Not Waving, Drowning earns a Kirkus Review!

What Kirkus had to say:

Sands, Linda NOT WAVING, DROWNING CreateSpace (224 pp.) $14.99 Paperback $2.99 e-book September 26, 2011 ISBN: 978-1466409736

The lives of three women, separated by time and connected by loss, are woven together in unexpected ways in Sands’ debut novel. The seductive Southern charms of Savannah, Ga., provide the backdrop for Sands’ tapestry of a novel that interweaves the lives of three women from starkly different eras.

In August 2011, photographer and grieving widow Maggie Morris arrives in Savannah after her husband’s sudden death in a boating accident. While investigating his mysterious drowning, Maggie becomes entangled in the lives of several local residents. One of these is a handsome, young lighthouse restorer who recounts the story of the famous Waving Girl—Savannah’s own maritime legend who greeted ships for over 40 years from the island home she shared with her brother.

In alternating chapters, the novel flashes back to the 1890s, when a feisty newspaper reporter named Bobbie Denton, who also happens to be Maggie’s great-grandmother, meets the actual Waving Girl, née Florence Martus, while on assignment in Savannah. Flora’s story, told from an intimate point of view, centers on one day in 1940 when the 72-year-old woman lays to rest her dead brother, George, while recalling her life’s dark secrets.

If this all sounds a bit complicated, it is. Sands writes with graceful lyricism about the longings and regrets that bind these disparate women, and the images of lonely lighthouses and windswept shores are often stunning. As a whole, however, the novel suffers from narrative interruptions, with the chapters alternating rapidly and often abruptly, and many threads becoming tangled as a result.

On their own, each woman’s story is rich and engrossing. In an ambitious novel spanning more than a century, Sands creates tension in small moments and haunting questions—many of which are not answered until the final pages.

Despite the awkward narrative structure, there is plenty of Southern charm to keep readers hooked until the end. Strong female characters and an evocative setting make this an enjoyable read.

What Bookwenches had to say:

Title: Not Waving, Drowning

Author:  Linda Sands

Author’s website:  http://linda-sands.com/

Publisher: BookBaby

Release Date:  September 26, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-61842-1715 Length:

Novel Format:  Electronic

Genre: Fiction

Language/Violence Level:  2 Sensuality Level: 3 Rating:  5+ Keeper

Reviewed by:  Clea

The stories of three women, spanning a century, interlink with one another in beautifully haunting ways. Flora, a feisty elderly woman, chooses to reveal a lifetime full of secrets to a complete stranger on the day of her beloved brother’s death.  Bobbie, a turn of the century reporter, travels for her job but is actually running from the trauma of her past, sacrificing her soul for scraps of love. Maggie, a woman who finds it increasingly difficult to express her emotions, goes to Savannah to look into her husband’s mysterious disappearance. ******** Savannah, Georgia, with all its quirks and traditions serves as a back drop to a multigenerational story of three unconventional women who struggle to survive the paths their lives have taken. Their stories are linked by beautiful poetry filled with love, hurt, death, grief, and life. The poetry serves not only as a tool to link the women and their experiences, but it also enhances the feelings behind each scene and draws the reader into the lives of these characters even more. Flora, Bobbie and Maggie are three unique characters that will haunt you long after you’ve finished reading their stories. They are strong, independent women full of heartache who struggle to survive and move forward with their lives the best ways they know how. Often that means making unwise choices in life which can lead to little bits of insanity, but sometimes that’s the key to survival. This book is overflowing with emotion and a lot of it is often sadness and loneliness, but the author manages to interject mild touches of humor even in the darkest moments of sadness. This may move you from tears to giggles in the blink of an eye, but the author does it in a way that is tasteful and serves to remind you that life goes on. One thing about this book that kept me turning the pages is how the story leaps from different points in time and takes us on a timetable throughout the history of the world from the late 1800’s, to the 1940’s then jumps to modern times.  I loved how the author uses this technique to show how the things we do, think and feel will affect people of generations to come. Not Waving, Drowning isn’t a happy-go-lucky story that will perk you up and make you feel good about life; instead it is a beautifully written, sad story that will leave a lasting imprint on your soul.

Though, boy oh boy this book looks good.

Everyone has opinions. See this article to get the analysis from Roger Ebert, Margaret Atwood and more.

My take?

When posting these paragraphs from my current novel in progress: 3 women walk into a bar, a scene told from the protagonists POV, I was told by the analysts at I WRITE LIKE, that  I write like David Foster Wallace. What do you think? Here are the paragraphs I submitted:

The cozy bar on the corner. There’s one in every city, a hole in the wall that does more business than the big hotel bars. It will have more character, hide more stories, and even though most nights the biggest tip will only be a crumpled ten spot tucked into the waitress’s cleavage, the place will cash out stronger than the big guys, and with an honest owner, it could be around for years— like Cheers, minus the high paid actors and a cheesy laugh track.

I felt it as soon as I walked in. That I-wish-it-was raining-so-I-could-have-an-excuse-to-hunker-down-in-the-corner- booth-with-a-smoky-scotch-and-a-beer-chaser feeling. The idea hit me that some people would do exactly that even if the sun was shining and the boss was waiting and then another feeling began to sink in¾ kind of sick and wormy¾ that some people, even if they couldn’t afford the scotch part of the fantasy, would spend their days in that corner booth drinking away their future, trading their life for temporary liquid happiness.

It was this feeling that kept me away from drinking booze in quantity. I have been known to drink the occasional cold one at the ballpark, but I didn’t drink and drive, I never drank alone, and no, bartenders don’t count. I’d learned over the years that me plus alcohol add up to asshole. Anytime I thought I wanted to imbibe all I had to do was come to a place like this and take note of the loner at the bar, the one trying to look like he had it under control, though you could smell the loser on him, or the guys slamming shots at a back booth, killing brain cells, getting louder and more idiotic by the minute. I’d be reminded of the jackass nature of the drunken male and could order my soda, then leave.

Then, I submitted another  section from the same novel, one told from a main character’s POV, her backstory. It looked like this:

She went into work the first day, wearing kabuki makeup with her hair knotted over her head and a light-up Star Wars saber tucked in her sparkly belt.

She pulled over a chair, hopped up on it and addressed her first table, “I’m the Queen of Siam, Motherfuckers, who are you?” The bartender applauded and the table ended up tipping thirty-five percent.

One day she wound battery-operated Christmas lights around her waist and had them trail behind her like a tail. She recited dirty limericks in foreign accents, took every guy’s phone number that was slipped to her in the check folder and pasted them to the ladies room wall, next to an arrow and the words: Rich and Hung like a horse.

Roxie sat around the bar with the other servers after work.

“What did you clear?”

“Ah, the usual bullshit, you know,” she said, shrugging.

But they didn’t. The other girls on the floor were pulling a buck fifty maybe two hundred on a Saturday, and that was if they hustled. The quicker you turned a table, the better chance you had to clear a nice bit of coin. But you still had to tip the kitchen and the bar, and sure as shit those bartenders knew what your tickets were. Most of the time the waitress could blame it on the customer, calling them cheap, or saying somebody walked, but if you said that too often it came out of your pocket. Like Janice. She fucked up more than once.

“You aren’t pulling a Janice, are you?” The girls asked Roxie.

“Who me? Shit, I sold a thousand bucks and turned in two hundred in tips, okay?” Roxie was getting pissed. She climbed onto the bar.

“Look, fuckers!” she yelled, waving a twenty. “This is for you Rusty.” Roxie crumbled the bill and threw it at the bartender. “And you, and you and you,” she said as she went down the line, liking how they looked scrambling on their hands and knees for the money. She didn’t care. She had really cleared over four hundred and stashed most of it her bra. “All right then? Are we okay? Now, can I have a fucking beer? Please.”

I WRITE LIKE said that paragraph was similar to the writing of Cory Doctorow

Hmm.

I tried a flash fiction piece that had recently appeared in DOGPLOTZ.

She wants to keep him around longer than a night. She wants to be more than his fuck buddy, the one he calls when he wants a piece of ass without buying it dinner. She knows she’s not pretty enough for him, not skinny enough or nice enough and her crooked teeth, she figures they might have something to do with it, although he never minds feeling them skim across his cock.

She wants him to shut off his phone when he walks in her door because the chime and ding of all those pretty girls calling him gets annoying after a while and she has to try even harder to please him, even harder to get him to understand she is so much more than this naked girl standing in front of him willing to do anything he asks any time he asks.

Again, I got Cory Doctorow.

Now, for the piece de resistance.

I inserted a few paragraphs from the novel my agent is shopping in NY, We’re Not Waving, We’re Drowning. Hello HOTSHOT MARKET SAVVY EDITORS????

I went for the opening:

A phone that rings after midnight never brings good news. Maggie Morris rolled over and reached for the receiver, glad they hadn’t yet cancelled the house landline. She never would have heard the polite chirp of her cell phone or even found the tiny thing she’d tossed in her bag the night before.

She put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Morris? Mrs. David Morris?

It never was a good sign when they called you Missus.

By the time Maggie hung up the phone, two local Philly cops were on her porch, as if she needed further confirmation that her husband was dead.

That wasn’t what they said, of course. No one was allowed to draw conclusions. After all, mistakes had been made before, wrong doors had been knocked on, boats had returned, people had swum to shore, but Maggie felt the void of David, a fissure in her wall.

They said missing. They said there were some indications. They said she would need to go to Savannah. They pushed papers at her and phone numbers and offered assurances they didn’t have, while Maggie nodded then closed the door behind them. She wiped her eyes and began collecting the things she’d need, until she found herself standing in her office sobbing and she realized she had no idea what she needed.

She stuffed the papers in her bag then pawed through the junk drawer in the kitchen for a working pen while she called a cab. When the drawer stuck halfway, Maggie reached in and pushed stuff around until she found the culprit, a ratty old book. She tossed that in her travel bag too, rolled her suitcase to the door and stepped outside, closing the door to her predictable life.

In the back of the cab, Maggie repeated her mantra. Rely on yourself. Rely on yourself. It was her mother’s voice in her ear, a voice that whispered to her on the first day of kindergarten, on the day of the fifth grade spelling bee, each time the love of young Maggie’s life dumped her. Rely. On. Yourself.

It was from a poem her mother used to recite. The next line came to Maggie.

Oh, but I find this pill so bitter said the poor man. As he took it from the shelf.

Something about the phrase fortified her.

I WRITE LIKE came back with David Foster Wallace. Odd, yes? Appears DFW is the default writer. Sorry, dude.

And from another section of the novel:

A story like that didn’t go away. It was a tragedy, a retold lesson of the boy from Tarrabelle who drowned, about his missing sister and their dead parents, the couple who had clung to each other until the bitter end, jumping from the branch of the oak in the meadow, the noose on her neck doubled around the branch, ending in a loop of rope around his neck. The mother who had needed sixteen stones in her pocket, a counter weight to her husband’s limp body.

Someone had taken a photograph and sold it to the city papers, a distant image of two darkly clothed bodies hanging beneath a tall tree. People supposed they had jumped at the same time, stepping off into the air together holding hands.

If you squinted hard enough at the blurry photograph you could see them walking down a foggy path and imagine the distant clouds under their feet were a soft road that led somewhere wonderful.

I’m almost embarrassed that that section pegged me as Dan Brown.

Holy crap.

Third try with same novel: ( benefit of having 3 povs??)

I am an old woman, given to rants and daydreams. I earned the right in my troubled youth to act this way. People give me leave, allowing me space to act out my foolishness. In all truth, they encourage me, thinking I should be a foolish old woman, a demented old bitty, a sad, lonely and deplorable creature, so sometimes to assuage them, I am. And it disappoints me when I take joy in their discomfort.

What would George think of me today, in this funeral home, crying over his dead body? What would he tell me to do? I’d spent weeks hovering over him, asking how I could help. He’d been the one to send me out with the dogs, told me to take them down to the water and watch the sunset, take my time coming back. I suppose I knew what he’d planned. Maybe that made me feel guilty, feel like I needed his forgiveness.

Why can’t someone say those words for him now and fill up my emptiness, unclutter my heart?

“Miss Martus?”

A young girl—but they are all young now—touches my arm. She hands me a tissue.

“Is there anything I can get for you?”

I want to say, Yes, I’d like another forty years with that man. You can turn back the clock and make me a young girl running barefoot on the beach. You can give me back my life.

And wow. That submission earned me: Neil Gaiman. I think I should stop while I am ahead. WAY WAY ahead. I idolize Gaiman.

So, here the thing. Have you noticed, they are all male authors? What am I supposed to think of that? I know I have cajones, but still?

Ok. Here’s a challenge for the analysts. Let’s throw that algorithm a loop.

I will submit a sentimental passage, from a female POV. Let’s see what they think.

The door opens. She turns and watches him walk into the room. He takes off his sunglasses and as his eyes adjust to the darkness he sees her in her yellow dress sitting in the same place where they sat almost a year ago. She stands, wiping her palms on her dress, raising her brow, inviting him to come to her.

He crosses the room in three long strides, reaching for her, pulling her into his arms, pressing her against his chest. He’s sweaty from the ride over, hot and thumping with the blood and the adrenaline and she is sure that he can feel her heart through his shirt, that he reads her Morse code message sent out in beating dots and dashes. It’s. You. Finally.

He smells too good, and fits against her perfectly, as she remembered. She feels his muscular back, his broad shoulders and feels the strength in his hands as he runs them down her back to her ass. The silky fabric of her dress rides up when she raises her arms to encircle his neck. She thinks for a minute it will be like a sappy commercial, that he will spin her around in the center of this bar, that she will pull the clip from her hair and let it free, while kicking up her heels. But the second has passed and they are still standing there in front of the other customers—she hears them now, scraping back their chairs, resuming their conversations as if to say, show’s over—but still Jimbo holds Angel.

He presses his cheek against hers then tucks his head into her neck. His breath is warm and cool at the same time, as if he has just brushed her teeth, as if he ate a mint in hopes of kissing her. He reaches for her chin and tips it up toward his. They are almost the same height, she in her high heels, he in his cowboy boots. She opens her eyes and slowly blinks. A tear runs from the corner of each eye. She doesn’t try to wipe them away.

He smiles then, as if that was what he’d been waiting for, as if that tear told him everything. He looks at her so intensely, his gaze moving from eye to eye. It’s a test, a confirmation, the solution to the puzzle. She rolls her chin in his hand and when he meets her eyes again, his lips part and the angle is perfect. When his lips touch hers there is nothing else in the world, but them.

She doesn’t want to break the kiss first, end the embrace, pull away, but also what she wants to do she can’t. She wants to climb up his body and wrap herself around him like a python, she wants to slither down the front of him then lay at his feet sucking on his toes. She wants to stick her tongue in his ear and reach her hand down his pants and ride him barebacked through town with hair as her only clothing. She thinks all these things in one foolish moment and then, allows herself a small giggle, and that is how they part.

AND boom. I’m back to David Foster Wallace.

How bizarre.

In further testing, various Blog posts came back as Cory Doctorow, ( three times)  Chuck Palahniuk, ( thanks! I think) William Gibson, ( who?)  Raymond Chandler ( I wish!!) and the most funny to me?  I got “you write like Charles Dickens,” with my Neil Diamond concert blog post from 12/08. HAHAHA.

So, the answer to all this…. is that I am now ordering some books by Doctorow, Gibson,  and Wallace. And yep, totally rewriting my Dan Brown-esque paragraph.

From the NYT 3-20-09 By WILLIAM GRIMES (read complete here)

“We are not after all intended to be consumed.”
So begins Lionel Ziprin’s “Sentential Metaphrastic,” a “poem in progress” of more than a thousand pages. “I reduced it to 785 pages,” Mr. Ziprin told The Jewish Quarterly in 2006. “I call it the longest and most boring poem since Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.’ ”

Mr. Ziprin, a brilliant, baffling, beguiling voice of the Lower East Side and the East Village in all its phases — Jewish, hipster and hippie — died last Sunday in Manhattan. He was 84. The cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his daughter Zia Ziprin said.

For decades, Mr. Ziprin, a self-created planet, exerted a powerful gravitational attraction for poets, artists, experimental filmmakers, would-be philosophers and spiritual seekers. He ran his apartment, on Seventh Street in the East Village, as a bohemian salon, attracting a loose collective that included the ethnomusicologist Harry Smith, the photographer Robert Frank and the jazz musician Thelonious Monk, who would drop by for meals between sets at the Five Spot. Bob Dylan paid the occasional visit.

“He was larger than life and so far beyond a certain kind of description that I am bamboozled,” said Ira Cohen, a longtime friend. “He was much larger than a poet, though that’s hard for me to say, as a poet. He was one of the big secret heroes of the time.”

“I thought I was living in the Bible,” Mr. Ziprin said in a documentary produced by Jon Kalish for public radio in 2006. “ My grandparents were like biblical people. The only problem I had as a child, I looked outside, and there were automobiles. There’s a big contradiction.”

While undergoing a tonsillectomy, young Lionel — called Leibel or Leibele by his family — was badly overanesthetized. After emerging from a 10-day coma he developed St. Vitus’s Dance and epilepsy. He was seized by fits of uncontrollable laughter and experienced hallucinations. For the rest of his life, he saw visions and conversed with the spirit world.

A man of many words, he managed to write his self-portrait in just a few:

I have never been arrested. I

have never been institutionalized.

I have four children. I am in

receipt of social security benefits.

I am not an artist. I am not an

outsider. I am a citizen of the

republic and I have remained

anonymous all the time by choice.

This year was a series of trials, sort of like the Olympics, but with less Chinese food and more Southern accents.
We had our technical challenges, beginning with Linda choosing to defect from Samsung to the BlackBerry team. There was a moment when she was wooed by a competitor, but even with its snazzy looking stylus she still couldn’t cope with the Microsoftness of it. She battled the internet to create a website for her new venture, scratch and maintain her own site.
More techical hi-jinx took center ring on the day C’s Guitar Hero 3 dongle died, reducing Slash shredders to the PS2 version and a 32 inch screen instead of the PS3 and 130 inch screen- all of which will only make sense to 64.8% of newsletter recipients.

The Olympic Torch fiasco of 1879 was re-visited on Lochwood Trail when the last of the Alabama Fireworks misfired causing severe injuries to the butt and lower leg of the lady of the house who happened to be comfortably ensconced, beer in hand, in her beach chair in the driveway. The dance display she put on when hit with the fiery balls was worthy of a gold in the Special Olympics. The resulting scars will be her medal of honor.

In Wrestling:
When Vishnu and David tear out your bathtub, it’s a whole new Olympic event, falling somewhere between Greco-Roman wrestling and judo. With underhooks, crossfaces and cutbacks, we broke through skill, language and tile barriers to pull off a victory in the heavyweight division.
C was taken to the mat by cellular phone roaming fees and ring tone downloads, while P used a whizzer attack in her attempts to break/lose her free mobile so that she might join the team of US Texters.
Coming up with the silver, M’s back door offense ruled over the Russians when he dropped his second or third walkie-talkie phone and may have even managed to run it over in a Cajun parking lot.
But Linda took the gold with the one step back and circle defense when her flanked Macbook crashed and she lost everything, leaving her with nothing but a mysterious flashing question mark- not only on her blackened screen but also floating above the heads of the Apple Genius Staff at the mall.

In Taekwondo:
Linda wanted to do a little martial arts on those guys, but didn’t want to end up banned for life from the sport. Instead she pulled a Matos and spat on the floor and was escorted out. Apple countered that the match was fixed and accused her of offering them money.
She took her high flying moves to the local bars and restaurants of her fair town where she only managed to get thrown out of two of them all year, definitely deserving of a medal.
On the other side of the stadium…

In Gymnastics:
There were some rhythmic gymnastics happening in the meat packing district when Linda went to NYC for the AWP which sounds like a lot of FUN. It was.
Meanwhile on the balance beam, M managed to keep one foot in front of the other performing trick after trick, despite landing on a rickety economic base. C showed off his talents on the bar, as a new high schooler. All that spinning and flipping was good until the flipping was aimed at the bus driver, then the spinning resulted in a disqualification by the principal.

In The Steeplechase:
We had our share of interactions with horses and horses’ asses, from our nonjumping horseback riding on the beach in Cape San Blas, to a government-issued obstacle course in which we’ve been leaping fences, creeks and secret hedges chased by our new friend Mr. Tax Auditor, whose favorite phrase is “I’m almost done.”

In Basketball:
“Any time you get beat it’s embarrassing and that’s enough,” Bosh said. “And we can really use that as a tool … no matter how you’re shooting the ball you’re going to be in the game.”
M took his game to the golf course. From weekend outings with friends to weekdays with clients, he chased the little white ball all over Georgia, even scoring tickets to a PGA event where he and Linda followed Phil Mickelson and Camilo Villegas and ducked when Anthony Kim’s errant shot on the ninth hole whacked a spectator in the head. Kim might be arrogant little man, but he was kind enough to autograph the ball after someone cleaned off the blood.

In Swimming:
No Michael Phelps stylish strokes here. Our events were held in the Florida Panhandle on a deserted Cape and in the Georgia mountains where we rode tubes down shallow rivers and fell into off-road gullies cushioned with poison ivy. Though there was a Phelps-like amount of pizza consumed.

In The High Dive:
P competed once again in the Odyssey of the Mind competition. All the practice in the world could not have prepared any of the kids or their ever patient, loving parents for the hurricane that ripped through the small Georgia town on the day of the meet up. Lucky to not be selected as the team who would wait out the storm in the boys locker room, Linda snuck her group out the door past security and all the way down the road to the Mexican restaurant, where she felt they would be best protected by cheese dip and Margaritas.

In The Pentathalon:
The animals in the house had their own pentathalon, though none of them are named Andrejus or Edvinas, they managed to shoot, fence, swim, ride and run us around, from dying hamsters to adoptable-via-Craig’s-List-you-know-you-want-one Guinea Pigs to hand-fed baby doves and aging dogs with pirate eye conditions that make them look like the homeless guy on the corner who says he’ll work for samwitches.
Linda’s annual birthday celebration had at least five events: dinners, lunches, drinks, a party that began on a tavern rooftop and ended at a comedy club. Instead of a gold medal, she received her first pearl necklace- in a box- from the store.
A few months later she competed in the pentathalon-like planning of the anniversary day. Highlights: tequila tasters, an hour of blindness (Dialog in the Dark), an hour of incredible sights (Biplane ride).

In Synchronized Swimming :
P’s love for the dance took a nosedive as her love for the grades won out in late Fall. The family’s love for the non-generic cheese thanks her. Ditto C’s guitar lessons AKA that-weekly-source-of-money-flinging. It had something to do with video games, web surfing and girls- and maybe a little to do with five hours of daily high school homework.
We finally managed to synchronize some extended family time starting with a surprise New Year visit by Mom, Dad and Alex, followed by summer in Baldwinsville where the cousins got to play, though synchronized would probably be the last word the grandparents would choose to describe those weeks.
It was a good idea until C came down with a 24 hour bug the night before departure- which meant 24 hours of puke gag puke, which is especially lovely when you’re stuck on the tarmac for over 3 hours.
Linda battled the same bug while making a synchronized exit to Southampton where she’d won a scholarship to write with the pros. There was lots of reading and writing and listening, moderated by totally non-equal amounts of drinking, dancing and exploring.

In Fencing:
Though some would argue that there should have been, there was no wearing of straitjacket-like fencing outfits here. Instead we
drove straight to crazy with a trip to the sandy Florida Panhandle with a hairy dog, and spent days eating hundreds of Apalachicola oysters, an Olympic feat in itself.
In a counter parry, we returned home to more work for M and more writing events for Linda- a few that included sports cars when she was hired by both Porsche and GM. Touché.
She takes a few more awards and publication credits, and the gold after a year old blog post about a huge mean Cichlid garnered her more hate mail and free press than she could have imagined. En garde! Fish Keepers!
C had his own personal jab and parry when he pierced his own ears- at least a few times.

In Canoeing:
Unlike the Olympic canoers who overexerted themselves and fainted, we stayed relatively upright on a luxury houseboat for Cinco de Mayo. Being up a creek without a paddle is just fine with us, especially when you’re floating along with a captain, a bartender and lots of high end Tequila. (Partida!)
There are many different ways to traverse a watery plain, including the old slalom course approach which the kids nailed during a week at Church Camp. They managed to avoid any Eskimo rolls and returned a bit holier in hearts and clothes.
P did some fancy paddling when she hosted her birthday party at a kid’s beauty salon. Embarrassment, wild hair and nail polish reined in the river of youth.

In Track:
M’s increased muscle size made competitors wonder if there was something extra in his kool-aid, but his slow pace in the 400 and ability to crash on any couch removed any doubt that the man is all natural. C’s race approach was more hamster wheel than track and field, while P and her friend competed in javelin, hammer and discus in an outdoor meet at the fort in the woods, or was that saw, hammer, box of nails?
Linda sprinted from event to event, from literary venues to girl getaways, even joining the DragonCon team, where she competed in the Irish Car Bomb category, taking the bronze, while the gold was awarded to one very large Storm Trooper.
There was pole vaulting and high jumping and the throwing of a few discuses when the house became a 1920’s speakeasy for the annual murder mystery party, moonshine and tommy gun vodka included.

In the Triathalon:
Georgia gave us a triathalon from lake drainage to water shortage to gas shortage.
House repairs and maintenance continued to challenge in all three events of carpet, paint and remodel. The events may have been steroid enhanced by tours of re-fabbed Sears and Roebuck mail order houses in exclusive neighborhoods, or the million dollar estate homes with indoor basketball courts, arcades and private beauty salons.
We swam to the new Georgia Aquarium, biked to the World of Coke where we downed a few Beverlys, then ran to the finish with seats at So You Think You Can Dance and Neil Diamond.

All in all, it was a good year, breaking 43 world records, 132 Olympic records and earning multiple medals for endurance. We still have our hurdles to overcome and continue training for success.

Life is a marathon. Lace up your shoes and warm up your muscles, the race is on.

note: most of these events were written up in detail on this site and can be found in the tabs.. I’m just too lazy to insert the links

LUSH LIFE. By Richard Price. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) Chandler — and Bellow, too — peeps out from Price’s novel, in which an aspiring writer cum restaurant manager, mugged in the gentrifying Lower East Side of Manhattan, himself becomes a suspect.

UNACCUSTOMED EARTH. By Jhumpa Lahiri. (Knopf, $25.) In eight sensitive stories, Lahiri evokes the anxiety, excitement and transformations felt by Bengali immigrants and their American children.

THE UNFORTUNATES. By B. S. Johnson. (New Directions, $24.95.) This novel, first published in 1969, dovetails theme (the accidents of memory) with eccentric form (unbound chapters to be read in any order).

WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS? By Kate Atkinson. (Little, Brown, $24.99.) Jackson Brodie, the hero of Atkinson’s previous literary thrillers, takes the case of a mother and baby who suddenly disappear.

THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICK. By John Updike. (Knopf, $24.95.) In this ingenious sequel to “The Witches of Eastwick,” the three title characters, old ladies now, renew their sisterhood, return to their old hometown and contrive to atone for past crimes.

We listened to icons tell the truth about their nude modeling careers

Later, I wondered if my manuscript was carpeting the floor of one of these offices.But most of all, we were invigorated by the city, by the people we met, the things we opened ourselves up to experience. I am only disappointed that I didn’t have more time- because if I had, I would have revisited Elaine’s and made a special trip here:
The Algonquin round table. Start spreading the news…