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Visit to Green Apple Books

Featured Reader of the Night
Featured Reader of the Night

I had a wonderful time in San Francisco reading from Red Eggs and Good Luck and discussing growing up biracial during the Great American Melting Pot and autographing books for readers. I especially enjoyed the lively discussion with readers who shared the same upbringing that I did. They have inspired me to continue to tell my stories.

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Signing Books for Readers

Special thanks to my publicist, Eva Zimmerman, for arranging the event and the entire staff of Green Apple Books for making my visit memorable.

Only one more stop on my nationwide book tour…stay tuned.

My Lucky Visit

More Questions
I enjoyed spending the day with students in Tomah, Wisconsin, discussing the themes of my memoir, Red Eggs and Good Luck, and answering questions about writing, Chinese culture, and what it means to be true to yourself. I appreciated the attentive audience with their enthusiastic questions. Their pure joy of learning fueled me through five presentations, three at the middle school and two at the high school, for a full day of fun!

Boswell Book Company

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Thank you to Todd Wellman at Boswell Book Company for welcoming me tonight.

Thank you to all the fans who showed up, especially Sydney Hofer, a long-time Goodreads and Facebook friend and fan who helped draw interest in the event.

Thank you to all the new readers I met tonight. I appreciated the enthusiastic and inquisitive questions that led to a lively discussion.

Boswell Reading 1

One More Page Books

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I kicked off my first reading at One More Page Books in Arlington, Virginia. Staff member and avid reader, Sally, gave an enthusiastic and well-researched introduction. The bookstore owner, Eileen, and her mother, Joyce, made me feel at home.

A special thanks to all of the readers who attended the event, purchased books, and made me feel welcomed, respected, and loved.

As a footnote, One More Page Books is where President Obama shops with his daughters for their latest reads. Although he wasn’t here tonight, I enjoyed seeing the pictures of his latest visit with the staff and shoppers.
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On the Road

Journey
This week I’ll be traveling from city to city to speak about Red Eggs and Good Luck. I’ll be posting blogs when I can and updating Twitter or Facebook when I can’t. I’m looking forward to meeting some fans and making new friends and exploring new cities. Special thanks to my publicist Eva, my longtime fan Sydney, and my fellow writer Amanda for helping make this trip possible.

Fall Book Tour Dates

Below is a list of confirmed events to promote Red Eggs and Good Luck. I hope you can make it to one or more of them!

East Coast

One More Page Books
Tuesday, October 27th from 7-8 pm

Midwest

Boswell Book Company
Thursday, October 29th from 7-9 pm

Tomah County Middle and High Schools
Friday, October 30th from 11 am to 3 pm

West Coast

Green Apple Books
Wednesday, November 4th from 7-9 pm

Best Wishes Cards and Gifts
Thursday, November 5th – Details to follow

On the Midnight Shuttle

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Moonlit Fields of Desire by Angela Turpin

We met at the Los Angeles airport after our flight was canceled because of a mechanical failure. You asked me, “Will they ship my luggage to my home?” I shrugged, having not traveled much in my lifetime, not much at all, except for business, which was why I was here, waiting for the next flight to Santa Rosa.

I didn’t pay any more attention to you. I was too busy waiting for my boss to return with her bottled water. I wanted to board the plane and head home. It was after ten o’clock, past my bed time, and the veggie sandwich I had eaten an hour ago was not enough to settle my nerves about whether or not I would be home in the morning to help my husband take our children to their respective schools.

After the plane landed in San Francisco, you found me once again waiting for the midnight shuttle to take us home. When you wouldn’t stop talking, I finally reached out, introduced myself, and shook your hand. I noticed your closely clipped hair that made you look almost bald, the tweed Fred Astaire hat in your hand, and the button down shirt and khaki slacks that made you look like you had stepped out of a 1950’s photo. You kept on talking and talking, and your enthusiasm buoyed me. I lost track of how cold the San Franciscan air was and how dark and lonely it felt beneath the awning. You were like a bouncing fluorescent ball of energy illuminating the darkness. Your talk was so absorbing, witty, and entertaining that I forgot about how my husband did not call to say he loved me, how my daughter only cared about how I had yet again missed her birthday, and how my co-worker friend thought my photo text with the abbreviated message, “Wish you were here,” was for my husband, not him.

My boss stood on the sidewalk behind us smoking a cigarette. I pointed to a man standing on the curb holding a sign with someone’s name written in black marker. “That will be me later this year when I go on a cross country book tour,” I said.

You glanced behind us at the man with the sign and nodded. “How many books have you written?”

“Too many to count,” I said, “but this will be the fifth I’ve published.” I bit my lower lip and tears welled up in my eyes as I wondered if my family would miss me or would they dread the day I returned.

You tossed the tweed hat back and forth between your hands and said, “I followed a girlfriend to college and picked whatever major seemed grown up at the time just to be with her, but when I discovered color—how blue or orange can make someone buy something—I discovered the my true calling.” You clasped your hat gently with the fingers of one hand and gazed at me with your hazel eyes. “Sometimes you have to follow a path that will care for your health and spirit.”

I glanced away and shivered. You must have thought I was cold because you offered me your jacket. I shook my head and said, “It’s my soul that’s freezing.”

You frowned and pulled me close. I rested my cheek against your shoulder and noticed my boss across the street staring at us. I shifted, trying to pull away, but you held me closer and whispered, “How can you be with someone who limits your potential? Who doesn’t want you to succeed? It might have been fine when you’re twenty, but it’s not okay when you’re forty. You need respect and recognition. You deserve to be with someone who understands that.”

“All I ever wanted was happiness,” I whispered back.

You released me. “Are you happy?”

I glanced away, afraid to answer.

You waved your hat like a magic wand, cutting through the night, bringing clarity to the situation. “When my wife and I contemplated getting a divorce last year, she said it was because she couldn’t live with a man who was too soft with his children. I told her I would rather be unmarried and alone than to create so much tension with my son that he would never open up to me. If that means I’m not hard on him, then I’m willing to end the marriage. I cannot live with someone who cannot accept me as I am.” Our eyes met. “When are you going to stop hiding that light inside of you?”

“I’m not hiding it,” I said.

You stopped talking. Your fingers splayed to catch the brittle night. “You’re such a liar.”

I laughed.

When the shuttle arrived, we sat next to each other and continued to chat until the bus driver said, “Hush. People are trying to sleep.” You tilted your head close to mine, and our heads touched. “Let’s whisper,” you said.

It was after midnight. “We should be sleeping,” I said. “We both have to be at work by eight.”

You whispered, “But I could talk to you all night.”

I smiled. “And I could listen to you all night.”

You said, “You are a good listener.”

We touched noses and continued talking.

I felt your voice vibrating against my skin. I felt your energy infiltrating me with new life. I felt your words filling me up, making me full.

“I have plenty of friends who say they’re writers,” you said, “but I’ve never seen anything they’ve written.”

“It’s a tough business,” I said.

“That doesn’t matter.” You wrapped your arm around my shoulder, tugging me closer. I placed my head against your shoulder and felt safe and warm and loved and understood. You said, “You’ve published five books.”

“I only sell one book for every five hundred hits on my website,” I said.

“That’s good.” Your voice uplifted me. “The average conversion rate is one to two percent.”

I was too tired to try to calculate the mathematical formula to verify if you were correct. “I won’t feel so bad anymore,” I said, although I knew deep down I would continue to compare myself to my friends, many of whom had books for sale in the Hudson Bookstore at the airport terminal at LAX.

You held me closer and whispered, “You’re a star.”

I smiled against your shirt, too uncomfortable for words.

Later, as the shuttle drifted through San Francisco, our words grew sparser, our breaths grew longer, and our eyelids grew heavier until we parted into dreams.

When the bus driver jolted us awake, we parted like plastic peeling away from skin, reluctantly and hesitatingly, a film of body heat clinging to us like memory. You said, “I enjoyed our conversation.”

We stepped out into the night, and while I waited for my boss to disembark to drive me home, you pulled me into your arms and said, “Even if we never see each other again, I will always look into the heavens and think of you because you are a star.”

I felt my throat tighten and tears well up against the surface of my eyes. “This night reminds me of the movie Before Sunrise,” I said.

You chuckled, stepping back and holding me with your hands on my shoulders. “No, it’s more like Clerks.”

I shook my head. “It was more like destiny.”

You smiled and nodded, donning your hat and walking away to the long term parking lot, leaving me alone.

Weeks have passed since that night. And whenever I am alone after midnight I think of you and wonder if you still think I am a star.

100 Years of Memories

Photo courtesy of Ed Turpin
Photo courtesy of Ed Turpin

I was honored to be one of several women who read excerpts from Suzanne Sherman’s book 100 Years in the Life of an American Girl to help celebrate the launch of a new series of books chronicling the lives of American females. The first book in the series features stories from girls around the age of thirteen sharing what it was like to grow up in each decade from 1900 to 2000.

The event was held in the main dining room of the French Garden Restaurant in Sebastopol. Photographs from the book were presented in a slide show while music from each decade filled the room. Guests enjoyed champagne, sparkling water, and orange juice while listening to Suzanne share her insights into each decade. Each reader presented a snippet of their stories to a rapt audience.

My story about growing up in the shadow of the American Dream was a prelude to my book-length memoir that will be released later this year.

For those who missed the event, Suzanne will be hosting other readings in the future. You may also purchase a book either directly from Suzanne’s website or through Amazon.

Fabulous Book Signing at Best Wishes

Thanks to all the new readers and loyal fans who showed up the day before the Super Bowl to purchase an autographed copy of my collection of short stories, The Human Act and Other Stories, published by All Things That Matter Press.

For those of you who missed the event because of illness or other engagements, a few autographed copies can be purchased at Best Wishes.

A special thanks to Kevin Gross, a championship softball player and an extraordinary loan officer at Summit State Bank, for graciously taking a publicity photo with me. I hope he enjoys the stories enough to return to Best Wishes to purchase the rest of my books.

Laying Fallow

Leza Lowitz introduced me to her friend, David Bromige, at a poetry reading in Sebastopol. Although I had been attending Sonoma State University as a creative writing major, I had not taken Professor Bromige’s poetry classes because he was on sabbatical. He was an elegant gentleman with wavy salt and pepper hair, leathery sun-kissed skin, and bright, though penetrating, brown eyes. He was dressed in a tweed jacket, white button-down shirt, brown slacks and matching dress shoes. We started talking about poetry. I was labeled a narrative poet; he was labeled a language poet. But we both liked to bend genres, experiment, and come up with new twists to old turns. At the time I had completed my first chapbook of poems, Woman of Crystals, and had been promoting it through book festivals.

“What are you working on?” I asked him.

His brown eyes widened and his brow furrowed, as if puzzled by the question. “I’m in between work,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. As a fellow writer, I imagined I would spend my sabbatical devoted entirely to writing my magnum opus, or at least, my next book to-be-published.

Professor Bromige grasped my elbow with his free hand (the other carried a glass of red wine) and led me away from the cacophony of others to a relatively quiet corner of the Quicksilver Mine Company. His voice was low and hoarse. “I’m laying fallow,” he said.

“Laying fallow?” I asked.

Professor Bromige began to explain how the farming concept of rotating crops applied to writing. “The mind is like a field,” he said. “You produce a great work of art and then you rest for a while.”

“But I always have ideas to work on,” I said. “I have so many ideas I can’t get to them all. I thought if I had time, like you do, I would be writing something new.”

That’s when he taught me a great lesson, a lesson I never learned in a classroom. “You should always rest between projects, let the ideas germinate. When they are ready to sprout, then you begin writing again. But no sooner. Always lay fallow. That’s what I am doing. I am laying fallow.”

“But when will you know when to begin again?” I asked.

He gazed off into the distance at nothing in particular and said, “However long it takes to complete a project is how long you should rest. That’s how nature works. That’s how writing works.”

At the time, I doubted the wisdom of his advice. If I didn’t have enough time to write, I most certainly didn’t have enough time to lay fallow. Besides, I didn’t have a paid leave of absence to do absolutely nothing. I had bills to pay and a body of work to complete before I died.

The evening ended with neither one of us understanding the other no matter how hard we politely tried. Unfortunately, I never saw Professor Bromige again. He retired shortly after his sabbatical and went on to publish ten more volumes of poetry before his death in 2009.

Although Professor Bromige is no longer with us, I finally understand what he was trying to say. I published my third novel in April 2011 and wanted to plunge immediately into my fourth novel. Although I have volumes of notes at the ready, everything I write falls flat. That’s when I realized it is time to lay fallow, to leave the words alone, to retire to other things, to let the mind grow fertile with rest.

It is a hard lesson to learn. Every morning I struggle with the guilt of “I should be writing” instead of sleeping in or jogging around the block. But I know, deep down, Professor Bromige is right. The mind is a field that needs rest. When the season is right, the words will germinate and grow into the next book to-be-published. Until then, I will be laying fallow.

More on David Bromige.

More on Leza Lowitz.