Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

July 29, 2011 By Patricia V. Davis Leave a Comment

“Stubborness does have its helpful features. You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow.” ~ Glen Beaman



Hi there!

 

Thanks for stopping by Patricia’s Opinion Dot Com.  Due to time constraints and other considerations, there have been a few necessary changes around here. Beginning August 1, 2011, I’ll no longer be posting at this site. But if you’d like, you can find my articles, essays, podcast interviews and “Expert in Failed Relationships Advice Column at:


HS Radio e-magazine: www.harlotssauce.com

 

For press releases, press photos, events, workshops and other appearances, please have a visit over to my personal author website at:

 

http://www.patriciaVdavis.com

 

To request my consultation, interview, or speaking fees, please contact my author liaison, Jane Hunter at:

jh@johngalvisagency.com

 

And if you just want to say hello, please send me an email:

patricia@patriciaVdavis.com


or visit my Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/patriciaVdavis


or find me on Twitter:

@patriciaVdavis


or Google +1

..or heaven knows what else by the time you read this!

 

Thank you for your interest in my writing.  I look forward to hearing from you!

 


Arts Critic Jan Wahl from KRON 4 News with Patricia V. Davis at "Diva Doctrine" Launch

 

Filed Under: On Writing and Publishing, Patricia Volonakis Davis' Blog, Podcasts and Technology Tagged With: , , ,

How to Have a Successful and Rewarding (Writing) Life

May 22, 2011 By Patricia V. Davis 11 Comments

Oscar Wilde, 1882

So a number of people have written to ask me for tips for a successful writing life. (Yes, believe it or not, they have. Why they’re asking me and not JK Rowling is a puzzle, but there you go.) In response, I thought I’d post my rules for doing that here. In fact, on pretty much every point, the points below are most likely the way I’d lead my life even if I hadn’t chosen to be a writer:

1)    Work hard.


2)    Have a supportive spouse/partner and family. If he/she is not supportive consider that this person may not be the person for you. (I’m serious.)  If your family (parents and other relatives) are not supportive, ignore them completely. If your children are not supportive, unless they’re under age 18, ignore them, too. Don’t let other people’s discontent with their own lives taint your perspective, even if you happen to love those people. You giving up your dreams will not make them any happier.


3)    Work even harder.


4)    Remember every single person who helps you get a step up ─ the people who give you blurbs, the people who leave comments on your blog, the people who review your book, your agent, your fellow writers who show up at your book events, the book seller who hosts your events, the local newspaper columnist who does a story on you, the editors who critique your work (they’re your friends not your enemies) ─ and even if that person never does another thing for you, try to help them at least twice as much as they helped you whenever you can.


5)    Keep working hard.


6)    Take no notice of anyone who is jealous of you and/or seems to wish you harm. Don’t be offended by those who trash your work, who say “no” to any requests, who ask to be taken off your mailing list, who give you an *unrealistically negative review. If you expend energy worrying about these people, that is that much of your energy used up in a negative way and ─ believe me ─ you will need all your energy. (See points 1, 3, 5, 7, 9.) Also, don’t be jealous of other people’s success. Don’t compare yourself to others, ever. Because what you’re comparing are two very unalike things; what you’re comparing is your inside to what somebody else’s outside appears to look like to you. Again, a big fat waste of energy.


7)    Keep working. Now is not the time to get discouraged.


8)    In point six, I say ignore the “unrealistically” negative review. But if someone takes the time to critique your work and make a criticism or two that you keep hearing over and over again, it’s time to silently thank those detractors and look over your work with a more critical eye. They took time out of their busy lives to write about your book. Heck, they even spent money to buy your book, and if they’re telling you something, perhaps you ought to mull over. This is a positive, not a negative thing.


9)    The more successful you get, the harder you work. Yes, that part sucks, but that’s the way it is. If you have one book out, you should be marketing it, but at the same time, you should be at least thinking about your next writing project. Can you say, “10-hours-a-day workday, 6 days a week?” Better be able to do more than say it.


10)    On point #9, if you want to have a life outside of writing and still be successful at it, plan every moment of your day to get the most out of your time. 10 hours a day includes your marketing time as well as your writing time. The rest of the day includes your sleep, your dinner time, exercise, your hobbies, your chores, your time with your family and friends. So plan it out well. Savor it. Don’t waste it.


11)    Embrace your workday, don’t resent it. You will be extremely unhappy if you can’t do this one thing.


12)    Take time off when you need to and do not feel guilty about it, ever. Want to spend time with your young children, even several years of time? Do it. Want to go away with your partner or some friends? With few exceptions, don’t make it a working holiday. (Unless, of course, you’re in the middle of book tour. Ahem.) Embrace your time off as much as you embrace your work day. Because the definition of “success” is being able to look back on your life without too many regrets.

Anyone care to add their own ideas on the above? I’d love to hear them.

:-D

(P.S. Isn’t this a wonderful photo of Oscar?)

Filed Under: On Writing and Publishing, Social Commentary, Telling it Like it Is Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Yes, Things are Changing—Deal with It! (Or, What I Learned in New York City)

January 29, 2011 By Patricia V. Davis 9 Comments

This weekend, I had the pleasure of being in New York City, which despite the January onslaught of snow and wind, is always a wonderful place to visit. I was speaking at The Writer’s Digest Conference, and when I tell you it was an honor to be doing so, I don’t say that just so the organizers will read this and think I’m gracious. (But I hope they do.) I say it because the speakers were amazing, and I feel I learned more than I taught. But the two paramount things I learned, the two most fantastic things, were not taken away from any one particular talk or speaker. Here they are:  20-somethings and 30-somethings are marvelous, and the salvation of the human race will come from our advances in technology.

How did I get all this from a writers’ conference? I’m so glad you ask. There are those of you reading who would be well within your rights to assume that we writers are a stuffy, insular, snobbish and introverted lot. Well, okay…maybe some of us are. But those farty literati types seemed in short supply at this particular conference. At this conference, what I noticed was that the majority of the attendees were upbeat, democratic, and brimming with passion for their craft. Though the older people were no slouches in exhibiting these characteristics, naturally it was the younger set who displayed them most. But it wasn’t because of their naive optimism. Quite the contrary — their confidence in what the future holds for them in regards to the success of their writing careers, stems from something they have on their side to help them succeed that those of us who started on the writing and publishing track in the 1970’s did not ─ the internet and the technological leaps and bounds springing from that forthwith.


Last weekend, I listened as speakers talked about e-book sales, (Amazon sold more Kindle books this past year than paperback), making books into phone apps, publishing on Scribd and Smashwords and more.  It was a cross-generational meeting of the minds as the younger writers instructed the older writers on how all this stuff works (and work it does!) and older writers became excited at the realm of new possibilities to share their art. I saw one 70-year old get up and ask a 40-year-old speaker who’d written his book as a phone application how she could do that with her newspaper column.


But what I also loved was how the younger writers still crowded into rooms to hear older writers speak about what we knew, too, solely from our years and experience. Yeah, that’s right ─ the young’uns weren’t a bunch of little ‘know-it-alls’ — uninterested or unimpressed with what we older lot had to say. I heard from them many references to works by writers long dead, and you know, you can’t get any older than dead. There was respect there, coming from the young for the old; but equally important, from the old for the young. They wanted to speak to each other and learn from each other, in fact, were eager to do so.


I admit I was more than flattered to see some of the younger people ‘tweeting’ my remarks from my lecture room out into the world in real time. How ‘bout that? Hmmm... So, if there were fifty people in each room where that conference was held, how many more still who weren’t there physically still got to ‘hear’ what each speaker had to say?


So this is what I’m envisioning from all of this ─ a world where, if you can’t be at the place where the Dalai Lama is speaking, (or he’s been banned from your country) you can still just pick up your phone and get his words from your Twitter feed as he speaks them.  And if a politician spews out lies during a speech, you can fact check what he says on your iPad right there and then, and fire right back at him with a rebuttal via his email address or website. (It’ll be keeping high school teachers on their toes, for sure, when their students do this during their classes.)And when they tell us that we should be bombing this country or that, none of us anywhere in the world will buy into it, because one of our online poker buddies will be from said country, and we know what a good guy he is. We know his wife, his kids, and his worries, and guess what?─ Even though he’s wearing a rather odd-looking hat, we know he’s still just one of us. Is it any wonder the Chinese are trying to suppress Google?


The part I like best is what this means for any writer, in fact, anyone who has something to say – you can still say it with flowers, or you can try saying it in e-books, online websites, and blogs. You can get your word out without it being censored or spin-doctored by the mainstream media; you can gatecrash the publishing world without one nod of condescending consent from any literary agent or traditional house. You can browse the internet for hours looking for just the right book, because it will be out there and available to you immediately in some format. Same goes for films, art, and music. There will be no reason to try to put Julian Assange in jail, because Wikileaks will be obsolete. We will become a world of no secrets and therefore, no fear of the unknown or of each other. It will be just as ordinary via Skype to have a conversation face-to-face with a beloved friend in South Africa or Toowoomba as it is to have one with your next door neighbor.


We, the little people, will finally be able to have our say without dozens of blockades put up for our ‘protection’. There will be one god for everyone, and that will be the god of kindness, respect, and caring for all, because we will all know each other, and we will all learn from each other, whether a different nationality or a different generation.


On the day of the 25th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger fall, oh, how I hope what I write here comes true. We mustn’t be leery of technology and scientific advance; we mustn’t hold it back, because despite any perceived and real risks involved in its development, it can save humankind.


Do I know what’s going to replace hardback books, or even if they will be replaced? No. But if they are replaced, will whatever replaces them be the “same”? Probably not. Just as printed books are not the same as scrolls, and when they updated Coca-Cola it no longer had cocaine in it. I’ll bet both those facts disappoint many. But I’m not one who looks in the rear view mirror while I’m trying to drive forward.


Did I tell you I’m learning to ‘tweet’?

—

Filed Under: Food for Thought, On Writing and Publishing, Patricia Volonakis Davis' Blog, Podcasts and Technology, Religion, Social Commentary, Social Networking Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Part II – I am No Longer A Person, Now I am Officially a Writer: Getting The Literary Agent

May 21, 2009 By Patricia V. Davis Leave a Comment

Now that you have your newly-edited manuscript down to 143,122 words, (not including the 36,310 words of the ‘Back Section’ which includes recipes, a guide to additional reading, a history lesson, a wine list, and other information you deemed pertinent to your readers as addendums to your manuscript), you start looking for a book publisher. The only problem there is that you have no idea how to find a book publisher. Someone wiser than you, or maybe someone who just overheard someone else talking to another someone about this, suggests you get a “literary agent”. But you’ve no idea how to find one of those, either.  So:

1) You go into your husband’s office and ask him, “Have you any thoughts on how I can get an agent for my women’s empowerment memoir?”

Your husband, a stockbroker who reads the financial pages, baseball biographies, and P.G. Wodehouse, and is at that very moment trying to make an important stock trade, replies (quite flippantly, you think), “None whatsoever.”

2) Unreasonably irritated, you leave his office, go back into your own, and type, “How to Get A Literary Agent” into the search engine on your computer. This is when you discover that Google has approximately 818,000 articles on how to find a literary agent, and amazon.com sells more than 50 books on the subject.

Surely you don’t need to read a whole book and all those articles? After all, how hard can it be to get an agent? Aren’t they like realtors? Don’t they want to sell your work? That’s how they make their money, after all, isn’t it?

Thus, assuming that selling a work of literature is like selling a house, you choose to follow the directives in a concise, one-page article you find on ehow.com.

3) The ehow.com article says that you need to first write a ‘query letter’ to an agent. Again, you are clueless. So again, you rely on Google, typing in, ‘what is a query letter?’ to find out on Wikipedia, another of your ‘unfailing’ information sources, that “a query letter is a formal letter sent to magazine editors, literary agents, to propose writing ideas.”

This seems simple enough, so you sit down and write your first ‘formal’ query letter, which goes something like this:

Dear ____________:

My name is Patricia Volonakis Davis, and I have written a women’s empowerment memoir called, “Amerikanaki”, which is my story about being raised first generation Italian-American, marrying a Greek national, and moving to Greece with him.

I hope you will be interested in reading my manuscript. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely yours,

Patricia Volonakis Davis

Address

telephone number

email

4. After formulating your concise query letter to match the concise instructions which you followed to write it, you make a list of the top ten agents in the United States, finding their names through Google, too, of course.

You go to the agents’ individual websites and discover the particularized instructions on each. Some want you to post your query letter, along with a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Others will only accept queries submitted by email. Some ask you send the first 30 pages of your manuscript, to also be included in email, pasted, not attached, in “WORD format only”, or “RTF format” (a format you assume is an anachronism for RUT the F*ck?!). Some want you to include any three random chapters, to be sent along with your SAE. And yet others ask that along with your query letter, you send the x-rays of your teeth your dentist took during your last exam.

Following all these instructions diligently (you were a teacher, after all) you send out your ten query letters/emails to your ten top choices of agents, and expect to hear from them all within a week or two at the most.

5. Three months later, you’ve written and emailed over fifty literary agents and received two replies detailing further instructions, and after having complied with those, you never hear from those two again. You now have six of those fifty available books sitting on your desk, with one more on order from amazon.com, and have taken five writing courses. One of those includes a three-day class given by a literary agent, (who shows no interest in your manuscript at all, by the way), simple titled, “How to Write a Query Letter”.

It was during this class that you learned how pathetically inadequate your first query letter was,  and you rewrote it so many times that it actually took longer to complete than the manuscript itself.  You also learn that apart from your manuscript and your query letter, you need to write something called a “book proposal”, and you have a new list of books written down and ready to order on how to write one of those.

You’ve spent hundreds of dollars on postage, photocopies, books, and classes. Additionally, you suspect your husband is seriously considering moving his office from home, so that you can’t barge in every day to cry over the latest rejection or out-and-out disregard from literary agents. You know these suspicions are well-founded when he suggests that you go to a writers’ conference where you can meet agents in person.

“But, writers’ conferences are very expensive,” you point out to your beleaguered husband.

“True, but a lot less expensive than my having to move my office,” he replies.

(You see? You were right.)

6. And so, you register for BEA (Book Expo America) in New York. You need to pay the conference fees, flight, hotel, meals, and transport to and from BEA, so that once there, you, along with hundreds of other hopeful writers, will have two hours to meet with as many agents as you can, who will give you three minutes each to pitch your manuscript to them. You have no idea who any of these agents are, you only read a short blurb description of them, and of whether they are looking for ‘fiction’ or ‘non-fiction,’ ‘children’s’ or ‘adults.’ You can also clearly see, as you stand on a queue waiting to speak to them, that all of the ones you’ve chosen are already annoyed at and/or bored with the writer who’s talking to them at the moment. And you’re up next.

7. You’ve spent thousands of dollars and another three months up to now, but guess what? ─ you walk away from the conference with seven business cards from agents who have told you to send them your manuscript! A month later, of the seven, two actually offer you a contract! Once again, you have no clue which of the two you should choose, so you go with the one who shows the most enthusiasm for your work. She turns out to be the less experienced of the two; as a matter of fact, you learn that you are her very first client, but no matter. You have an agent! You’ve done it!

8. You run into your husband’s office again, this time with excitement, kiss him and thank him for his brilliant suggestion. You then ring your best friend joyously, informing her that you finally have a literary agent! You will be published within weeks!

Or so you think.

(To be Continued.)

Filed Under: On Writing and Publishing, Telling it Like it Is Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

I am no Longer a Person; Now I am Officially a Writer

May 1, 2009 By Patricia V. Davis Leave a Comment

 

Agatha Christie

May 2009 marks two years since I wrote my first blog.  These two years have been an extraordinary writing journey for me.

I started ‘blogging’ because my literary agent recommended it as a way to build my writer’s platform , but discovered that it offered me much more than that. Blogging helped me make friends from parts of the world I’ve not yet even had the opportunity to visit, taught me how much more alike across the globe we all are than I’d even suspected, and made me think about my perspectives on so many social and political issues. All because of comments left for me on my written posts by other bloggers, and comments left on the posts of others whose blogs I loved to read.  Blogging even introduced me to some extraordinary writers who add so much quality work and enthusiasm to my online magazine.

And then, my dream came true and my first full-length work was finally published.  And ─  boy, oh boy ─ did life change. Yes, “getting a book deal” is the golden ring all writers are trying to grab on the merry-go-round of the publishing world.

So, for those who dream of it, or for those who know someone who dreams of it, let me tell you what it’s really like once you’ve obtained that objective. Sit back, as I go through it all, step-by-agonizing-step. I promise you every word following is true:

1)     You decide to write a book. You write every day for two years; some days you actually put some words down in a document. You then put manuscript away for one year, because:

a) you move

or

b) your children move

or

c) one of your children moves back in.

2) You pick your manuscript up again, and write for two more years. You’ve now finished your first draft. That’s right ─ your first draft.

3)     You give it to your husband and your best friend to read. You wait impatiently, feeling unloved and neglected, as for unfathomable reasons, they do not drop everything to read your manuscript, which is over 400 pages, single-spaced.

4)     After finally reading, your husband and best friend both gently suggest that you might want to get a professional editor. You thank your friend sweetly, but argue with your husband bitterly for that heartbreaking and insulting insinuation, and then you put your manuscript away for another three months, because you have no idea where and how to find a good editor.

5)     A man whom you’ve never seen before is on the treadmill next to you at your gym. You blurt out to him that you are a writer, and are looking for an editor. It turns out that he is a writer also, and he recommends an editor he knows. This is not the sign from God you think it is. The man on the treadmill next to you is a writer because you live in Marin County, California, where everyone, including George Lucas, thinks, for better or worse, that he or she is a writer.

6)     You phone the editor and she quotes you an eyebrow-raising hourly rate. You say you will ring her back. You walk into your husband’s home office, and tell him the fee the editor wants to work on your manuscript. Your husband asks, “Is she a good editor?” You say, “Yes, of course.” Your husband tells you to hire the editor.

7)     Your new editor takes two months to edit 80 pages of your 400-plus page manuscript. Then she goes on vacation and returns after two weeks to tell you she won’t be able to work on your manuscript for another four months. You spend three sleepless nights trying to decide what to do about your new editor, whom you like as a person, but are very impatient with as an editor. On the fourth morning, you go into your husband’s home office, exhausted, and tell him your problems with the editor.

He says, “I thought you said she was a good editor.” You leave your husband’s office, annoyed with him once again, go in your office and sit down at your computer to write an email to your editor, terminating your working relationship as professionally as possible, your stomach churning the entire time. She sends you a polite acknowledgment back, returns your manuscript, and with it, her invoice. You sigh with relief, and send her the money, a hefty sum. You are depressed and sleepless for three more days.

8)     You go back to your gym, where the man who recommended your former editor is never to be seen again, but another man, whom you know a bit better, recommends his wife to edit your manuscript. You grab her email address and send her an email.

9)     Man-at-the-Gym-Whom-You-Know-Better’s wife meets you in person appropriately at the local bookshop to discuss your needs and her credentials. She sounds qualified to you, but then, what do you know? The price she quotes you is even more eyebrow- raising than the price the previous editor quoted, so you excuse yourself to use the Ladies’, where you ring your husband on your cell phone, interrupting his work once again, to ask his opinion again. Your husband again asks, “Is she a good editor?” And again, you say, “Of course,” to which he replies again, “Then hire her.” You go back to the table where your now cold coffee and your new editor are waiting patiently, and hand over your manuscript, and Mrs. ‘M-A-T-G-W-Y-K-B’ promises to have your work back to you in one month, edited.

10)  Your new editor returns your manuscript in one month, as promised. On it she has penciled in the margins dozens upon dozens of questions and comments. She also encloses a three-page document of her own that offers more suggestions, her invoice, and her doctor’s bill for the carpel tunnel surgery she needed to have after editing your manuscript.

11)  You quickly glance through some of the notes your so-called editor has smeared across your manuscript, outraged and upset by every one of them. You walk into your husband’s office again, crying this time. This time, he wisely says nothing, and just keeps working. Disgusted with him, your editor, your work, and yourself, you walk out of his office, and phone your best friend for sympathy. She says she’s glad you found an editor that finished the job she promised to finish. Really disgusted now, you make an excuse to get off the phone. You leave your edited manuscript untouched for two weeks.

12) After two weeks, you look at your manuscript again, and decide you might as well try making some of the edits suggested, since you paid so much for them. You realize as you work that most, if not all, are not nearly as brainless as you’d first supposed. You type diligently and fruitfully for two solid months. Your manuscript is down to 337 pages and is much, much better. You run into your husband’s home office and tell him how exuberant you are over your brilliant editor. You run to your gym, hoping to meet up with her husband there, so you can congratulate him profusely for his choice of life partner. You now love him and her both equally, as a couple, as though they were old, dear friends.  You ring your best friend joyously, informing her that your manuscript is now ready to be presented to literary agents. You will be published within weeks.

Or so you think.

(To be Continued.)

Filed Under: On Writing and Publishing, Telling it Like it Is Tagged With: ,

An Announcement from Patricia’s Publicists

October 1, 2008 By Patricia V. Davis Leave a Comment
Harlot’s Sauce Book Cover

Dear Blogging Pals of Patricia Volonakis Davis:

My name is Margot Van Riper and I am Patricia Volonakis Davis’ author liasion. I’m taking over Patricia’s blog space today to announce with great pleasure the publication of her book, Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece.

If you are a fan of Patricia’s blog, we thought you might be tickled to know about this publication and that Patricia has acknowledged her VOX neighbors and writers on Harlots’ Sauce Radio e-magazine in her book’s dedication page.

If you would like any more details about this memoir, or updates on Patricia’s work, please visit her new interactive website. Currently we’ve posted some fun videos on the site which include Sicilian and Greek dancing, a young Greek ‘stud’ trying to book a date, and how Italians use donkeys to tell time. In November,upon release of the book to bookshops, ‘outtake chapters’ from her memoir will also be posted, as well as lots of information about Greece, including some fascinating history, current events, and practical tips for travel. (You’ll even learn how to catch a cab in Athens and obtain a Greek divorce if you are a non-national!) There will also be recipes for foods which are described in the memoir, and a video of Patricia herself cooking- you guessed it- Harlot’s Sauce! (Salsa Puttanesca)

We hope you will read Harlot’s Sauce and be inspired by it.

Margot Van Riper
author liaison
Timothy Ross Publicists

(for Patricia Volonakis Davis)

Book Blurb

When Patricia, the Italian-American, marries Gregori, the “gorgeous” Greek, she spends almost two decades in a sometimes tragic, sometimes uproarious pursuit of ‘Happily-Ever-After’. In a last-ditch effort to make their relationship work, Patricia moves with Gregori to Greece, where he insists he must be in order to be happy. Once there, she discovers that though she might not save her marriage, she just might save herself.We follow the narrator, as she describes in self-deprecating and side-splitting detail how growing up first-generation, blue-collar, Italian-American influenced her choice of mate, the naiveté of her perceptions throughout their courtship, her hapless, yet hopeful years amongst her new Greek relatives, and her eventual self-actualization brought about by the intriguing time spent in her adopted country — Greece. With vivid descriptions of life in modern-day Greece, this memoir is both a tasty treat and an exhilarating sail on the Hellenic seas through xenophobia, dysfunctional family units, religious ravings, obsessive protocols, political disorder, European football, and fabulous food.As the Italians say, Buon Appetito! (Good Appetite!) As the Greeks say, Kalo Taxidi! (Good Voyage!)

Available on amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.co.uk, www.bookpassage.com and other fine online booksellers sites. Released to bookshops and retail outlets November 1, 2008.

For more information, visit www.patriciaVdavis.com.

This title is also available as an e-book and on Kindle

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Filed Under: On Writing and Publishing, Press Release, Social Networking Tagged With:

My Very First Blog

May 24, 2007 By Patricia V. Davis Leave a Comment

I just realized today that it is approximately five years since I returned to the US after having lived in Greece for more than seven years. Gosh, these five years have just zipped by. When the weather warms up like it has, I still miss sitting by the Greek sea, sipping retsina with my friends and eating a feta cheese and tomato salad. I keep saying I will get back there one of these days, but so far, I haven’t done it. At least I can still keep up with my people there via email and cheap internet phone and every once in a while one pops in to send a kid to college here or sell the old property that belonged to the family, or what have you. So it’s not like we’ve lost touch. Still, so much has happened in the past five years, that I think I can be forgiven for not getting back as of yet.

 

Let’s see—well, there was the divorce itself that precipitated the move back. Then there was the sale of the business over there. Then there was the subsequent remarriage. Then there was the anxiety over the divorce, remarriage and business sale. Would I get out of Greece without having to leave my son behind with his father? Did my son really want to come back to the States with me and not stay in Greece with his father? Were my business partner and I happy with the terms of the business sale? Was I making a ridiculously optimistic mistake in getting married again? Did I know if my judgment in personal matters had improved any?

 

And apart from the anxiety over the divorce and the move and the sale and the remarriage, there was the guilt. Make that GUILT. I was dripping with it. Would my 14-year-old son adjust to all the changes I had forced on him? (We moved back home, but not exactly ‘home‘—we went to the west coast instead of the east where he’d been born, because after living in Greece’s sublime climate, I knew I just couldn’t abide a New York winter.) So we had the absent dad, the new state, the new school, the new step-dad and stepbrothers. There was the English language for him to contend with, as opposed to the Greek one. And I went from being a working mom to a stay-at-home-and-write mom. Every time he had any kind of issue, great or small, my whole body effused with shame—had I destroyed this kid or what? Said kid could really sense that GUILT, too and like the smart kid he is, he used it and used it good. He got at least a year’s free pass just on my self-reproach.

 

Gee—you’d think with all the anxiety and guilt, I wouldn’t have gained weight in those first two years back. I thought anxiety and guilt made one jittery and therefore gaunt. But, no. Because, you see, despite the anxiety and guilt there was HAPPINESS and love with my new fellow and love and happiness to me means cooking great meals and heavenly desserts and sipping wine by the fireplace we were lucky enough to have in our new flat. So the first two years back in the States, we had nerves, guilt and weight gain. But we also had joy. For the first time in my life, if I’m honest. I discovered in those first two years back, that the distinction between a happy marriage and an unhappy one, is like the distinction between a federal prison sentence that permits traveling privileges with a monitor strapped to your ankle and the exhilaration of complete exoneration. Much to my astonishment, it was—so far, fingers crossed—that different.

 

Until the car accident. My new husband lost a son, a boy I was just getting to know. But I won’t write about that today. It took us a while to get back on track, yet we’re managing. There is still happiness, but it’s mitigated now with the complete understanding of what sadness and despair truly is.

 

Now here we are three years later. I’ve spent the last four years writing, writing, writing. And being disgusted with George Bush, the Iraq war, the Patriot Acts and the Military Commissions Act. And being a wife, mother, stepmother, friend and enjoying every minute of those. And going to the gym, whipping myself back into shape and not enjoying that quite so much. But if I’ve learned anything at 51 years of age, it’s that if you have health, life still holds so many wonderful possibilities.

 

So, there you have it. My first blog. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it. Still—be warned—they won’t all be like this one. Going forward, reading my blogs will not be for the fainthearted. Stay tuned.

 

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Filed Under: Divas and Harlots, Food for Thought, Friends and Relationships, Greek Culture, On Writing and Publishing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

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