New Year's week 2010 has been honored by the State legislature of Texas.
House Resolution 176 in honor of Susan Bright

"WHEREAS, Susan Bright made a lasting impact in the lives of countless people through her dedication to literature and to myriad worthy causes, and those who were privileged to share in her love and affection will forever hold her close in their hearts.... "

God be with you Susan! Your legacy and larger than life spirit and driving force remains in Plain View Press with the recent good news that it has achieved---"Non-profit Status!
Plain View Press has converted to a non-profit corporation, a decision made to insure the ongoing operation and stability of the press. It was important to resolve certain legal and financial issues to put the press on a firm footing. More to come as we initiate fundraising events and membership participation in the press. Thanks to John Andrews, Sherry Pilisko, and Pam Knight, we are now on a new path of exciting oportunities. The Press hopes to reopen submissions this fall under this new structure."

Linda Rader Overman thanks Kindle purchasers of Letters Between Us

2011-07-29T02:41:00.001-07:00

Many thanks to those Kindle purchasers of Letters Between Us for pushing my novel's standing in Kindle to Amazon Bestsellers Rank Kindle Edition #61,389 out of 750,000. I am humbled and grateful!

Linda Rader Overman honors a mentor of long ago PASSINGs: Phyllis Gebauer . . .

2011-06-21T22:07:00.000-07:00

PASSINGS: Phyllis Gebauer . . .

Rest in peace Phyllis Gebauer, my teacher and mentor of so long ago, I will never forget you, nor ever be able to thank you for mentioning me during the recent Thomas Pynchon donation ceremony at UCLA. Blessings to you for helping me shepherd my nascent novel back in 1990 (published in 2008) Letters Between Us in your class at UCLA Extension. God carries your soul into the light!

Letters Between Us by Linda Rader Overman on Kindle

2011-02-28T17:31:00.000-08:00

Finally the wait is over and my novel is on
KINDLE

Linda Rader Overman presents Pictures on the Wall of My Life

2011-01-09T19:19:00.000-08:00

At the Hawaii International Conference on the Arts & Humanities I gave my talk on my new novel Pictures on the Wall of My Life...my personal paparrazo (husband Jim) did his best to catch the spirit of the talk and large crowds that attended....I was quite lucky to have interested viewers and listeners who participated in the talk and found the photographs I discussed interesting.

More importantly will they purchase my novel?
Even more importantly, will I find a publisher? I suppose I will find out when I finally get this novel out into the marketing world. Right now it is part of my PhD through Lancaster University.
Somehow presenting in Hawaii just makes everything feel light, breezy, and full of sun. Hmmm...Now that my presentation is complete...mai tai anyone?

Linda Rader Overman's writing holds her captive and

2010-10-17T22:47:00.000-07:00

she likes it that way

Linda Rader Overman is proud of her son

2010-09-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

This is some of my son's artistic work for his employer. All those years at Art School paid off. Good job sweetie!‘Cars’ town of Radiator Springs coming to life at Disney California Adventure in 2012

Linda Rader Overman & ordinariness

2010-08-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

When I began this blog I thought about what it would be like to record the simple, unaffected, ordinariness of my life.

I don't know if I really knew what the word ordinary meant, I just felt compelled to type the word, ordinary. Something I have been afraid of being labeled most of my life. I always thought the wallflowers at the dances in middle school were ordinary, or that girls who had no boys chasing them were ordinary, or girls who stayed home on Saturday nights were ordinary. And then I became best friends forever with a girl who embodied those traits, and then that forever friendship suffered when she died in a very ordinary way, but that is another story, and some of it is in a novel I published a couple years ago and needs no reiterating here.

Anyway, I would rather talk about this ordinary moment, this non-fictive element.

Last night sitting in a hospital room while I watched my 97 year old aunt (my dead mom's sister) hovering between the now and her past, her death or its coming has turned out to be quite ordinary. Something she never wanted it to be.

My aunt's beautiful Hollywood Hills home was taken back by the bank when she was moved into a nursing home a few years back. The result of a reverse mortgage decision, which became irreversible when money troubles loomed long ago. She had filled the house with expensive and tasteful possessions, which when viewed more closely by assessors, later, turned out to be quite worthless and ordinary. The point for her was to make her life and everything in it look extraordinary.

And as I continued sitting by her hospital bed, with my daughter and I telling my aunt that she should just let go and embrace the light that will come to her as it does to all who meet their end, I realized also that transitioning from this life to the next does not have to be anything out of the ordinary.

It just is what it is and that is just fine.

Never mind the drama and the sadness of my aunt's life, which was not exactly what she wanted it to be. Two marriages, one divorce and a daughter who hated her so much that she stopped speaking to her years ago and now is missing from her mother's life caring not a whit whether she lives or dies.

Sad choices but of my aunt's own making. And isn't that what life is--a choice we make. And now she is making her death her choice, refusing all food and medications. She is ready. And maybe I am ready to consider the ordinariness of my own life more seriously without feeling like a failure. But I am not entirely sure yet.

I only know that my being labeled as ordinary is not the worst word I have been called.

Linda Rader Overman presents @ Univ of Cumbria-Lancaster, UK

2010-07-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

Presenting some initial research on my PhD studies at the Doctoral Colloqium at University of Cumbria-Lancaster Campus in the UK.
I look like I really know what I am talking about .....or do I?

Linda Rader Overman: How Everyone I Knew Has Died Too Soon

2010-06-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

Recently at the memorial for a dear friend, and former boyfriend of old, I sat and pondered how was it that so any of my old friends from teenage-hood either did not live to see 40 or have not made it to 60?

Tony Peluso and I met when he was 16 and I was 15. He was in a band a bunch of us girls had hired to play at a party we were giving for our friends from Hollywood High School. It was 1966 or thereabouts. It was in the spring and for some of us, our junior year was coming to an end. I had skipped first grade and was a year younger than most of my friends. This would plague me for most of my secondary school life as I was always too immature to fit in. I crashed and burned when I failed my entire freshman year of college, dropped out, and then did not complete my undergrad year until I was almost 40. But that's another story.

Tony was also not a particularly good student. In fact, he had left Loyola High School and was attending the dreaded Hollywood High Continuation school. That way he could focus on his passion: playing and composing music. He was actually quite the prodigy. Upon meeting Tony and his band mates in The Abstracts, filled with kids who had all met and attended various catholic schools together, Blessed Sacrament, Loyola, Notre Dame, St. John Vianney (before it became Daniel Murphy)--I met a large group of guys and girls who were all trying to fit in. That is what the high school years are partially about belonging...doesn't necessarily matter what, just belonging.

We all shared a love of Tony's band and the various clubs on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, CA that his band was paid to perform at. Later, I introduced some of my girlfriends to some of these cute young men and relationships and even a marriage or two resulted. My first roommate out of high school and I enjoyed socializing with the band members and its group of band groupies. We all did what a lot of people did in the swinging sixties....participate in those free loving rituals Dr. Timothy Leary opined. Tune in, turn on, and drop out aka sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. We were invincible. We were against Vietnam. We enjoyed the rituals of smoking marijuana and experimenting with hallucinogenics. We protested "The Man" and what he stood for especially what the man did to blacks in those days.

Many of us went on to college and did very well, many of us did not go to college and still did well. Many of us were enmired in drug addiction and struggled out the abyss it threw us into, some of us did not, and succumbed. In our late twenties and early thirties some of this crowd I had hung with started dying off for a variety of reasons. Illness--physical and mental, drug addiction, AIDs, heart problems, Cancer, and the list goes on.

It all came to a head for me one afternoon, when I was visiting the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio with family members around 1996. We were simply tourists and I stumbled into the screening of a documentary of the Sixties and The Who were being interviewed. Pete Townsend was very upset at the grim reality that so many of his friends in some of the most famous rock 'n roll bands in the world were all dead. He was in tears as I heard him say, "All my fucking friends are dead!" And that phrase exploded in my head because so many of my fucking friends were also. I had to run out of the museum immediately. I rushed out of there balling my eyes out at the loss of over a dozen of the old crowd I had so long ago become friends with, partied with, cried with, smoked weed with, done other drugs with, regretted it with, and then laughed about it all with. I was in a rage at the stupid naivete we all showed by our cavalier approach to living. We inhaled life in that devil-may-care way that so many young people do, even today, except when I was growing up AIDs was not an acronym.

Tony was charismatic, diligent in his goal to be a rock n roller. He was a genius at his ability to play the guitar, arrange and produce records, as later evidenced by his long list of Grammy awards and other amazing musical accomplishments. See below from the Hollywood Reporter obit page:

Tony Peluso, who played lead guitar with the Carpenters before becoming a successful producer, died on Saturday, June 5 in Los Angeles of heart disease, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Peluso, 60, was a four-time Grammy winner who made an impressive mark on the world of pop music, performing and producing on records that, in total, sold in excess of 150 million copies.

Peluso got his start working with teen idol Bobby Sherman in the late '60s and played guitar with Paul Revere and the Raiders before joining the Carpenters in 1971 at the age of 21. Following the death of Karen Carpenter in 1983, Peluso signed on with Motown Records, where he was an A&R executive. He produced records by Smokey Robinson, Michael Jackson, the Temptations and the Four Tops in his 10 years with the label. He most recently worked on the Oscar-winning soundtrack to 'Brokeback Mountain.'

In 1992, he and Latin artist Santaolalla helped define the Roc en Espanol genre. Through this affiliation, Peluso was later tapped to produce the 'Brokeback Mountain' theme song 'The Wings.' Peluso is also credited for producing and engineering records by Kenny Loggins, Seals and Crofts, Apollonia, Animotion, Stephanie Mills, the Fixx, Ricky Martin, Café Tacuba and Boyz II Men with Selena, among others.

Peluso is survived by his sons, Joe and Andrew. Funeral services will be held on Saturday, June 26 at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Northridge, Calif.

Sitting and listening to Tony being eulogized and afterwards talking with so many faces (that at times I didn't always recognize), I realized how old I am and that I feel much older. I realized that some four to five decades ago, how many mistakes I had made as young girl who was narcissistic, concerned with how much of an impact I made entering a room, and totally unaware of life's dangers. I, of course, would never have any problems, that was only other people, not me. I realized, too, how much I had eaten my life in one large gulp instead of one bite at a time, and yet I had relished doing so.

Many of my friends who I had not seen since the last memorial service we attended, in the fall of last year, also ate life on those terms in their youth. Yet here we were still surviving: our hair was whiter, our physiques showed how good a life we were still living, we had wrinkles, we wore glasses, we embraced and bemoaned how we had to stop meeting like this. And we all mourned a friend, a father, a musician, a former altar boy, a husband, a boyfriend, a band mate, a colleague, and in my case one of the first men I actually fell madly in love with, when I was a college freshman. His insatiable appetite for music and for me frightened me so that it took all my power to run from him. His intensity for those things terrified, mystified, inspired, intrigued, attracted and repelled me. He did not let go without a fight. But to survive, I had to turn my back on him and that life.

I can't believe how much I miss that me, that him, those friends who stood in a semi circle that day at the church for a group photo. And what makes me even sadder is that when I see them again, another one of us will have died. Another one of us will remind us all what we were, what we did and should not have done, what we loved, embraced and lived.

Our lives were better because of and in spite of each other. And to one who had a compelling impact on my early life I say:

Dear Tony,

Goodnight sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Linda Rader Overman travels with...

2010-05-19T12:50:00.000-07:00

Mother of the Bride (Mary) and Mother of the Groom (Linda) are talking about skipping their daughter and son's wedding and going on a road trip with a recent acquisition!

However Mother of the Groom selfishly wishes to keep this chariot all to herself!

Linda Rader Overman & PhD at almost 60...a work in progress

2010-04-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

Pictures speak but people are too busy too listen.

Thank you to my Hollywood High School buddy, Ben Babbitt, from so long ago for this card...a picture of a writer at 4 years old an Ordinary Woman who is beginning her chronicles.

Linda Rader Overman agrees that Sinead O'Connor deserves an apology!

2010-04-03T12:39:00.000-07:00

Sinead O'Connor deserves an apology for sure!!
I remember watching her tear up a photograph of the Pope on Saturday Night Live and I appauded her for it! Everyone else who viciously criticized her should send her an apology too. She knew what she was talking about. Sadly no one has discovered the horrors of what she tried to point out until 18 years hence. And it's much worse than she even indicated.
Read her editorial in the Washington Post. There is a link to it on the blog I have linked to here.

Linda Rader Overman & PhD at almost 60...a work in...

2010-04-02T17:28:00.000-07:00

Still in progress with maneuvering the waves toward my PhD....
Writing at the beach can be exhilarating or distracting. My colleagues Nicole and Kathleen attest to the exhilarating part.

Linda Rader Overman & PhD at almost 60...a work in wonderment

2010-03-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

I wonder at times why I began this expedition of PhD academia?

Ekphrasis a word I am excited by and how it relates to photographs.

It all begins with:
The act of ekphrasis, (derived from the Greek as in ek for “out” and phrazein for “declare” or “pronounce”) in effect is “to describe” or “to tell in full.”

And then comes Roland Barthes
who writes, “In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art” (13).

And I can't stop wondering?

While I sit inside the

Linda Rader Overman & PhD at almost 60...a work on fire

2010-02-19T19:00:00.001-08:00

Sitting across from my colleague Nicole while she writes her dissertation. Kathleen sits at the kitchen table and writes hers. I sit near the fire and wonder why mine isn't on fire also.

Linda Rader Overman & PhD at almost 60...a work in progress

2010-02-12T15:14:00.000-08:00

Writing by the fire with my colleague who is also writing, a peace resides between us as the fire burns. Both warm the swiftness of our fingers as they glide across the respective keyboards rendering us ever closer to that far reaching peak.

Linda Rader Overman & PhD at almost 60...a work in progress

2010-02-07T23:38:00.000-08:00

A writing afternoon, working on my PhD spent at the Oviatt Library at CSUN was made all the more interesting with a bomb scare. Thankfully it was at the north end of campus and thankfully it was all over within a couple of hours. Meanwhile, hard at work with my colleague Nicole Warwick working on her PhD also, we did not quit until the library closed at 5:00 p.m. So where did we go . . . up to our office in Sierra Tower to continue writing. Now that is dogged determination in a rainstorm no less.

Linda Rader Overman & PhD at almost 60...a work in progress

2010-01-30T16:28:00.001-08:00

An afternoon writing w/ fellow PhD colleagues at the Camarillo library was hours well spent!

Linda Rader Overman at author gathering at Lyon Books & Shasta College

2009-12-07T23:12:00.000-08:00

Heather Lyon owner of Lyon Books in Chico, CA. and Linda Rader Overman holding Letters Between Us celebrating an author event night on Nov. 19, 2009!

A wonderful gathering of readers, authors, and those who honor the spoken word at Lyon Books. Many thanks to Heather Lyon and her wonderful staff who supported us and provided great snacks.

Thanks Jay & Jody!!

Prof. Kiara Koenig's Shasta College classroom with creative writing and literature students arriving for an author talk by Linda Rader Overman, author of the novel Letters Between Us, and Zu Vincent, author of A Lucky Place.

Linda Rader Overman appearing @ CSUN

2009-11-29T17:21:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 12/1/09 1130AM
Prof. Eve Caram's Contemporary Literature
English 300
CSUN
Education Bldg 1127
18111 Nordhoff Street,
Northridge, CA 91330

Tuesday 12/1/09 2PM
Prof. Tina Love's Writing About Literature
English 355
CSUN
Sierra Hall 207
18111 Nordhoff Street,
Northridge, CA 91330

Linda Rader Overman appearing Lyon Books & Shasta College

2009-11-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

I will be signing copies of Letters Between Us at
11/19, Thursday from 6-8 P
Lyon Books
121 W. 5th Street
Chico, CA 95928
(530) 891-33381

Classroom Visit
Pro. Kiara Koenig's English 31: Intro Creative Writing
11/20, Friday from 12-3 P, Room 811
Shasta College
11555 Old Oregon Trail
Redding, CA 96003
(530) 242-7500

2009-10-05T15:29:00.001-07:00

PhD Linda Rader Overman minds her cloud on Wordle -

2009-10-05T15:23:00.000-07:00

To what extent does the act of ekphrastic narrative render the form of fictional memoir into a visual to verbal act of de-familiarizing re-memory?

Wordle - Linda Rader Overman: ""

Linda Rader Overman & PhD at almost 60...really!

2009-09-11T07:04:00.000-07:00

It's the middle of a July afternoon. In Lancaster it's in the low 60's. I am listening to the graduate school director at University of Cumbria, Lancaster, in the UK describe the PhD process, and I wonder...what am I doing here?

I'm 58. Sixty sounds closer than I want it to. A child of the sixties is how I always think of myself. My novel Letters Between Us, published last fall, was in part a testament to living during that chaotic and free-love wielding generation, but also a testament to surviving the drugs, the sex and the rock 'n roll so prevalent in that time. Yet now at almost 60, I've begun a PhD in Creative Arts.

Classes are held in the summer over a two week period at UC Cumbria, Lancaster campus.
The degree is ultimately awarded by Lancaster University about an hour by train north of the city of Manchester.

It's raining. It rains a lot here. The rain is more of a light shower. It's not cold, just wet. Everyone wears summer clothes. I brought rain boots. I never wear them, mainly I wear flip flops to class. I carry my brolly (code is umbrella for those of us from America) constantly, a purse sized one that is no bigger than a brush. It allows for instantaneous opening and closing in a quick downpour or drizzle that lasts less than five or ten minutes, consistently.

I share a flat (a dorm) with three other bright and dynamic women. Two of them live in the UK and attend courses more regularly through the year. Both frighten me with their brilliance. My nearby roommate teaches with me at CSUN. Jacqui is completing her final year of a three year required attendance. I am just beginning. She has consented to hold my hand through this first trip of mine. She originates from South Africa and understands the system here. Jacqui celebrates her recent accomplishment in this UK system of Phd studies: a successful Transfer from MPhil to full blown PhD candidate. I am still considered probationary. I haven't been on probation since I was 17 and a juvenile delinquent.

I chose this PhD path...why was it again ...I wonder as the class comes to an end on July 17, 2009 at 3:15 p.m. I am among some of the best and brightest here. Students seeking PhD's in Medical Imaging Sciences, History, Geography, Education, Business Marketing, Contemporary Literature, and them there's me...Creative Writing.

I skip the class that covers the ethics of data collection for Subject Human Research. But they call it something else here, and my brain hurts so much I can't recall what that is. I skip the class to collapse in my twin bed and try to sleep just to feel some measure of rest and reassurance that I am doing the right thing. My God, I'll be closing in on 65 by the time I complete this doctorate. If I complete this doctorate . . .

I have to do it...I tell myself this all the way home on the plane even though my brain hurts from all the academic discourse forced upon it over this jam packed two weeks of three courses a day and constant discussion with my colleagues treading this same journey.

They are all so incredibly smart. Again I wonder ... what I have done as I sip my last airplane provided cup of hot tea.

Two months hence, I have done little work on this PhD...those three initials that will now rule my life every moment for the next five or six or seven years create an odd fit in my head. Balancing other aspects of my life intercede, teaching and prepping for fall courses at CSUN. Grading papers, remodeling a bathroom, buying a mountain vacation home (a surprise from my husband), supporting my two adult children emotionally and otherwise, facilitating care for an elderly relative, among other daily demands of being human exact their much needed time.

I am supposed to send two more chapters of my novel to my advisory team by October.

Does just thinking about it or feeling guilty about not working on it yet, count as doing something?

Linda Rader Overman & Part 2--Letter to a friend upon disconnection of life support

2009-08-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

Please RSVP to aidita2000@yahoo.com
Celebration in Honor of the Life of Albert De Francisco
A merry celebration of Al De Francisco's life will take place on
Sunday August 23 at 4pm.
Location is 3714 Latrobe Street Los Angeles, CA 90031 This is a
neighbor's home on Al's street.
Food, soft drinks, water and ice will be provided. Please bring any
other beverage of your liking.
Anyone having a great story about Al is encouraged to share it
with all of us.
driving, parking and entrance instructions below
Any questions regarding this event may be answered by:
Robert De Francisco--323.251.0674-bobde@tech-center.com
OR
Anthony Seta--818.352.6378-11am to 3pm-tonyjseta@yahoo.com
OR
Dave Thomas--323.842.3182
You may also RSVP to any of the above gentlemen.
Al’s Celebration August 23, 2009 4:00PM 3713 Latrobe St.

Directions to Celebration
1. North on the Pasadena Freeway (to AVE 43 Exit (Be careful, 5mph exit)
2. Go East (Soft right) on Ave 43, up the hill to Griffin Ave (Stop Sign)
3. Turn Left onto Griffin Ave and go to Montecito Drive (Stop Sign)
4. Turn Right on Montecito Drive and go to Sinova St. (Stop Sign
5. Turn Left on Sinova St. to Latrobe St. (Stop Sign)
6. Turn Right on Latrobe St. (You may want to use second gear)
7. Proceed up to 3714 Latrobe and start to look for a parking space.
8. Additional parking is available farther up Latrobe St.

Additional Parking

1. Go Past 3714 Latrobe St.
2. Go Past open gate with additional parking sign on it.
3. Turn Left on Montecito Drive to Stop Sign.
4. Turn Left on Montecito Circle and look for parking
5. If on Montecito Circle use the address of 1341 with sign on mailbox
6. Proceed down the long driveway to the open door with the welcome sign
7. Have Fun
Those of you traveling from the Alhambra area and coming up the back way:
1. South on Huntington Drive to Mission Road
2. Veer Right onto Mission Road to Broadway
3. Turn Right on Broadway to Lincoln Park Ave
4. Turn Right on Lincoln Park Ave to Flora Ave
5. Turn Right on Flora Ave to Sierra St
6. Turn Left on Sierra St to Roberta St
7. Turn Right on Roberta St to Montecito Drive
8. Turn Right on Montecito Drive to Montecito Circle
9. If on Montecito Circle use the address of 1341 with sign on mailbox
10. Proceed down the long driveway to the open door with the welcome sign
11. Have Fun

NEED HELP FINDING OUR LOCATION?? CALL DAVE AT 323.842.3182
FOR HELP IN LOCATING THE CELEBRATION

Linda Rader Overman & Letter to a friend upon disconnection of life support

2009-07-29T16:38:00.001-07:00

Dear Al,

By now you have probably embraced that light we all hear about upon death...having been drawn into that final tunnel infused with it, after your older brother Bob (on the advice of doctors who said "there isn't anything more we can do") had to give the word to shut down life support and say goodbye and face the unfaceable: letting go of a loyal younger brother, a devoted son to a father who won a Silver Star in World War II (who married the woman he loved to become the mother you adored), a faithful boyfriend, a friend to the many from long ago Hollywood High school days, and much before that Blessed Sacrament School.

By now you probably also have finished reviewing your life from end to beginning as so many experts say right after death, and those who judge you from on high have pronounced that you did your best with honor, elegance, and grace just as your parents taught you.

I always knew you as dependable, reliable, funny, candid, charming, chivalrous Albert De Francisco--the guy who I always knew if I needed anything, anything at all, you would provide it free of charge other than with the love your heart carried, especially when we were kids around 15 and 16 who thought we knew it all.

I remember how we loved each other then as young teenage friends do with virtuous passion, friendship, equanimity, and innocence. Yes, we were naive, but never about our devotion to each other or to the rest of our friends who comprised the crowd we hung with so long ago.

I remember while traveling over Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood hills in your Triumph motor cycle, my long black waist-length hair tangling in the wind while wearing one of my many hippy dresses, and barefoot, high on a certain drug of fashion in those Swinging Sixty days, I never once worried about whether or not we would make it to the bottom of that twisty turny road so carefree with the craziness of the night, of the times. We didn't wear helmets then (God help us), my mascara ran making ghastly streaks on my face which prompted you to whisk me over to the local IHOP on Sunset Boulevard across from our high school to wash my face. You simply wanted to take care of me. You didn't wish me to make a fool of myself. And you never ever cared about what others thought when it came to your allegiance to friends. You simply wanted to be there when called upon. Maybe that is why I never called upon you. I knew you would be available to save me from any situation if I dared request it. But I couldn't. You took such a task with great seriousness, in those days, I took nothing seriously, least of all myself. But you defined the word serious in the way your word was your bond. So unusual for a teenage boy in 1968.

I remember that through the passing decades we drifted apart and then back together as waves lapping randomly on the shore sometimes hitting the same mark twice, sometimes not...but each year, on my birthday, you would call and leave me a happy birthday greeting, considering that April 18 is your brother's birthday also, it was easy to remember me on that day as well. What I can't forget is that even during the years that we didn't necessarily talk you would still always call me. I mean for years. And I, stupid and self-absorbed, never called you back to thank you, I merely marveled at your recall and your consistency, and smiled upon hearing the grin in your voice.

I remember the one year you didn't call me, I called you, finally, and bawled you out for forgetting this task you had set up for yourself with annual precision. One which I looked forward to and sincerely missed. We laughed and chatted for a long long time and then met for dinner to which you brought your parents who were elderly and still very much in love, they'd always held a fascination for me, a girl who grew up in a divorced home, whose father had abandoned her at four years old. Mr. and Mrs. DeFrancisco, which are the only names I ever called them, were so much in love and were so esteemed by you and your brother, I always prayed I would have the same loving marriage. Your mother was a small sexy little drop of a brunette who held her cigarettes erotically like play toys and your father--in one look at her--would drink her up in one small gulp. She was his and he was hers. No doubt about it.

I remember the day prior to your bone marrow transplant at City of Hope hospital, we talked on the phone as you walked around one of the large and brightly lit lobbies dragging your tree (you called it) with requisite IV plastic bags of sustenance hanging like Christmas ornaments (you had about 5 or 6 while other patients, you said, carried 10 bags or more). You were getting a little exercise and talking about how your house remodel was almost finished and how glad you were that your brother had relocated from Hawaii with his new wife and kids to care for you during the long awaiting recovery process. We laughed a lot that day and revelled in each other's voices and relished in the longevity of our friendship and the joy in knowing that you would come through this immense passage in your fight with leukemia.

Instead, at not quite 59 years of age, you have joined your parents in that great divide between this world and the next. I know they met you with a great white blinding light of love and elation as they embraced your spirit. And most likely have shared with you the answers to the many mysteries of life that those of us who are left behind still wonder at.

And now I will always remember how each day since you are no longer able to return my messages or hear my voice I still call your house twice sometimes three times a day just to listen to you say, "I'm not home right now, leave me a message and I'll call you back."

I won't forget that I can no longer do so and that you can't call me back, that I will never hear your happy birthday message again or hear your smile and your laughter and that no amount of wishing I could will change a thing.

The world feels emptier without you. But because of you I can still remember.

A celebration of Al DeFrancisco's life:

Sunday Aug. 23rd at 4:00 P.M.

At the home of his neighbor Dave

3714 LATROBE ST LOS ANGELES CA 90031.

We're not in Kansas anymore: Linda Rader Overman attempts PhD-oh my!

2009-07-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that this Yank (actually I am a Chicana, but nevermind) would be back
in school, but here I am. I just returned from attending summer classes at the University of Cumbria-Lancaster campus in the lovely town of Lancaster, Lancashire, UK. PhD studies pulled me there and I realize now that I might as well be climbing an academic Mt. Everest. Well, one of my tutors (here we'd call him Professor but in the UK he is a lecturer), said, "build it in bits"...and that is what I will do.

Each bit will be one step closer to this goal. A PhD in the Arts at Lancaster University. What am I thinking?!
Who knows...I may be toasting this event closing in on the age of 65 by the time I complete this journey, but I will be turning that age eventually....(it's a while yet, for the curious) so why not?

Bishop's Walk is tree lined and an engaging path to take when returning from downtown Lancaster and a trip to Marks & Spencer for groceries. The view out of my dorm window is softened by lace curtains...can't imagine lace curtains in any dorm in the USA. Walking from my residence hall up to the classrooms is another tree laced view of Morecambe Bay.

And standing under a sign directing me back to campus is my colleague and schoolmate Jacqueline who talked me into this endeavour in the first place. Actually she didn't have to try very hard.

It has been an intense set of weeks, and I am just beginning to realize what I must do to make this happen...set a timetable, set a schedule...between teaching, writing a sequel to my novel, Letters Between Us, writing a children's book, setting time aside for my PhD will just be like a second, unpaid, job.
Well why the heck not?

Met lovely flat mates all smarter than I am...looking forward to seeing them next year....if I live through this one.
Geesh.

Linda Rader Overman featured speaker at SAGE Society Forum

2009-06-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

SAGE Society Forum attendees gathered Friday, June 5, 2009 at Knollwood Country Club in Granada Hills, CA to hear Linda Rader Overman's talk, "If It's Written in First Person It Must be True....Well Guess What? -- It Isn't!"

Linda was very impressed with the diverse group of retirees from many walks of professional life.

"SAGE operates under the auspices of California State University, Northridge as part of the College of Extended Learning and is designed to provide learning in retirement programs."

Linda enjoyed meeting Janet Schulz and Blanche Wentworth attendees who were so gracious and engaging sharing their life experiences.

Janet wrote and published some 60 novels with Harlequin in the Special Edition category romance genre under the nom de plume of Tracy Sinclair...but she has decided to slow down now. Compared to my one published novel so far Linda did feel like the underachiever with this crowd of accomplished professionals.

However, Linda was quite touched that some of the attendees bought copies of my novel: Letters Between Us. Linda so appreciates it as does her publisher Plain View Press.

Thank you to Jeanne Polak-Recht & SAGE for inviting Linda Rader Overman to be the featured speaker and share ideas and discourse with this august group!

Linda Rader Overman congratulates son Michael's cover art

2009-05-29T22:24:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to my son Michael Overman and his amazing cover art design on Letters Between Us for being selected for this coveted Finalist award! All those art classes paid off.

I love you Michael!

Letters Between Us & Linda Rader Overman 2009 Next Generation Indie Books Award

2009-05-29T08:02:00.000-07:00

Linda Rader Overman & Letters Between Us feted at 6,000 feet!

2009-05-26T00:49:00.000-07:00

My gratitude to Susan Reep (a Hollywood High alumni as I am) and Mark Smith who invited me to bring Letters Between Us to their open house where guests celebrated the beauty of an artfully crafted tongue-and-groove knotty pine mountain vacation home in Alta Sierra, CA 6,000 feet above sea level.

Susan even had a signing table ready for me with a stand up of my book and my photograph! I stand here between two Susans, my host on the left, and her dear friend Susan on my right.

Jennifer, their daughter, is a fan of my novel and posed for me with a potential reader, her adorable son, Joseph, who needs to mature just a bit before he reads it--but he was very willing to pose next to his literary loving mom.

The day couldn't have been lovelier (a comfortable high 70's F.) and the magnificent mountain weather at that altitude was splendidly assisted by the surrounding forest of fragrant pine trees. Susan even even tied balloons along the way for the attendees to find this jewel of a house. I felt like we were standing in a Hansel and Gretel highrise with only beautiful people.

Thank you to Mark and Susan and the guests who were gracious enough to buy my book.

Finalist Honor for Letters Between Us & Linda Rader Overman

2009-05-18T17:33:00.000-07:00

Letters Between Us was selected as a "Finalist in Novella" and "Finalist in Best Cover Design Fiction" categories of the 2009 Next Generation Indie Book Awards!
Linda is especially pleased for her son Michael who created the cover for Letters...all those art classes paid off...Yay!

Letters Between Us & Wonderful Review on J. Kaye's Book Blog

2009-05-13T23:58:00.001-07:00

Thanks to J. Kaye's Book Blog for the wonderful review and comment on Letters Between Us and its verisimilitude! It really helps and makes me proud.

"Letters Between Us by Linda Rader Overman is an emotional roller-coaster story of two women and their lives. From the start of Laura and Kitty’s friendship in 8th grade in the 60’s to Kitty’s death at age 39 from mental illness, this story is one of ups, downs and self-discovery. The setting is Los Angeles in the 60’s thru 80’s and both girls were from low middle-class dysfunctional families. Both were different in looks and temperament. . ."
Read furtther at J. Kaye's Book Blog

Letters Between Us & Linda Rader Overman in Prof. Caram's CSUN English class

2009-05-05T17:39:00.000-07:00

Letters Between Us and Linda Rader Overman received a thorough vetting today in writer & Prof. Eve Caram's English 300 Class at CSUN. The students were ready with a load of challenging questions about the characters, the plot, the writing process! It was easy to tell that Prof. Caram had prepared the students well to interact with my novel and boy they did put me on the spot with some hard questions for which I am very grateful along with the interest and ensuing discussions.

It appears that papers will be written on Letters by some of the students and I hope they go easy on me, gulp! Thanks so much Prof. Caram for allowing me to visit your class and for teaching Letters Between Us again this semester.

A second time she has been so gracious to use Letters on her required reading list!!

Thanks to all of her students who were ready for me and enjoyed receiving my shameless self-promotion pens and had me sign copies of the novel. It was a privilege.

Letters Between Us & Linda Rader Overman appeared @ Brandeis National Cmtee's 20th Annual Words Wit Wisdom luncheon

2009-05-02T12:47:00.000-07:00

Linda Rader Overman presented from and signed copies of her novel, Letters Between Us, at the 20th Annual Words, Wit & Wisdom Authors & Book Luncheon for the Brandeis National Committee San Fernando Vally Chapter.
The Ahmanson Ballroom at the Skirball Cultural Center provided an outstanding venue for this event.

Brandeis University has 60 some chapters and this very active one honored writing and reading with presentations (in order) from Linda Rader Overman (Letters Between Us), Leonard Felder, Ph.D. (When Difficult Relatives Happen to Good People), Kate Jacobs (Friday Night Knitting Club), Carol Tavris, Ph.D. (Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me), Mark Sarvas (Harry, Revisited), and Susan Straight (The Friskative Dog).

Many thanks to Mary Millman, and Fran Shuster (enjoyed sitting at Fran's table), Program Vice Presidents and Naomi Javitz, Luncheon Chairperson, among many many other amazing women who oversaw this worthy event.
Funds from the luncheon and book purchases are donated to the Library at Brandeis University to encourage and enhance knowledge of the written and spoken word,
hence the title of this luncheon.

It was a pleasure meeting all the writers (I am sitting between Mark Sarvas and Kate Jacobs at the signing table) and the incredible group of dedicated women who are the motivating force for this exciting and uplifiting day!!

Please consider sending your love and donations to Library at Brandeis University if you honor reading and writing.

Many thanks also to my dear friend Ann Fuller who drove up from Huntington Beach to attend, take these photographs and have me sign her copy of Letters.
And love to Sandy Struman, a colleague from CSUN,
who also attended and was most encouraging.

Letters Between Us & Linda Rader Overman joined Authors' Coop @LATimes Festival of Books

2009-04-28T20:02:00.000-07:00

At UCLA on Saturday 4/25 (& Sunday 4/26) Letters Between Us and Linda Rader Overman was thrilled to be part of the Authors' Coop in Booth #610 during LATimes Festival of Books!...The weather was splendid and the dozen or so of us who were privileged to share booth time and sell & sign copies of our books of various genres couldn't have been luckier to be a part of this wonderful event that is a testament to the written and spoken word. Here I am standing with writer Julie Spira who I was happy to meet and discuss our passion for writing with. I was also thrilled to meet writers: Janet Golinger, Linda Ballou, Anne Megowan, and Loren Woodson in person.

The booth was faciliated, gracefully and with class, by poet, Christine Alexanians and writer, Carolyn Howard-Johnson. Many people dropped in to take a look at our displays, ask questions, talk about reading and writing---a favorite subject for all of us---and buy a book and take away a freebie from our collectively donated pile. There were readers walking by who stopped in to purchase a copy of Letters such as Bill and his daughter Danica. Also colleagues and friends stopped by to obtain signed copies of Letters!
Many thanks to Mary Marca, Ren Colantoni, Terri Silverberg and Marsha!
It was an envigorating experience and I am grateful to have been part of it.

Haunted By Her Photograph by Linda Rader Overman

2009-04-10T00:05:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, I was sifting through an old photo album. I found it among my mother's possessions, household items cobbled together and sitting in our garage. There among the dusty boxes and cloth-draped antique furniture stood artifacts of a 96 year-long-life lived. Since her death, they have been gathering dust along with their memories. Mother saved over a hundred photo albums capturing images of family and friends, but this particular 3x5 color photo drew my eye immediately. It was something in the background that made me stop and look again and again. In the foreground are two old girlfriends (today they'd be designated as BFFs, I suppose), one I'd worked with at NBC decades ago when my life mattered in behind-the-scenes television, the other I'd known since middle school, but had lost track of. We were barely in our twenties then. I was the photographer, and I snapped this shot in the den of Mother's home, yet I remember little of what we were doing just prior to, and following the snap of the shutter.

The standout photograph in this act of remembering is not the one I was holding in my hand, but the photograph within this photograph. Hanging on the wall just behind one of my BFF's, who is holding a lit cigarette (everyone smoked back in the 1970s), is a black and white portrait of another schoolmate. She, too, was probably in her twenties when this was taken by a professional, but she looks to be about sixteen in this rest-her-cheek-upon-her-hand pose. I can't really make out where she is in this image inside an image, but her hair is long and she is smiling. I have not seen any photographs of her in years.

This picture startled me because this fragile and childlike BFF died long ago. This photograph is also long gone, presumed dead, as I have no memory of where it currently rests. Oddly, after her death, I started writing my epistolary novel Letters Between Us in fits and starts. The idea of losing my girlfriend who shared much of my formative years with me left a gaping hole in my heart back then. Mostly, because I felt as if part of me-that infantile, naïve, silly, curious, giggly and gangly child that I was, died with her. As we grew, we discontinued our communication, which often happens to old friends, so when I learned of her passing, I did not believe it. I thought it was a mistake. I knew she had been ill, on and off, for several years. Sadly, that illness ultimately took her away from her loved ones. It was nobody's fault.

Her death caused a gap in my life; she was an absence in my memory as was that part of my adolescence. To revive it, I wrote about those days in the early 1960s, those make-peace-not-war days, those burn-your-bra days, those hell-no-we-won't-go days, and it felt like talking with my long lost friend all over again. The characters in my novel have much of the same passion I had expressed in my youth, yet in no way resemble me or my dead BFF. Curiously, though, while crafting Letters, I found myself feeling those same familiar rebellious feelings I had felt as a young hippy protesting the Vietnam War. Fast forward some forty years: now I am left holding this photograph of her photograph, which brings back her presence in the way seeing a welcoming light guiding me through a foggy passageway might-a light I have chosen to forget. It haunts me.

Linda Rader Overman interviewed on Fascinating Authors Blog

2009-04-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

Read my interview on Fascinating Authors Blog....secrets about my novel revealed!
They were very nice to interview me and let me shamelessly self promote
Letters Between Us

Letters Between Us read by BC: Housewives of Encino

2009-03-22T20:29:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday evening, I was fortunate to have been invited to the stunning Encino Park home of my friend and CSUN colleague Julie Todd. This terrific book club of seven erudite and well-to-do women took the time to discuss Letters Between Us and take a trip back to remember those swinging sixties. They asked me many questions about the whole process of writing and publishing this first novel of mine. The gourmet food and elegant wine helped me unwind and get over my nerves at being queried about this novel which is so close to my heart.

We all enjoyed remembering those years when President Kennedy was assassinated...those difficult and challenging years of an unwanted war and the whole counterculture lifestyle that so predominated that decade.

As you can tell by these photos we also enjoyed the libations not to mention that all of the food was green except the corned beef tacos and the chocolate cake..since it was the day after St. Patricks....erin go bragh ladies... and thank you, Julie, for inviting me to share a wonderful discussion with such great women. Thank you all for allowing me to read excerpts from the novel as well. As it turns out one of them-Debbie-and I knew each other a while back when our kids were in elementary school together in the nineties (was it so long ago?). Six degrees of separation never ceases to amaze me.
Thank you so much to all as shown in second picture:
l to r top row--Debbie Spino, Marijo Demattos, Eileen Kaires, Tish Amborn.
bottom row--Julie Todd, Ann Egan, Nancy Futterman, Anita Rezzo.

P.S. for Letters Between Us from the BC: Housewives of Conn.

2009-03-16T11:19:00.000-07:00

Imagine my surprise when my colleague and friend Prof. Meg Florio who facilitated a rousing discussion of my novel in January with her Connecticut book club--sent me this photo. No pictures were taken of the event at the time as all were too busy discoursing about Letters Between Us!

Thankfully, I think that is because they all actually liked the novel, which was a great complement to yours truly! Not to mention that Prof. Florio was hosting this salon in her gorgeous NYC apartment on the Hudson in the middle of a snowy and icy evening in January to which all of these women drove in from Connecticut to attend.

Subsequent to that book club the following month, they met to discuss yet another novel but wanted to take a photo with mine, which I appreciate wholeheartedly!

Thanks to all of you lovely ladies who honored me so (seated): Kate, Meg, Anne, and (standing) Debbie, Suzy and Denise.

LA Times/UCLA Festival of Books Featured Authors: Find Us (& Linda Rader Overman) in Booth 610

2009-03-15T21:53:00.000-07:00

Signing Saturday and Sunday, April 25 and 26
Booth #610. It's by the food booths! Yay!

 Get a FREE book with your purchase of any book while supplies last.
 Browse books of other authors.
 Sign for Free handouts on promotion, editing and more (to be sent by e-mail).

UCLA Campus, Sat. & Sun, April 25 and 26
FREE Admission/Parking $9.
Easiest Parking at Structure 3 near Hilgard & Sunset Boulevard, Westwood (Los Angeles Area), CA.
Use the map of the on-campus event: http://www.latimes.com/extras/festivalofbooks/eventmap.html.
Look for the Authors Coop banner above booth #610.

Booth Sponsored by:
Marshall Turner's WebforAuthors.com, Red Engine Press, HowToDoItFrugally.com Series of Books for Authors, 4RVPublishing

Gift with Purchase Books Furnished by:
Leora Skolkin-Smith, Diana Raab, Philip Henderson and others.

Scheduled Authors Saturday 04/25/09
10:00 AM Loren Woodson
11:00 AM Lynn Goodwin
12:00 PM Janet Goliger
1:00 PM Marilyn Meredith
2:00 PM Anne Megowan
3:00 PM Linda Overman
4:00 PM Julie Spira
5:00 PM Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Christine Alexanians

Scheduled Authors Sunday 04/26/09
10 am Linda Ballou
11:00 AM Lynn Goodwin
12:00 PM Janet Goliger
1:00 PM Marilyn Meredith
2:00 PM Anne Megowan
3:00 PM Pamela Kelly
Poetry Reading Hour
4:00-4:15 PM Sona Ovasapyan
4:15-4:25 PM Don Kingfisher Campbell
4:25-4:35 Pardis Bagherzadeh
4:35-4:50 PM Carolyn Howard Johnson
4:50-5:00 PM Christine Alexanians

At Butte College students stop for a chat with Linda Rader Overman & her writing colleagues-Part 2

2009-03-08T21:35:00.000-07:00

According to the Press Release touting a Butte College Master class on Friday Febrary 27: "Presentations and Q & A session for Linda Rader Overman, Letters Between Us (Plain View Press 2008) epsitolary novel, Zu Vincent, The Lucky Place (Boyds Mills 2008) literary novel, and Bryan Tso Jones, Raking the Hollow Bones (Bedbug Press 2008) poetry occured where each author spoke for about 20 minutes, mixing in readings from their own work with discussions about point of view, storytelling, revisionist mythmaking, structure, character development and inspiration.
Bryan focused on how poets (and fiction writers) reuse old stories and myths, and adapt them to their lives, connecting that larger literary discussion to some of his own poems, which use Chinese myths.

Linda discussed creating distinct character voices and the epistolary form, along with the necessity to record or journal one's own experience.

Zu used excerpts from her own novel and contrasted them with Joyce Carol Oates' "Where are you going? Where have you been?" to draw attention to how writers use setting, pyschic distance, anticipation, and overall effect (or 'singular effect') in fiction."

After the class, Prof. Kiara Koenig's students stayed for quite a while to chat and get autographed copies of the three different works, which they are required to read in her Intro to Literature and Creative Writing classes.

Letters Between Us & Linda Rader Overman joined a panel of writers in the Butte College classroom: Part 1

2009-03-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

Poet & Professor Kiara Koenig (of Butte College) invited a panel of writers to teach a Master Class on Feb. 27 from 1-3:30p @ the Chico Center in Butte College. The idea for the class was in part formed to bring more multicultural and contemporary literature into the classroom.

With her particular group of Intro to Literature
and Creative Writing students in mind,

Prof. Koenig invited poet Bryan Tso Jones

and

novelists

Linda Rader Overman,

and Zu Vincent

to participate in a joint presentation / Q&A session
on aspects of writing and literature.

2009-03-08T00:38:00.000-08:00

Letters Between Us and Linda Rader Overman did a reading/signing along with Zu Vincent (author of The Lucky Place) on February 26, 2009 Thursday at 7p.m. at Lyon's Books in Chico, CA through the good graces of store owner Heather Lyon/. Her event coordinator Jay Castor hosted us for the evening as Heather was out of town.
We had a fine turnout of listeners who appreciated our readings and asked lots of interesting questions about the writing process.

The experience of reading with a colleague and a writer who so embraces the love of writing and literature as I do helped to enhance the supportive atmosphere that evening!

Many thanks to Heather for believing in us enough to schedule the event, and to Jay for his gentlemanly ways, for enabling us to use this delightful bookstore (I wanted to move in) to promote our love and passion for the craft of writing.

The weather couldn't have been more beautiful in the quaint town of Chico...known among many things for California State University, Chico where I did some of my graduate work beginning back in 1999.

Professor Kiara Koenig of Butte College attended the event as did some of her students.

The Disappearing Act of Writing a Letter by Linda Rader Overman

2009-02-25T15:17:00.000-08:00

I take out a sheet of paper and smooth its curled edges with my hands as I lay it on my writing desk. The paper is not white, rather more of a beige or splash-of-cream color, really. It contains no lines, just the minimal echo of the tree it once was part of. I take a whiff and it smells of ink and pencil and the perfume I'd dripped on the desk a bit earlier. There are no spots on the page fortunately, yet the scent is of lemon and salt and the sea. My favorite fountain pen, an old Waterman, the color of malachite, given to me years earlier still feels able-bodied and ready in my hand. I think a moment and then put pen to paper.

Truth is the sheer act of writing a letter in just this way to a person, placing it in an envelope, licking a stamp to it and mailing it, sadly, appears to be a dying art. And partly why I chose to write Letters Between Us as an epistolary novel, to recapture that art, just a little.

Now we have email, blogs, Skype, Webcams, instant messaging, and texting - so much faster, quicker, and more efficient. There is something to be said, however, about the act of holding a pen in your hand and writing to friend or family member, even if only to share a brief hello, a thoughtful remembrance, a declaration of love, or something more. It is embedded with the careful process of cogitative thought, let alone leaves a palpable imprint of the writer's energy. One day it might even be a treasure to be discovered amongst the long forgotten possessions of another. In addition, writing a letter in such a way brings to light a voice distinctively different from other genres of writing. Imperfect, unedited it is a reflection of the times in the raw.

What would we have done without the letters exchanged between loved ones during war time: the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, for example? From such letters we have the voices of a private history from long dead family members and/or friends in their own hand-writing importing a tone that we may never have actually heard them speak during their life time.

This happened after my mother-in-law died. We found love letters written to her on V-Mail (or Victory mail, which was the microfilming of specially designed letter sheets. So as not to waste cargo ship space with large bulks of shipped mail overseas, microfilmed copies were sent instead and then enlarge" at an overseas destination before being delivered to military personnel). My husband's mother, Martha, was affectionately addressed as "Toni" by her husband away fighting in the Pacific theatre during World War II. No one in the family understood why Marvyn Overman called Martha Overman - Toni? But there it was in the salutation in a facsimile of a letter-sheet reproduced to about one-quarter the original size: Dear Toni, My beautiful Toni, Beloved Toni. Toni. Toni - she will always be Martha to me - was back home in Hollywood, California raising her toddler son: my husband.

This little bit of information called to mind a young couple, they were 25 at the time, deeply in love and suffering from separation. The loving voice of this couple is one I never heard either of them use in the decades that I spent in their presence. Basically, they communicated by fighting, yelling and forgiving and then doing it all over again. Family dinners at their home were usually: eat fast, hold our breaths, talk a little, and hope Marvyn and Martha didn't do their "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" routine on that particular night. Once they began, all we could do was wait for a break in the action, and cut and run. And yet, they once talked of love and nicknames no doubt written and whispered to one another in days gone by. To this day neither my husband, nor his two brothers know the origin of this pet name for their mother.

Being separated by war is nothing new to this generation of 18-34 year olds. Computers and their full complement of audio/video software enable close circuit communication over many miles and multiple time zones. Families separated by the current wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere can talk to and see each other as if they were sitting in the same room. These conversations over thousands of miles have meaning and impact, don't get me wrong. But as far as leaving a written record as the letter I am completing to my unborn great grandchild (who exists only in my imagination and that of her potential parents: my son or my daughter) I can't help but wonder if she or he will prefer to benefit more from this piece of myself on paper, which wears my perfume and is embossed with traces of my own hand writing - or from popping in a portable drive that shows me moving and talking. There's no perfume in that.

Writing My Way Back Into My Childhood by Linda Rader Overman

2009-02-17T16:12:00.000-08:00

The other day my twenty-something son stopped by for a visit and decided to take a short swim in our pool. This was something unique, really, because he hadn't been a steady presence in our pool since he and his sister were of elementary school age. Then with only just the two of them, or with the addition of some sleepover friends, they would all play in the water for hours, and I do mean hours. Hunger, thirst, or my calls to exit the water because they were turning into prunes and needed to take a break did not deter this pack of four-legged dolphins to cease their joy for a minute.

Just before my son left to go back to his town house about 20 miles away, he commented: "Mom, I was thinking how when we were little, all we needed in the pool was ourselves and our imaginations to keep us happy. We didn't have to worry about work, errands, jobs, or anything. All that mattered was playing." Then he threw his hands up in the air as if accepting one of those light bulb moments, and we all have them, with great reluctance.

"Yes," I said, "we spend most of our adult lives longing to recapture those days of innocence."

And those days of my innocence have been lost for far too long. And that is partly why I undertook the task of writing my epistolary novel Letters Between Us. Spurred on by the death of an old schoolmate whom I had long lost touch with, I began writing Letters in full middle school teenage-ese the way we had in our childhood. The letters were not to anyone in particular, perhaps they were to my 13 year-old self, I don't know. I decided it would be interesting to write this series of letters the regular old fashioned way with pen and paper leaving in the mistakes, the scratch outs, and silly symbols kids often use for emphasis.

All I know is that the act of recreating those days of only caring about whether or not my patent leather shoes matched my patent leather clutch purse, whether or not I'd painted on my Twiggy style perfectly, and whether or not I'd had my bra snapped by the most "bitchin-est" boy in school mattered. Writing in such a vein re-awakened my long forgotten childhood again. Mind you we, my girlfriends and I, did not sound or act like Valley girls in the sixties. We sounded and acted like young adolescents desperately trying to fit in with the in-crowd. Often, I was assigned to the out-crowd, but even that was a crowd.

I can still recall the pangs of being told by a small group of in-crowd girls as I tried to catch up to them during lunchtime when they paraded around the quad checking out which of the cutest boys were checking them out being told: "Linda, we don't need you today." I immediately dropped out of step with them. I was dismissed and there was no appeal allowed or necessary. I was simply not "in" that day. I was deeply hurt, but I clamored for acceptance on another quad patrol day. And accepted I was because I was wearing a dress they all coveted. So simple really, no hidden agenda, no talking behind my back. It was a simple message reminiscent of the phrase, "....one day you're in and the next day you're out!" I did not need a memo, or a phone call, I knew exactly where I stood. If only boundaries were that clear cut over our entire maturing process.

In addition, during those times we were often bombarded with the exhortations of great democratic minds:

"Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country; Tune in, turn on, drop out; Do Your Own Thing; Love the one you're with; Peace now; Hell no, we won't go; Make Love not War." From the draft-card-burning protests of the Vietnam War, these are the slogans I remember the most.

How ignorant I was as to the true meaning of any of these slogans and their ramifications in the coming decades. Over and above all of those turbulent years, all I can recall is that when we are little, we either want to be a good kid or a bad kid. The sad part is that in the midst of it, we have no appreciation for the infantile challenges we face, like-getting up, getting dressed, brushing our teeth and even tying our own shoe laces without help, and all of those tasks that make us feel right in all their marvelous lunacy. When we mature and move beyond childish things, of course we pine for those days when we really didn't have much to fret about. Our parents woke us up, saw that we were fed, chauffeured us around, and made sure we got to school on time. We only had to make sure we didn't get into trouble with mom or dad, or our teachers. It was our playmates on the playground and who we hung out with and shared secrets with who counted.

The poignancy of such a time in any of our childhoods, notwithstanding the degree of just how dysfunctional a family we were raised in, is the beauty of existing in a state of such naiveté.

What still amazes me is how I miss it--the simplicity of being a child, the complexity of being a curious teen during a very unpopular war, and only needing to not be the last kid picked on a team for handball to feel alive.

My son called me about a week after his swimming visit to inform me that he had met up with his some of college buddies, about eight of them. They had all met at the beach and for the better part of that afternoon, they ran into the water swimming far through the waves, tossing, dunking and chasing after each other like the younger dolphins they once were.

"How did it feel?" I asked.

"Like it will never be that way again," he said.

"Yes," I said. "It won't."

Linda Overman is a Finalist in Nonfiction in New Millenium Awards 26

2009-02-10T20:03:00.000-08:00

Linda Overman's, 5000 word nonfiction work titled, "Adiós Rita Hayworth, Hello Margarita Cansino," was selected in the New Millennium Awards 26 for Fiction, Poetry, & Nonfiction (which had a final deadline of July 31, 2008) as a finalist in nonfiction in their Summer 2008 Awards.

Yeeeehaaaawwwww!!!

If It’s Written In First Person, It Must Be True by Linda Rader Overman

2009-02-07T10:56:00.000-08:00

"Oh come on, it’s all based on a true story isn’t it? Come on. Tell me. I know it is.”

I hear this comment often. And now that my novel Letters Between Us has been published by Plain View Press and is going out into the world, some of my preliminary readers, friends, and colleagues are certain that it is an autobiographical novel. Interestingly enough when readers take up works written in first person point of view an incorrect assumption is sometimes made that it’s the voice of the author speaking through the narrator. Because my novel is written in first person, other readers have suggested that I am using the narrator in the novel, Laura Wells, as my persona. After all, she attended Hollywood High School, so did I. She worked in television production, so did I long ago. There are other characteristics we do not share, but you’ll have to read the book to discover what those are besides getting to know me.

Amazing how readers read what they want into a work and believe they are correct no matter what I, or other authors might say about their fiction. My two main character’s names were actually inspired by Katharine (Hepburn) and her dear friend American Express heiress Laura (Harding).

Only because a writer friend of mine who had been close to Hepburn-helping produce some of her movies made for television-thought it would be a nice testament to them and their sixty year friendship. In fact, my two lead characters are nothing like Hepburn and Harding, but I liked the way their two first names looked on the page. Also, I admired Hepburn’s work in films and still relish watching them. So that may dispel any notion of autobiography there. Truth is that although the “I’ in the novel is the protagonist, that “I” is not me, but the voice of a completely made up character struggling with issues I did not necessarily struggle with, but that others may be able to relate to.

The fact is that fiction means “shaping” in Latin. So as an author of fiction I am shaping a story I am telling from a world I know, yes, but not necessarily a world I have lived in. Like any artist using the act of sculpting, I must know just how much to leave intact and just how much to pare down in creating a sense of reality, not my specific reality, but the reality of the characters in the novel. This of course is accomplished through manipulation of literary aspects such as setting, point of view, style, tone, imagery, plot, and so on with the assistance of description. And, as any writer knows, description is only an effective tool on the page if it brings alive the reader’s five senses to savor what has been written. But sometimes boundaries between fact and fiction are blurred creating what is referred to as faction.

I do write fiction and have written and published creative nonfiction so I agree that at times lines between the two become indistinct. And as a writer, I see no difference (as writer John Daniel has said) between what I do in creative nonfiction, narrative essay, dated journal entries, dialogue, faction, or memoir, using the same technical devices as a fiction writer might to tell a story. As far as I am concerned it is all acceptable as long as the text we are reading teaches us how to read it. However, not every reader wants to accept that lesson and prefers to put their own spin on what they are reading and its origins.

The important thing about this entire creative act and the result of its output is that the reader is getting a “good read.” As a reader myself, I want to get lost in someone else’s interpretation of reality, someone else’s rendition of another time, another place. I want to believe in those who populate that space. This so I can escape the pressures of my own world, pressures I desperately seek relief from at times. And through the act of purchasing a book, holding it in my hand, inhaling it, marking the place I left off at with a bookmark, leaving it on my night stand, and often, finding the imprints of rings from a moist steaming cup of tea on it, I can do just that. That for me is a good read. Isn’t the experience the book brings us what really counts?

Again, I hear an echo from a friend last week proclaiming that my novel is based on truth . . . and then adding, “Isn’t it?”

“No,” I answer and explain further that “the label Novel implies a work of fiction.” My girlfriend smiles and says, “Sure.”

Letters Between Us @ Visible Voice in Tremont

2009-01-30T23:15:00.001-08:00

On another wintry afternoon, on Sunday, January 18, 2009, friends and family trekked to Visible Voice Books in Tremont in Cleveland, OH to hear me read excerpts from Letters Between Us.

It was a small intimate gathering inside this amazing book store that has wine tastings along with book signings....I only wish I had known about the wine tasting part before I came.

The day was snowing and overcast, and yet, friends and family came anyway. This is a hardy group and I thank you all for your support.

Thanks so much too to Jeff Dubyk,

manager of Visible Voice, for inviting me to read while not knowing anything about this Hollywood author....I so appreciate my cousin Marylou Palermo's dogged determination, which strongly encouraged me to make these appearances in Cleveland overall. I loved the winter white weather inspite of the cold.

I mean who has ever heard of weather in Hollywood, California!?!?

Letters Between Us Visits B&N Crocker Park, OH

2009-01-30T23:00:00.000-08:00

Thank you to Bobbie Werner Community Relations Manager (not pictured) and the staff of Barnes & Noble in Crocker Park, OH for giving me a writer's reception on a cold and snowy Saturday Jan 17 afternoon. They provided coffee and my cousins and I provided yummy brownies to attract a crowd.

Luckily, family and friends turned out in large numbers for this meet & greet and bought all 20 copies that Bobbie and the store had ordered of Letters Between Us. Hooray!

It was wonderful to see everyone and talk with passersby also who took interest in my work.

I was having such a good time signing books that I forgot to take photographs of the crowd and so returned later to at least document being at this large, spacious, and well-run store...Bobbie---you are great and thanks for your belief and support in Letters Between Us. Thanks again to all the Trotta and Palermo families and also the many friends & colleagues of Marylou and John who I loved meeting and chatting with.

Linda Overman talks w/West Side Writers in Cleveland

2009-01-30T22:39:00.000-08:00

On January 17, 2009 on a bitter cold Saturday morning, I was introduced by Susan DiSalvo at the West Side Writers talk in the Westlake Porter Public Library in Cleveland, OH where I talked about the challenges of being an author--as I call it--"Publish or Perish and Live to Tell About It." Comprised of a "motley group of writers, published and not yet published, working in various ways the craft and art of writing," this audience was well informed and a devoted group of men and women who share the same passion and love of the written word as I do. It was quite an honor to speak with them and discuss why we do what we do so doggedly despite the many many rejections. No matter, we just do it because it's like breathing and we have no choice but to continue.

Thank you for inviting me West Side Writers and thanks to my cousins John & Marylou Palermo for providing me with first class accommodations at their lovely home in Westlake, OH and for feeding me our favorite food, Italian. Also thanks to reporter, Mary Levtzow, who writes for several of the local papers such as The Westlaker Times, Crocker Park Press, The Olmsted-Fairview Times, The Lorain County Times, and The Lakewood News Times among others for taking photographs and writing such wonderful articles to publicize the event. Thank you to the library for accepting a donation of my book and promising to review it on their website.

The fact that all these attendees came out on such a cold snowy morning to hear me and excerpts from my novel, Letters Between Us, is a testament to the forbearance and drive of so many writers. Again thanks to the wonderful hosts from my family the Palermos and their willingness to support me during this book tour!

Letters Between Us & AAUW NYC Chapter Book Club

2009-01-30T22:16:00.000-08:00

On Jan 15, 2009 Thursday evening at the elegant East 37th Street
brownstone of the New York City Branch of the American Association of University Women, Letters Between Us, was read and discussed by a small group of brave women who ventured out in the brrrr! of the night to share tea, tastes, treats, and good conversation. Again this book club was lively and fueled by the insights of Professor Meg Florio and her colleagues, thank you to Julie and the rest of you for buying, reading and being willing to talk into the night about my epistolary novel with such passion and caring.

Letters Between Us welcomed in Book Clubs Jan 2009

2009-01-30T21:55:00.001-08:00

Letters Between Us was read and discussed in
New York City in the coldest of winter days at
a Book Club hosted by Professor Meg Florio in her
beautiful apartment on the west side with
stunning views of the city a
of the Hudson River. Here we are lunching at Asiate inside the lovely Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

The ladies showed interest, wisdom, and keen insight in the literariness of this epistolary novel, guided and facilitated by Prof. Florio's close read of the work along with her sister and friends who drove into the city from Connecticut on the coldest of evenings!

My thanks and heaps of warm appreciation to all of them & especially Prof. Florio for hosting me and my novel in her exquisite apartment and providing me with a five-star shelter and
a metro card, which I kept
mis-sliding in the subway entrances and
holding up the line.

Letters Between Us speaks in Westlake, in Cleveland, OH

2009-01-15T06:42:00.000-08:00

Letters Between Us is addressing the Westside Writers at the Westlake Porter Public Library in Cleveland, OH on Saturday 1030AM. It may be cold on the outside but it should be warm and toasty inside...remember the Sixties, and drop in to share in the talk....!
Please join me if you can ---see details below.

http://westsidewriters.blogspot.com/

Letters Between Us visiting Gotham & Cleveland

2009-01-10T18:02:00.000-08:00

Taking Letters Between Us on the road to visit New York City and speak to Books Clubs there and then on to Cleveland where I will be speaking with Westside Writers at the Westlake Porter Library on 1/17 at 1030A and then will do a signing at B&N Crocker Park, on 1/17 at 1P and then
at Visible Voice in Tremont on Sunday 1/18 at 1P.

Letters Between Us in the college classroom

2008-12-08T08:09:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday, I was invited to attend Professor Eve Caram's English 300 Contemporary Literature course at California State University, Northridge.
Lucky for me that Prof. Caram required her class to read
Letters Between Us. It was the last novel in the series and the class members
all had very insightful comments and questions for me.
I hope I measured up to them....I want to thank Prof. Caram and her class for a very articulate and fulfilling discussion about Letters. I was quite humbled by the experience and quite excited as well.

Letters Between Us at Russo's Books in Bakersfield, CA

2008-12-02T02:57:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving holiday, Linda Rader Overman signed copies of her novel Letters Between Us at Russo's Books in Bakersfield, Ca.

Hosts were The Riccomini family--long time residents of Bakersfield. Linda and Merino Riccomini were kind enough to entertain Linda and her husband, Jim, in their lovely home as they continue to celebrate the engagement of their daughter Lisa to writer, director, and teacher Garrett Clancy of Los Angeles, formerly Boston.

Mike Russo and his dad,
Tony, were very gracious to
allow Letters Between Us
to have a meet & greet
at their beautiful bookstore.
Linda felt very lucky
to be there and even more fortunate to talk
about her book to passersby who were nice
enough to stop and chat, and even buy the book!

Linda ended up meeting a former Hollywood High School alumnus, Kathy Arnold, who lives in Bakersfield....They graduated within a few years of each other.
Kathy ended up introducing Linda and Jim to another HHS alumnus Susan Reep who also graduated within a few years of them. This world just gets smaller and smaller. And both ladies bought copies of the book.

Thanks to Russo's and Riccominis for making the holiday end on a very happy literary note!

Veteran's Day & Letters Reading/Signing B&N Encino,CA

2008-11-13T19:44:00.000-08:00

Veteran's Day 11/11/2008 Linda Rader Overman read

from her award winning novel, Letters Between Us,

to a large crowd of attendees.

Introduced by Kristine Williams, Community Relations Manager,

who Linda had been talking to for the better part of a year

about creating such an event, Kristine and her staff

were very accommodating and had enough

faith in this first time novelist to ink in the event.

Thank you to all my dear friends, colleagues, and

family who bought the book, asked wonderful

questions, laughed, and really made me feel loved,

proud, and also humbled by the overwhelming

show of support.

The good thing is although Linda was very nervous,

the crowd enjoyed the performance and many books sold, and isn't that the point!

Thank you to B&N Encino and Kristine Williams for
believing in Letters Between Us and Linda.

Skylight Books in Los Feliz, Ca & Letters Between Us

2008-11-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

I am thankful to all attendees and readers who came to see me perform Letters Between Us and buy copies of the book which I happil!y signed...even if I couldn't feel my feet anymore...drat those red 4 inch stilettos heels, but they looked good

Skylight Books & many friends attend

2008-11-09T14:22:00.000-08:00

Ana Martinez and her daughter psychologist Joanne Alvarez were in the audience.

Just about this point I my red 4 inch stiletto heals were starting to kill me.

Jon and Sharon Laahs with son Evander dropped by to buy a book and share a bite of dinner post reading at Figaro Cafe next door!

Letters readg @ Skylight Books in Los Feliz district of L.A.

2008-11-09T14:15:00.000-08:00

Always amazed to see my books and a publicity poster in a book store....of Letters Between Us. It is so twilight
zone-esque and yet
I am so thankful that I am actually experiencing
this moment of coming unstuck in time.

I asked a passerby to take my photo and she thought it was so funny that I-author-should ask.

Being introduced by Skylight Books co-owner and manager, Kerry Slattery to the many attendees.

Author reflects on Author in the window

2008-11-01T21:38:00.000-07:00

At the local Barnes & Noble in Encino, CA. within half a mile from my home I stand facing myself in the window....my reading/signing here is not until Veteran's Day 11/11/08 at 730P, Tuesday. But I couldn't help myself--I had to stop by as a friend had called the other day to tell me she was standing in front of the display for Letters Between Us in the window.
It was almost surreal seeing myself and my book behind the glass. It is also surreal that after so many years of trying to get pubished that Letters was honored as a National Best Books 2008 Award finalist in Chick Lit/Women't Lit category sponsored by USA Book News.
Then I remembered over thirty years ago while writing in my journal, writing in the closet I used to call it, I wondered, rather forlornly if one day I would ever experience such a moment....and suddenly here I am and there she is staring back at me---Linda Rader Overman, award winning Author.

Author Gives A Talk-part 2

2008-11-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

Skylight Books Manager, Steve Salardino, came to handle the sales of copies of Letters Between Us at my Author Talk at the Northridge Public Library.
Friend and colleague Jeff Gilbert brought his lovely wife Susan who nursed a veracious cold...and by holding a hanky near her face all present were convinced that she was actually quite moved by my reading (sort of)!

An Author Gives a Talk-part 1

2008-11-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

On November 1, a Saturday afternoon, a dedicated group of friends and CSUN colleagues braved the rain and thunder to hear me read from Letters Between Us. Snacks were provided to keep them full of sugar and wide awake. And they did me proud by listening, asking challenging questions, and best of all purchasing copies of the book for themselves and as gifts for friends and relatives.

Letters Between Us - hosted by Valencia socialite Loreen Soto part 3

2008-10-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

Thank you again to Mrs. Soto and her husband Mario for hosting this Letters Between Us coming out party in her elegant Northbridge Point home!

Letters Between Us - hosted by Valencia socialite Loreen Soto part 2

2008-10-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

As the afternoon wore on and the shadows grew longer the party goers became giddy with wine and vibrant conversation. No one wanted to go home. And the good thing is more books sold!

Letters Between Us hosted by Valencia, CA socialite Loreen Soto

2008-10-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

Letters Between Us (Plain View Press) had a very successful coming out party at the home of Valencia hostess and socialite, Loreen Doyle Soto and her many lovely friends. They all turned out in abundance to meet and greet author Linda Rader Overman. Her daughter, Deva Overman (in stripes), designer and owner of clothing line Nakey Baby, added color and splash by selling her adorable boy shorts, baby clothes and off the shoulder custom designed off-the-shoulder shirts. Ms. Soto can be seen modeling one of them in midnight black.

The ladies chatted away in the garden on a beautiful afternoon, savoring
hors d'oeuvres, and a variety of Napa Valley wines while everyone enjoyed the literary salon of the day and purchased signed copies of the award winning epistolary novel.

Finalist honor for Letters Between Us

2008-10-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

Happy news today that

Letters Between Us has been honored as a "Finalist" in the "Fiction & Literature: Chick Lit/Women's Lit" category of the
National Best Books 2008 Awards, sponsored by USA Book News.

Yeah baby!!!

Letters Between Us reviewed on Reuters.com

2008-10-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

Wahoo!!

Letters Between Us was well reviewed on Rebeccasreads.com BUT then Reuters.com picked it up as well. Check it out

I pasted it in below.

Reprinted in Reuters.com

Linda Rader OvermanPlain View Press (2008)ISBN 9781891386626
Originally Reviewed by Kam Aures for RebeccasReads (8/08)
“Letters Between Us” begins at the end, with a Santa Barbara Herald newspaper article chronicling the death of 39-year-old Katharine Taylor Fields whose body was found in a dumpster at the Cold Spring Tavern Inn. Katharine’s friend, Laura Wells, learns of the death through Katharine’s estranged husband David. Katharine had been a patient at the Santa Barbara Psychiatric hospital for the past eight months, had just disappeared, and then was found dead. After attending the memorial services, Laura visit’s David’s house and he gives her “a brown cardboard box with some of Katharine’s mementos from childhood.” (p. 19)
It turns out that both of them had saved the letters written between them, Katharine’s even dated back to 8th grade. Laura holes herself up at the Vista del Mar Inn and after having her husband send her own box of saved letters she is intent on reading through all of them. This is the form in which the story is written, a series of letters back and forth, interjected with journal entries and Laura’s memories.
Following Laura’s journey of discovery and remembrance makes for an interesting narrative. I love the way that Overman uses the letters to piece together the story and while doing so paints a clear picture of the two main character’s lives. I also enjoyed the inclusion of the historical events and pop culture references that were a part of the era in which the story took place. Katharine and Laura keeping pace with the world around them gives a feel of authenticity to the book.
Although I had an advance reader copy without the final cover, I did see a picture of the cover of the book on the author’s website and absolutely love it. I think that it is perfectly fitting of the storyline and gives the reader a clear picture of exactly what the book is about. “Letters Between Us” is an engaging, easy-to-read novel, written in a unique form. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys women’s fiction, stories of friendship and family, and to anyone who came of age during the 60’s and 70’s.

At Borders in Valencia 10/18 Saturday Letters sells!!

2008-10-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

I spent a lovely Saturday afernoon talking to many friends, colleagues, students, and book browsers who actually bought signed copies of Letters Between Us. It felt like a literary salon with all the wonderful people who dropped by...thanks so very much to everyone and especially to Stan and Carolyn for treating my husband and me to dinner after....! All copies sold out!!

BookSoup Reading/Signing 10/11/08 on Hollywood

2008-10-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

A successful reading and sold many books and many friends and relatives dropped by in support!
Thank you all!
Join me for my next appearance at Borders Valencia Town Center Sat 10/18 at 3p.m.

Sex Drugs and RocknRoll!

2008-09-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

Letters Between Us--My novel is out almost...not out of the closet....well maybe ... as it was in the writing closet for over a decade and more. BUT here it is and how groovy it was to find myself on B&N and Amazon....funny thing is...there is another nonfiction book with the same title published in 2004 on Amazon. And when I found my book link other book sellers claimed that they had used copies of my novel for cheap. I laughed because there are NO used copies of it. How could there be, it just arrived. Liars liars pants on fires.
If you want my novel, don't be confused with that other title from 2004,don't buy that one, buy my novel: Letters Between Us. My son did the artwork and it is brilliant.
Click here to see the Letters Between Us book trailer and scroll down a bit. It foreshadows the movie that will some day be made of this work...just wait and see!
Know now--everyone--mine is the 2008 novel and it rocks! Just like the Sixties did, which is when it takes place in flashback form as a look back from the Eighties....
All of you out there who purchase it--please be cool and post a review on Amazon and B&N. Por favor???
Check out lindaraderoverman.com to see where I am reading/signing around the LA area, Valencia, and Bakersfield too!

It would be totally bitchin'!
Later ....

Letters Between Us: Press Release & Interview by CSUN

2008-08-21T04:14:00.000-07:00

Below is really great interview conducted with my by Nichole O'Grady CSUN Public Relations about my novel Letters Between Us--thanks so much!

"CSUN Professor Resurrects Art of Writing Letters With New Publication"

(NORTHRIDGE, Calif., Aug. 8, 2008) ― People, smells and objects have the power to recall memories throughout a person’s lifetime. For Cal State Northridge English professor Linda Overman, writing letters reminds her of a childhood once forgotten, inspiring her to author a book in hopes of immortalizing the past.

In “Letters Between Us,” Overman uses written letters to create character relationships that develop into an intricate plot of murder, mystery and self-revelation. The book is scheduled for release this October.

“It’s about a troubled writer’s search to understand a friend’s mysterious death at a mental institution leading to her own self-discovery and transformation,” said Overman.

Main character, Laura Wells, attends a memorial service for her childhood friend, Katharine Taylor, whose body was discovered in a garbage dump. After obtaining boxes of her own correspondence with Taylor as well as her friend’s diary, Wells heads down a 26-year-old path only to reveal a past she never quite understood.

Wanting to give readers an experience similar to what other authors have given her, Overman is pleased to present her first novel.

“I love to lose myself in a literary world that pulls me to live and breathe the fictional ‘reality’ that an author gifts us with, at times, in order to forget the burdens of our own,” she said. “Reading should help us to transcend our peripatetic lives and in the process guide us to learn something more about our world and ourselves.”

The inspiration for “Letters Between Us” came after an old schoolmate of Overman’s passed away. Although the two had not recently been in touch, she recalled how losing a friend she had known since adolescence “felt like losing a part of my own childhood.”

“That shared history with that particular friend is partially gone,” she said. “We had enjoyed a writing relationship, starting with passing notes in class and trying to not get caught by the teacher. So to fill that gap, I decided it would be fascinating to write a series of letters between two young girls the old fashioned way ― with pen and paper.”

Written in epistolary form, Overman faced the challenge of recreating letters that not only tell a story but grows with the characters over time. Stylistically, when writing the correspondence between the two as young girls, Overman left in mistakes, scratch outs and “silly symbols kids often use for emphasis” to make it authentic.

“It became a challenge to recreate the voices of two hormonal adolescents,” said Overman, “and to give them each a distinctive and unique voice recreating the teenage-speak of the 1960s and 1970s. From there, the novel grew.”

The CSUN alum is happy to have completed her first book after 18 years of life’s interruptions, she said.

“I am currently immersed in the publicity and marketing of the work and that is quite a different and dizzying experience,” said Overman. “Needless to say, I am thrilled, terrified, excited and hopeful all at the same time.”

For more information on “Letters Between Us,” visit http://lindaraderoverman.com.

Letters Between Us: a novel 18 years in the making

2008-07-14T20:02:00.000-07:00

I'm scared. Truth is I shouldn't be. But I am. Okay, now I've said it. When I received my first round of pdf/galleys of Letters Between Us, I immediately thought maybe I should call my publisher, Susan Bright, and say....what? Say, nevermind, Susan, I don't really want to be a published writer, it was all a mistake, no really, I would much rather be an anguished writer. I would much rather just stay in the the writing closet, writing in my leatherbound lined journals with my name embossed on the spines.

This way I can fully live the meaning of tortured almost writer, but writer nevertheless who suffers for her art. Always wanting and never having. Always near missing never quite landing...there is poetic pathos in that, isn' there? The only reader I had in mind was my children and my children's children. BUT

then I look at the galleys and start to read through, and I see mistakes, some mine, some formatting. And think this isn't bad, this novel. I think, wow this is going to be in actual print, someday. Then I realize not someday, but soon, this fall October 6, 2008. Some students at my university will actually be required to read this novel in a Contemporary Lit course...and the reading public will actually purchase this novel and have opinions about it. Some good, some bad, and then I want to throw up with fear, and excitement, and terror.

Eighteen years ago when I began this work, I did not know how to write, not really. In fact, a friend of mine who wrote romance novels looked at 17 pages of rough draft for it and never really spoke to me again. She never mentioned the work (it was bloody awful, but it was a start) and when I finally called her to ask for the manuscript back, she just couldn't locate it, she apologized and just said she didn't know what had happened to it. Easy, I thought, she threw it in the trash before reading past the first sentence and I don't blame her. I didn't know what I was doing then so in order to improve my writing self, I enrolled back in college and 14 years later I am still in college as an English professor.

Who knew?

What I know now is that I am blessed with a publisher who found the novel worthy. I am blessed with the notion that a reading public might also, even if they don't they have to purchase it to decide . . . and that counts for something (I say this with crossed fingers and that's hard to do while typing, believe me).

Graduating to one crutch

2008-06-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

So my doctor says you don't need two just one...you can walk on one crutch. Good thing right? One crutch is better...right...it takes me twice as long to get around...my family walks slowly to keep pace but not slowly enough.

I was faster on two crutches...and people, perfect strangers open doors and move out of the way. Nice I think, humanity isn't really so bad after all, until someone without a handicapped sticker takes up a handicapped parking space....aka 47 please.

More later...

Birthing of a first novel

2008-05-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

I always thought that if I were lucky enough to get a novel published I would just be able to sit back and let the publisher do the publicity for me. Well, ha ha, jokes on me, NOT!
Mainstream publishers may have budgets for such things, especially for a blockbuster of a novel, that means $$$$$$ maker, tried and tested.

For a first time novelist with a small independent publisher, well, guess what...publicity, marketing...all out of my own pocket. And it all depends how deep that pocket is. I have talked to about five different publicists, sent them copies of my novel whole or in parts. The truth is I better budget like I would to buy a second car. My budget for such a vehicle is more in line with buying a used small even-with -a-couple-of-dents-compact to get around the city, certainly not something for long hauls with Bose stereo system. So far with different estimates and such maybe if I am lucky I can get away with around $10K. Sheeit!! I don't have 10K for that. And each publicist talks in pub speak and I am not totally familiar with that rhetoric...say to me pathos, ethos, logos, okay from years of teaching composition I get those...but telling me about Organic SEO or Virtual Author Buzz Tour and I say "Huh?!"

So now I am learning that writing the work is 10% and marketing is 90%...maybe I should just go back to being a writer in the closet. Harrumph.

Crutches in my life

2008-05-27T12:45:00.000-07:00

I just had hip arthroscopy...torn cartilage, left hip..."mileage," said my orthopedic surgeon. What he didn't tell me is that I must be on crutches for 4 weeks! No weight on my left hip whatsoever. Nevermind that in trying to coordinate my movements and those of my new pair of crutches I have already fallen several times, and nevermind that I live in a home with stairs. I must remember to not step on my left foot, lean on my left leg, rest on my left knee. What a bitch. What a humbling experience. I have never before felt such empathy with another using crutches, a wheelchair, a cane. Every inconsequential step I take is now to be pondered logistically. I take many steps in my home in a 24 hour period, but never before did I realize how much these peripatetic movements cost. If I leave one thing in another room, to crutch back to retrieve it takes time and energy that wears me out too early in the day, too early for this overachiever.
My upper body strength is being sorely tested, I have aches and pains in the sides of my body that I forgot had muscles...my forearms and wrists wear out earlier in the day than I would like...arthritis in my right thumb pains me after a day of crutching around. After three days of this I threw the crutches angrily on the floor because no matter what I do they seem to fall down constantly...then picking them or anything up off the floor takes concentration and alertness. I tend to want to steady myself on my left foot and forget that I cannot.
My patience level is being tested in a way that raising teenagers never has (fortunately I have twentysomethings now out in the world on their own).
But excuse me for whining, I thought my crutches in life would merely be a bit more servings of wine than I should, or when I was a protesting hippy, too much weed, hash, LSD or whatever...now crutch takes on a resonance that enrages me. My inability to accept the fact that I am not perfect, I am not able to get everything done when I want, as I want, where I want. Sigh. Maybe I should just shut up.

Letters Between Us - my novel out in Fall 2008

2008-05-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

Up-and-coming writer Laura Wells goes to a memorial service for her best friend from childhood, Katharine Taylor, whose body was found in a garbage dump near Santa Barbara, California. At the time, Laura has been living apart from her husband. After she obtains some boxes of her own correspondence with Katharine and entries from Katharine's diaries, Laura moves into a cottage on the beach and begins her long 27-year journey back in memory revealing unimaginable past secrets of both herself and Katharine. As a result, Laura discovers a Katharine she thought she knew and didn't. LETTERS BETWEEN US is a requiem to friendship and an homage of remembrance, loss and liberation.

Check out lindaraderoverman.com for more about my epistolary novel coming this fall.

Summer 2007 in Shanghai Teaching

2008-02-16T15:33:00.000-08:00

Photograph above is of Master of Nets Garden in Suzhou, China and by traveling there, this doorway compelled me to pass through it so strongly as if the opportunity to enter an enchanted realm would never come again. I did not hesitate.

I spent a week at Shanghai Normal University this past June 2007. I taught two creative writing workshops using image texts to inspire and motivate the students into another kind of writing...and what I showed them was quite a new concept for them.

Teaching 30 graduate students and ...what I found among the students (all English majors) was a strong desire and motivation to learn American English, culture, jargon, idioms and to embrace new kinds of literature.

These students very much wanted also to understand and embrace critical theory. One of the grad students asked me to help her with researching Donald Barthleme...she was mispronouncing his name and was happy that I taught her the correct pronunciation, but the important thing was is that she knew of him and wanted to use him as one of her sources in her thesis.

I later sent her some articles I had found that she could not. The university library at SNU is NOT hooked up to the worldwide web ( I think all of you can understand why considering the intense level of censorship that exists in China)...their internet access is limited...but many of the students find places on campus where there is wireless and then go crazy surfing the web.

I do believe, as my colleague Bob Chianese says, that these students would soak up any lit crit that Bob and the rest of us can teach them. They still are sheltered from much of the global discourse that lit crit engenders within classroom discussion...so this a way to open that door for them. And I am encouraged that Bob can continue this process in the fall 2007 at SNU that you have all begun here at CSUN.

SNU students are very shy about speaking out in class. They are not taught to challenge a professor openly in the classroom either through query or anything else. It is simply not their protocol. What I witnessed and heard from my interaction with grad students (I did not necessarily interact with undergrad mind you) was you do not interrupt nor openly speak out during class time. It would be considered rude and impolite.

So understanding that about these students...they need encouragement from us to be individual thinkers and feel free to engage in discourse through our prompting of such behaviors. Overall these students are under intense pressure there at SNU, and those who come here even more so...their success reflects not just on them and their culture, but their families and the very towns and provinces they come from...some are extemely poor and are priviliged to be at SNU or any university. So their actions reflect their entire community...if they fail they fail their entire community, village, town, etc., and lose face. These are very serious consequences. So there is a lot more to consider here than just teaching literature as a new means of independent thought.

Writing is the Daughter of Memory

2008-02-09T17:41:00.000-08:00

Telling un Cuento in Travel and Journal Writing -- Project Chiapas
Linda Rader Overman, California State University Northridge

Chiapas Journal of Mernory-3.28.97

Sitting on top of El Templo de la Cruz among these Mayan ruins in Palenque, the oversized white, hand embroidered shirt I purchased from a Mayan woman a few days ago, wraps itself. over my breasts, into the crevices underneath. It sticks along the length of my spine and it remains moist from the screeching humidity of this place and I am not surprised. This is where I want to be. Sitting on these stone steps, shells of what once was, I feel a connection that transcends time, myself, what I might have been, what I was, or perhaps what I am now. Quizas. I find my own deepest creative feeling in this remote jungle is not only Woman going back through the ages, she is myself discovering my own inner worlds, where my present one seems so pathetically inadequate.

I look past the trapezoidal complex of El Palacio, covered with anthills of foreign tourists speaking French, Spanish, and German who climb these steps, snap photographs, gulp down bottled water, and wipe away the perspiration from their faces. I see into the distance beyond these thirty-seven acres cleared and accessible to visitors, beyond the green of the jungle, beyond the patches of farmland, beyond the sphere of the earth, and I comprehend just why the ancient rulers from this natural palisade believed they were all powerful. They must have felt as I do now, like I’m sitting on top of the world where no one can touch me.

If, as David Bartholomae states, "every time a student sits down to write for us, [she] has to invent the university for the occasion; the student has to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing ... that define the discourse of our community," (460) then I, too, had to appropriate a "specialized discourse" to make a variety of connections as the student and not the teacher on this trip to the far away place of Chiapas, Mexico. All of these connections became links to ancient stones of my past; to Spanish as a second language (when once it was my first); to Tzotzil, one of twelve Mayan dialects; to code switching between all of them. I had to learn to speak several languages by "assembling and mimicking… while finding some compromise between idiosyncrasy, a personal history" and learning the protocols of another country within a country. That is the country of the Maya who co-exist problematically and sometimes violently with Ladinos (Mexicanos & Guatamalans who reject individually or through their cultural heritage, Indian values of Mayan origin). Coming from Los Angeles, where Mexicana/Chicana is synonymous with the label of a historically under represented group, in Chiapas, suddenly, I was a member of the historically oppressive group.

Ladinos historically have marginalized the Mayan Indians and continue to do so today. "¡Andale bruta! Que te pasa, correte y trae la seflora su toalla ahorita. ¡Estupida!" The few minutes I spent watching a young Mayan servant girl being given a tongue lashing by her Ladino employer, in the hotel I was staying at in San Cristobal, made me painfully aware of 500 years of oppression suffered by these Indians. It was something I did not want to face, did not want to remember. It was knowledge I had stuffed away inside of me and wanted no part of. But traveling and journal writing in Chiapas during an English class trip, in order to study Mayan literature in whatever form I chose to appropriate it from, forced me to confront another story, the discovery of my own cuento. I felt very much like the student who must move into "a specialized language . . . [speaking] with a impressive air of authority" (461), but struggling every step of the way in this university that was relentlessly present for me each of the ten days of my trip.

I hide from the others -- the group I came with, my classmates as I hide from the I tourists, hide from myself so that I may find her, me, this woman in her fourth decade who still seeks secrets, secrets the ancient Mayans knew and many of the Mayans of today still know. Secrets Rigoberta Menchu knows when she writes, "Nevertheless, I’m still keeping my Indian identity a secret. I’m still keeping what I think no one should know. Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can find out all our secrets" (247).

Suddenly I hear the calling of birds, birds I do not know the names of. The music they sing is like nothing I have heard at home in any forest. At first I’m not sure if it's the birds or the howler monkeys, but they are not so very near. They are smart and stay away from the throngs of people that invade this place during Semana Santa. Foreigners, all of them, all of us, and all of me. Although I am the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of a Mestiza, I too am a foreigner in my own land. This country is some part of what I am, yet for so long I was not allowed to admit to my connections to it by a mother who wanted to protect me from suffering the racial epithets hurled at her during a painful adolescence. But now that disconnection is falling away and reconnections are merging in union with the rhythms of this rain forest, in the heat that thaws my memory and soaks my oversized white, hand embroidered shirt. Estoy empapada completamente, pero no me muevo, aqui me quedo.

Clearly I'm on a journey in time and space. Answering la llamada de la aventura, I travel, although I sit here on this age-old stone. I have not traveled nearly far enough, yet. I am compelled by the specter of my indigenous great-grandmother. She appears to me as a young black-haired beauty standing outside her hacienda in Puebla, staring toward the hills watching for her husband's return. She was barely sixteen when she married Antonio Morales. By the age of twenty-one she was dead, leaving three small children motherless. My grandmother, Maria, was only six years-old when calling for her mother one day, who had fallen ill, and was told by a servant "Esta muerta. "

I will never know what Petra Rios really looked like, nor did my mother, Enriqueta, her granddaughter. A lock of braided black hair is all that Maria had left of her mother. An atavistic memory. Now it is all I have of her to give to my own daughter Deva, whose name means nature spirit.

Petra calls out to my heart, which takes steps before the rest of me. I sit still and listen as her calling intermingles with each bird song, with each cascading waterfall, with each stone that speaks to me as it did to Rosario Castellanos in her poem "Silence Near An Ancient Stone": 7he fragments of a thousand ancient defeated gods/ seek and bind each other in my blood, straining to rebuild their statue. From their shattered mouths/ a song struggles to rise to mine" (81). My own words are not quite intact yet, not as the words of the speaker in this poem who states, Estoy aqui, sentada, con todas mis palabrasI como una cesta de fruta verde, intactas. . . " nor do they [my words] bare the fruit I am looking for. Mis palabras struggle, bodies breaking free beneath the stones of my ancestors, like Petra, and her mothers before her of whom I know so little.

Sleep comes and I try to shake it off. I lie down on the cold harshness of the stone steps. I stretch out my legs. My head rests on my backpack--Mosquitoes buzz around my ear. I wave them off. Half asleep I begin to see other sights and hear other sounds, still in the jungle but far away from here. I think about the women. All those women dressed in red and white huipiles and black cortes. "No nos olvidas," they cried and I can't. Displaced, homeless, and hungry refugees, their men in prison or murdered by their enemies, the Mexican government, the women keep reappearing, the whole group of thirty or was it fifty? They almost look as if they are wearing uniforms while sitting waiting, and watching our group of fifteen college students, as we climb out of the white Ford pickup truck. We are all so happy to unwedge ourselves from the mass of crowded bodies and backpacks crammed into the back. We never did learn whose truck it really was. Juan Diaz, our Tzotzil translator, in the municipality of El Bosque, said he had a truck to take us to Las Delicias about one hour away, but no chauffeur. Armando, one of our group answers, "Pues tenemos un grupo de chauffeurs aqui, senor, " Juan smiles. "Ah pues vamanos entonces." We arrive in Las Delicias, a small hamlet about an eight hour drive in the mountains northwest of San Cristobal on a mission to take testimony from this group of expulsados, kicked out of their village two weeks earlier, by La Seguridad Publica, the men in blue, the state police. Briefed by the Human Rights Center, back in San Cristobal, in proper protocol among the Maya, we bring nothing to offer these desplasados, as we must not single anyone out. If we don't have enough provisions for 60 families, then we must not cause divisiveness by favoring anyone with food, water or medicine. Something they have little of and need desperately. Something we have more of than we need.

We arrived at this refugee camp believing ourselves to be a group of intellectuals sent by California State University Northridge to do research and gather data for the term papers we were expected to write out of this experience. We were, in fact, more along the lines of organic intellectuals, similar to those defined by Edward Said as a "[group] of individuals ... aligned with [an institution] and [deriving] power and authority from [that institution]" (50). We were ready and felt ourselves to be completely prepared by the previous two months of study on the Mayan condition, and on the political upheaval from the Zapatista Revolution with its current tensions. We had our journals. We were armed and eager to write.

We soon discovered, however, that we were amateurs fitting Said's definition as those "with desire to he moved not by profit or reward but by love for and unquenchable interest in the larger picture" (57). The larger picture in this case was a starving, ill and displaced group of almost three hundred refugees. In this picture our group was clearly one of "apprentices rather than. . . teachers or scholars" (Bartholomae 462) in a university that privileges Tzotzil over Spanish, community over individuality, and men over women. We "were children" being offered the suffering and wisdom of the others' experience. We found a completely alien environment, a university that we had to invent and acclimate to; causing us to reinvent the discourse, and ourselves.

There are over a hundred people milling around between those of us in front of the main assembly building up on a little hill where we wait and the open area below us where the women wait. We are all waiting for something to happen. I watch the women who wait still, so many of them sitting together in orderly fashion like schoolgirls. The littler girls stay together, some by their mothers' side. Other little babies are in rebosos, which are slung around their mothers' shoulders, nursing, sleeping, clutching the warmth of the body that carries them. These females of all ages are so beautiful with their long hair in braids, as they stand and sway in a sea of red and white while the day's heat melts us all.

They move as if possessed by one body, one mind alone. And I move with them as Gloria Anzaldua writes, "continually [as I walk out of one culture into another" weaving the fabric of a canto constructed out of a cuento of my own-as these women have woven the very shirts that now cling to their breasts and the crevices underneath.

Works Cited

Bartholomae, David. "Inventing the University." Composition in Four Keys. Eds. Mark Wiley, Barbara Gleason, and Louise Weatherbee Phelps. Mountain View, California: Mayfield, 1996. 460-479.

Castenanos, Rosario. A Rosario Castellanos Reader. Ed. and trans. Maureen Ahern. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.

Menchu, Rigoberta. I Rigoberta Menchu. Ed. Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. Trans. Ann Wright. London: Verso, 1984.

Said, Edward. "Professionals and Amateurs." Representations of the Intellectuals. London: Vintage, 1994. 49-62

Reference Citation: Overman, L. (1998). "Telling un Cuento in Travel and Journal Writing—Project Chiapas." WILLA, Vol. VII, p. 20-22.

Find this article also at Willa Vol. 7 from The Women in Literacy and Life Assembly of The National Council of Teachers of English.

Letters Between Us sees the light of a published day!

2008-01-05T00:34:00.002-08:00

After almost two years of sending out my novel and receiving the usual "interesting....but nevermind," or "good...but nevermind," or "we love your characters...but nevermind," or "we think it is poignant...but were not the agency for you try....nevermind," then finally editor, Susan Bright, from Plain View Press read it and got it (or as Jack Kerouac would have written "dug it"). At any rate Ms. Bright "got" the manuscript...she "got" the story. And she is publishing it later this year. God Bless that Texas gal!

Letters Between Us by yours truly Linda Rader Overman, will see the light of the printing press. It is a novel about a troubled writer's search to understand a friend's mysterious death at a mental institution leading to her own self-discovery and transformation.

And there will be more. . .yahoo!

A Desire to Write Transcends being Locked In

2007-12-04T15:47:00.001-08:00

After viewing the incredible film The Diving Bell & The Butterfly and then reading the memoir of the same title, I wonder if I have anything to complain about...I mean really. Blinking out a memoir in 14 months one letter at a time with one eyelid?! Now that's a voice insisting to be heard and worthy of being listened to.

After teaching remedial writing this semester, I suggested my students all see the film, a testament to the victory of the human spirit and a profound commentary on the desire to write and be heard no matter what the cost.

By itself alone this story of Jean Dominique Bauby, (French) Elle's Editor in Chief, and quite the Bon Vivant
sharing his last words and reflections on his life should inspire all nascent writers to come forth and mark their place in history on paper, on a keyboard, on a blog or video but mark a place and share the story of their own lives, for themselves, for their children and grandchildren. I don't know if any of my students will see the film, many of the class members were born in 1988/1989 and the idea of writing in a journal with a regular old pen may seem archaic, but I did see one of my young female students showing off her vinyl bound journal the last day of class with white pages inside filled with her cursive and her life as she is living it now.

Our personal histories are so undervalued, but so important in the sum total of our lives. Even though we may just be ordinary and I am certainly first in line as an ordinary woman, but the students that I have the privilege of teaching will one day rule the world that I will be ageing (and hopefully sage-ing) in. It will be important for all of us in the years to come not to forget what we must remember and what books and films like that of Bauby's story demand we remember.

Family Pictures Shape Memory

2007-07-31T16:05:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from my essay

"Family Pictures Shape Memory."

Chican@s in the Conversations
Eds. Elizabeth Rodriguez Kessler and Anne Perrin.
New York: Longman (2007).

Photographs of my intersection with self and history are images that have a profound impact on the way I remember my past. These images exist thankfully because of the photographs taken by my father (who made a career out of snapping the lives of others on film), and by photographers whose identities have long been erased from the memory of my family members: my elderly mother or my aunts and other uncles, repositories of my family history, some of whom are now frail, in their eighties, early nineties, or dead. Collected and stored by my mother--a woman who never throws anything away--thousands of pictures stuffed in albums, in envelopes, in dressers, and in boxes are now in my possession. The best I could gather over the past two decades line the walls of my home. These images of family members and friends, some long dead, some still alive, intrigue me. I wonder just who all these people and images I grew up with really were and what they were actually doing when the photographs were taken? Often there are no captions to inform the viewer of anything, so I wondered what had occurred just prior to the click of the shutter or just after. Why are the subjects in the snapshots positioned just so? What directions were the subjects receiving from the photographer? What responses were being directed back at the photographer? Were the subjects told to look just off-camera, put on lipstick, smooth a misplaced hair, or simply just told after a 1-2-3 count to “Smile? What did the photographs so masterfully composed not show or tell about the people or events captured? Was the attention centered on the picture=s real subject? What kind of statement was being made as a result? Was the photographer taking a kind of revenge on a particular subject or offering forgiveness?

During this looking and recalling, I had many discussions with my mother about the treasure trove of photographs she so lovingly and caringly saved along with her idealized and/or perceived memories. Mother's descriptions often suffered from an occasional fuzzy memory exacerbated by poor eyesight. It was then that I would discuss these photographs with aunts and uncles who often affirmed or contradicted Mother's (re)memories of the very same images. Within the contradictions misconceptions about memory arise, and although photographs evoke memories those memories do not simply spring out of the images themselves; they generate meaning-making, traces, suggestions of something else-disagreements within family culture.

Moreover, any references to my parent's ultimately unhappy marriage, lasting only eight years and ending in divorce, were also cause for conflicting narratives and, at times, distorting the topography of remembrance. Looking back on realities and ideals shared between us, fueled by countless 8x10 glossies, Mother (without realizing it) ended up assisting me in producing narrative complements or imagetexts, which allowed me to fill in what the pictures left out. . . . . . . .

The Deadliest Mass Murder in US History-at a university

2007-04-16T20:49:00.000-07:00

Why? Why? Why?
As I watch the horror unfold on TV that occurred this morning at Virginia Tech--all I can wonder is why?
And the only answer that comes to me is . . . sadly . . . because. Because. Because the killer could. Because no one knows the horror that lives inside a determined killer's mind. Because the time, the place, the opportunity existed in the killer's mind and no one could possibly know what darkness shrouds, clouds, corrupts the mind of a killer. And so he killed because he could and no one stopped him.

No one stopped him after he murdered two students in their dorm room and no one stopped him after he murdered over 20 students more than two hours apart across campus while they sat in their German class?
What were the campus police thinking?
Maybe they weren't. It is hard to judge, I wasn't there.

"Why?" is what I hear in the CNN reports. So Anderson Cooper interviews a killer from another shooting years prior. The convicted killer speaks, "I had to do something to get everyone to leave me alone." So this kid was picked on unmercifully and his resolution was to shoot one by one at his list of abusers. He based this on watching video games. He never realized that a wounded or murdered person didn't get back up after being shot. That never happened in video games, so why wouldn't a murdered person get back up again. If only he'd known the reality. Now he is serving an over 200 year life sentence.

I guess somebody should have told him that his problems, just maybe, weren't that bad. Oh . . . he just said this himself.

I teach at a university. How can something like this be prevented or how can my university be prepared for such a horrible thing? How and why can any university be ready to avoid such a massacre?
Honestly, I don't think my campus can nor can any other campus.

But I have had a student become scarily aggressive and verbally abusive in class, so much so that I had to walk away quickly and report him to campus police. The result...he was told to write me a letter of apology by the VP of Student Affairs. He never did and remained in my class even after I had a campus police officer talk with him about his inappropriate behavior after class one day. I could not legally force the student to stop attending....after all--I was told--he paid his tuition--all I could do was fail him.

The ironic thing is that these kinds of events are creating cell phone journalists. Students using cell phone cameras are the primary reporters for this particular event. Jamal Albaughouti jumped into action as he was walking across campus to talk with his advisor...as a professor yelled at him and others to get the fuck away Jamal drew his phone and started recording at least 27 shots fired. And now he and other students are stringers for TGV and radio--paid nothing by the way--for their reports.

What do we call this new form of electonic journalism? Cellphojournalists? CPjournalists? Jamal is being interviewed all over the news. He and a slurry of other cellphojournalists or students who were eyewitnesses.
Jamal, now referred to as an eyenews reporter by Larry King, felt this event to be similar to what he, Jamal, was trying to escape from in the Middle East. Go figure. You don't have to be in the Middle East to risk being killed in a war zone....just come to the USA--any school.

Where is there a safe place to live?
Answer--Nowhere.

Finding an agent is so interesting

2007-03-25T15:12:00.000-07:00

In the last year I have circulated my epistolary novel, around town and by town I am stretching the term to its pandemic meaning. Anyway, my query always generates lots of interest. Many agents and publishers have responded with Yes, send it. Over and Over. Then . . . I wait. Then rejections . . . contradicting each other.
"It is well written and we are moved by it . . . but can't take it on right now."
"Good luck with someone else."
"We find it interesting but in today's world of publishing there are too many books are out there and not enough readers. Good luck elsewhere."
"It is too short."
"It is too long."
"It is too multi layered."
"It is not layered enough."
"It is not poignant enough."
"It is too poignant."
"We just plain don't think it right for us, but some other agent/publisher may feel differently."
"Don't give up."
"It isn't chocolate mint chip enough!"
......bla bla bla.

It is all so funny to me.
Really. I have no doubt that the right person will finally "get it," and the novel will be published. It is just a matter of time. And the journey to that entity that agent/publisher is fraught with ups and downs, hopes and expectations, duels with words, and it is all part of the struggles and challenges of being a writer: Getting someone to believe in what one has written. This apparently is the only way to validate the writing at all.....Hmmm. It is all so amusing and ironic because what makes a writer more worthy than another says so much about "who" is doing the reading.

Apparently not enough people are out there doing much "reading." The act alone conjurs up too much work complain many of my students here at University. They don't like to read...they would rather IM or text or just plain watch a movie about a subject instead. Why read Herodotus when you can see 300?

Why read any history book about Native Americans and the U.S. goverment's genocidal treatment of them when you can view Disney's Pocohantas?

Yikes! Kill me now.

I see my challenge as an English professor, especially with incoming freshman, to make them want to put aside the Ipod, the laptop, the Shuffle, the Blackberry, and whatever else is still to be invented to cut short holding an actual book with printed paper and valued font on it in one's hands...if only for a little while and fall in love with the words on the page. Helping and guiding students to "get it" and by doing so "get" themselves and more of who they can be, will be, and what they can and should contribute to their world and that of succeeding generations. When they enter my classroom I don't greet them with "Enter future Masters and Mistresses of the Universe" for nothing. I know they will get it and they will conquer.

Introduction--open forum

2006-12-14T12:02:00.000-08:00

What gets people talking nowadays? Talking about themselves? OR TV shows they prefer or hate? OR talking about people we love or hate? Discussing dreams, fears, passions?

Everything and anything?

Sitting here with my student Mr. Beck, we talk about those things and more, and so what? That is the question? The so whats of life? What about them and where do they take us? Mr. Beck likes talking about things that people don't know about...anything that elicits the response of "What's that?"
"I do," he says. And he's not talking about marriage vows. He's talking about his car accident but he says, "I'm tired of talking about it."
"Why?" I ask.

"I don't know...my mom uses it as a tool sometimes...she likes to talk about it...like she wants people pity me...and yet I talk about it and maybe it sounds like pity, but that is not my intent."

"So what would you rather talk about?" I say.

"Something not tragic...there is a time and a place for that...feel sorry for me...people seem to want that and it sounds kind of selfish...you are just talking about yourself. In a conversation there are two people...so what about the other person?"

Yes, I think, what about you?