Not there, not here, but will be back soon at the Summerhouse, God willing and the creek don’t rise.
My dear friends,
The length of time it has taken me to post here with my promised memoir update was unintended. And now here we are, bruised, battered and staggering to the end of another year with yet more uncertainty.
In September, knife-like stabbing pain in my jaw and sinuses from a tooth abscess rendered me useless. My dentist isn’t local, I have never had a root canal before. The mere mention of it filled me with dread because I have a phobia of dentists. But mercifully, the treatment and antibiotics did the trick.
I enjoyed a lovely birthday with my family a week away with hubby and my mother to Norfolk.
Then began long-delayed but urgent repairs to our home in October.
First the chimney, then the kitchen, stripped down to rafters and brick. This revealed more extensive damp than we realised on the single, non-insulated outer wall. And no insulation in the ceiling made from plywood. Hence it was freezing in the winter and salt turned rock hard in the cupboard.
But six weeks without a kitchen is no joke.
And it is true: as with any major renovation, it takes twice as long and costs twice as much as budgeted. But we are grateful to at last have it finished. It is warm and beautiful and damp-free. The cleanup, however, is major and ongoing.
And now here we are.
Almost Christmas.
During this time behind the scenes, I must tell you I have worked on submitting my memoir to literary agents. This meant months of preparation on my query letter with pitch, hook, comparative book titles and bio. A synopsis too, and because it is a memoir and required by some agents, a full proposal with a chapter outline and market overview.
I took agent feedback on the first 5,000 words of my manuscript. Same on my query letter. I spent months going over my agent list, researching each and everyone who might want a story like mine.
I was ready.
My plan, my hopes, my determination? To submit in November.
It didn’t happen.
Due to unforeseen problems, the kitchen took twice as long and cost twice as much. The disruption grew more intense in the last grand sweep and it was impossible to focus on anything. Christmas got closer and closer and by then, a few of my chosen agents had closed to submissions until January.
Put it down, I told myself. Wait until then.
But here comes my panic.
Every story is unique, but the key is to pitch that unique selling point if you are taking the traditional publishing route. Have I missed the boat? I ask my husband. Is my memoir right for the industry right now? He tells me as he always does there is no right time. I need to submit and get it out there and that is all there is to it.
I read once that what we really need to snag an agent is a big sprinkling of fairy dust.
Maybe Santa will bring some. We could all use it, submitting or not.
More than anything, I want Christmas with my children. But Covid has struck my family, despite being fully vaccinated, boostered and staying vigilant. Omicron is rife in the UK. We don’t yet know enough about it and we are extra careful. We must stay clear with negative lateral flow tests in the coming days, or that will be it for our Christmas.
The threat of last-minute restrictions remains. Will they steal Christmas away like last year? I cannot bear to think of it. In Table Talk, my end of year Memoir Across The Pond post at Carrot Ranch, I did not dare mention it.
And so here we are.
Thank you for reading and sending smiles to the Summerhouse for nine years and counting. May your Christmas be merry and bright and to better days ahead for 2022 for us all.
Love, Sherri x
Greetings, dear friends! Behind the scenes, I have been working furiously on the last of the memoir revisions. And they are done! More on this shortly. Meanwhile, it’s time again for Memoir Across The Pond with Charli Mills at Carrot Ranch. A personal reflection on 9/11, twenty years on. Keep safe, keep well, dear ones. Sherri ❤
Greeting, dear friends, and a long, dark stretch this has been. This interminable separation from my children. Where are our friends and visitors? Are we… okay? We are safe and well but loss takes many forms. Anxiety is real, sorrow lies deep, the toll is great. But we are here and we are grateful. Thank you, special ones, let’s keep those fires burning. The right kind ❤
I’m thrilled to introduce Memoir Across the Pond, my new column at Carrot Ranch. A huge thank you for following my previous Unsung Heroes column through the travails and challenges of 2020. And to Charli Mills for the opportunity. Writing stories from my Californian past to life today in England connects me to you with universal themes of love, loss and home. The ebb and flow from shore to shore in themes that bind us. The Words We Know is a light-hearted take. Hope you’ll join me!
Today, I am delighted to once again welcome author Anne Goodwin to the Summerhouse. Since her last visit, Anne has published two novels and a small story collection. Her background as a former professional psychologist brings a depth to her novels I find fascinating. Specifically, the exploration of identity.
My drive in writing memoir feeds my compulsion to seek and find. The constant call to that elusive, “what lies beneath”. The approach differs greatly between memoir and fiction. Or does it? Memoirists write true stories about real people, primarilly oneself. But how much of “self” do novelists put into their fictional characters. If any?
To mark the launch of her debut novel, Sugar and Snails five years ago (yes, five!), Anne addressed this subject in her thought-provoking guest post. I am excited to repost it here, along with exciting news of her free e-book offer below.
Putting the personal into fiction … and taking it out again
A friend emails to say she’s about halfway through my novel, and enjoying it very much. Her husband has read it before her, and he enjoyed it too. But I can’t help chuckling when she says he’s warned her she’ll look at me differently when she’s finished. I know exactly what she means and, like most jokes, it carries more than a grain of truth.
My debut novel, Sugar and Snails, is about a middle-aged woman with an unusual secret, one she’s hung onto for thirty years in fear of friends and colleagues looking at her differently if it ever got out. It’s made her cagey, awkward and prickly; although she has a reasonable life with her own house and a decent job, she’s always holding back. Diana’s story isn’t my story, but I identify with a lot of her struggles.
I write from a love of words and story, as well as a desire to give my own experiences shape. I write because I grew up with a story that somehow couldn’t be told, yet I’ve no desire to produce a memoir. I didn’t give much thought to this until I began interacting with memoirists in the blogosphere. I’ve chewed over the question of what makes the difference, why some of us translate our lives into fiction, while others go for memoir. I still haven’t come up with a satisfactory answer.
I suppose I’m driven less to tell my personal story than to transform it into a story that can be told. Maybe memoirists feel a similar motivation; it’s not for me to say. But while I recognise that my fiction is very personal, and can identify parallels in my own life, the foundation is always a story: the interaction between character and plot.
In Sugar and Snails, I’ve created a character with an unusual biography, a woman with a life very different to mine. But in order to enable myself to fully inhabit her mentality, I’ve written her story as if it were mine. She’s me and not me or the me that, in different circumstances, I might have been.
Yet I’m not entirely sure what people mean when they ask the question, Is it autobiographical? (Or in my case, look at me differently, but don’t dare ask.) I think they’re wondering about the surface issues, the facts of the case, the details that I’m inclined to make up. As a former professional psychologist, and as a writer of literary fiction, I’m more interested in the themes we might discover below the surface, the emotional truth of the novel, so to speak.
Some of the underlying themes of Sugar and Snails are very close to my heart. One of the reasons I’m thanking my therapist is for the help she’s given me both in making sense of my own past and in drawing the line between my fictional alter ego and myself. Yet, three months on from publication, I’m intrigued by how little curiosity there’s been around the possible connections, not just from those who don’t know me so well wondering if I share my character’s secret, but from those who’ve known me for years drawing the deeper parallels.
Of course, there could be whispering in dark corners of which I’m unaware, but I think not. The lack of questioning might stem from the fact that many readers can identify with the underlying themes of my novel, they don’t need to pin them on me. After all, who hasn’t ever felt uncomfortable in their own skin? Ever felt like the ugly duckling and wished you could be transformed into a swan? Traumatic adolescence anyone? Something about you you’d much rather others didn’t know? These themes pop up again and again in life, in novels, and in memoir. Maybe I should stop worrying about why we choose one form of words over the other and focus on readying my next novel to be scrutinised, or not, for the bits that come from the deepest part of me.
And now for that promised offer!
Shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize, Sugar and Snails is a powerful
and inspiring read. Throughout February, Anne is offering it free to subscribers of her newsletter.
Click here to sign up and get your free e-book copy of Sugar and Snails.
OFFER CLOSES 28 FEBRUARY
At fifteen, she made a life-changing decision.
Thirty years on, it’s time to make another.
When Diana escaped her misfit childhood, she thought she’d chosen the easier path. But the past lingers on, etched beneath her skin, and life won’t be worth living if her secret gets out.
As an adult, she’s kept other people at a distance… until Simon sweeps in on a cloud of promise and possibility. But his work is taking him to Cairo, the city that transformed her life. She’ll lose Simon if she doesn’t join him. She’ll lose herself if she does.
Sugar and Snails charts Diana’s unusual journey, revealing the scars from her fight to be true to herself. A triumphant mid-life coming-of-age story about bridging the gap between who we are and who we feel we ought to be.
*******
Connect with Anne:
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnJ5pbhSLho&feature=youtu.be
Website: annegoodwin.weebly.com
Twitter @Annecdotist.
Link tree https://linktr.ee/annecdotist
Amazon author page: viewauthor.at/AnneGoodwin
YouTube: Anne Goodwin’s YouTube channel
*******
Thank you for your visit, Anne. I continue to enjoy our lively discussions and always a pleasure hosting you at the Summerhouse.
Born in England, my firstborn son didn’t meet his American grandparents until he was three-years-old. His father, tired of the rain and dismal British economy of the mid 1980s, decided we would have a better life in the land of his birth. And so once more (another story), I left my home, family and friends for America where we would live for seventeen years.
We settled on the central coast of California in the late summer of 1986. Though the grandparents lived some four hours away in Los Angeles, we would see them regularly and always at Christmas.
At the bottom of the holiday and shift rota at the start of his new career, my (ex) husband (EH) got what was left. For many years, he worked “graveyards” before graduating to “swing-shift”. By the time he made the day shift, our “little boy” was in high school. By then, I had Christmas in California all figured out.
But not that first Christmas, far from home.
I got up at the crack of dawn to put the turkey in the oven for what would be my first attempt at cooking Christmas lunch. Grandma and Grandpa had driven up from LA the night before, Christmas Eve. EH would have to eat and run to start his shift at 3pm. Not only him, but the grandparents too: Grandma had to work the next day.
No Boxing Day for us in America.
But, determined to make our Christmas as British as possible, I served Brussels Sprouts and a homemade Christmas pudding. The polite refusals by my in-laws assured me they were not the hit I had hoped for. Over the years, my mother-in-law and I would reminicse and laugh about it, but at the time I yearned for my family back in England, never missing them as much as I did that Christmas.
And so everyone left in the afternoon, leaving me and my little boy alone in our first American Christmas. An aching loneliness for us both swept over me. If there had been at least a chill in the air, it would have helped, but the sun shone down from a warm blue sky. Our short-but-sweet Christmas with our new American family had brought fun and joy, but how could it have ended so fast? In my mind, it was far from over.
The weather outside wasn’t frightful but quite delightful and perfect, I realised, for a walk.
With our dog, Bonnie, a cross Lab/Collie come with us from England, we strolled around our new neighbourhood. Windchimes hung on porches of two-story houses and tinkled cheerfully in the gentle breeze. Most houses, like the one we rented, had living rooms upstairs, some providing a sliver of ocean view and a glimpse of Morro Bay.
We wandered down a few roads keeping to the side with no pavement. My son ambled along at my side, stopping to exam rocks and leaves as small children do and Bonnie padded up ahead, tongue lolling and sniffing everything, as dogs do. A quietness had settled all around, save for the low, distant hum of a fog horn.
I imagined families gathered inside their homes enjoying their festivities as we walked by. My son and I were strangers in a distant land, not knowing any of them. He had yet to start school and make new friends; I had yet to meet their moms and my best friend, build our network. My two other children were not yet born. But we would go on to make lifelong friends and build a rich family life with our own traditions. And, smiling down down at my son, I resolved it would start that Christmas Day.
We returned from our walk, raided our chocolate stash, built my son’s new Lego set and watched Pinocchio, Grandma’s gift and first video on our rented VCR. We read stories from his new books and made hot chocolate with marshmallows. Later, I poured myself a glass of Christmas cheer and lit a fire, though it felt like spring outside.
Together, we found our Christmas in America.
Nothing worked out as I had planned, but everything happened as it should. Grandma and Grandpa are long gone now and we miss them. Today, I celebrate Christmas with my adult children in England.
One thing I have learned is that nothing stays the same. Life in its great ebb and flow with constant change. Sorrow and joy. Loss and hope. Separation and reunion. This year, so much is uncertain. We miss our loved ones, have too much worry and loneliness. But if we have love we have everything and for me this is the true message of Christmas.
Dear friends, wherever you are, may you find peace and love in your Christmas and hope for better days to come.
Love Sherri x
Today, I am delighted and honoured to guest post at Sally Cronin’s Author Spotlight Life Changing Moments Series with ‘Shake The Dust Off Your Feet’. You never know when you’ll face a life-changing decision, nor who’ll be there to support you when you do. Huge thanks and shout out to Sally for her amazing support of bloggers and authors everywhere, and as always to you, dear friends and readers, thank you ❤
September already and here we are. Greetings once again, dear friends, I hope you enjoyed a good summer, pandemic aside. My plans went awry then revived and I am writing, mending and walking again. Progress! Great to return to Unsung Heroes at Carrot Ranch. My post explores a personal take on lockdown, Asperger’s Syndrome and social anxiety in a different world. As always, keep safe ❤
Walking, as we know, is good for us. A brisk walk a few days a week has always been my go-to form of exercise. Walking helps me. A lot. Especially the kind when I’m stirred up, stressed out and just plain stuck.
For those kind, I plug in my headphones and crank up my iPod. Although I write in silence, I process more to Kurt Cobain and The Foo Fighters than anywhere else.
But not now, because twelve days ago I broke my ankle.
Four more weeks before I can walk or drive. I wear this fracture boot day and night and hobble about on crutches. And yes, it happened when I was out walking with my husband in the middle of a field.
I’m thinking, Robocop…with Velcro?
I stopped wearing my Fitbit. What use is a ‘Weekly Report’ that only reminds you of your paltry lack of steps? Well I’ll have you know, Fitbit, you should see me when I navigate the stairs. Surely that counts for something?
What better workout could there be with a broken ankle, than Kitty zooming past me mid-stair in her newly made-up game of Dodge the Crutches?
It’s okay. I see her coming. She sleeps by me every night, long and warm and cuddly and just yesterday, I awoke with her two front paws stretched out on my leg. As if to say get better soon.
Kitty & Cherry Tree July 2020 (c) Sherri Matthews
So I forgive her anything.
But what of other news from the summerhouse?
Lockdown in late March brought a surprise heatwave and an emergence of frenetic bee activity from our bee hotel. We had the delightful privilege of observing these entertaining busy bees until they retired, worn out poor things, in June.
We’ve had Leafcutters in the past, but this year we had mostly Red Mason bees. They are solitary and vitally important as urban pollinators. Much of their habitat has been destroyed; a bee hotel provides nesting and shelter.
The Woodland Trust has some good tips for making one for your garden.
Here’s what I’ve learned: the males emerge first and wait for the females. They mate, the males die and the females get busy building nests and laying their eggs over the next couple of months.
We frequently observed several bees at a time darting in and out of various tubes, busy forming mud seals at the entrance. Sometimes they would work in this position for hours (c) Sherri Matthews
Within each tube, they create different cells separated by little walls of mud. In each cell, they lay an egg and deposit tiny globes of pollen, brought in attached to their abdomens. This is food for the developing larvae.
For further reading, The Pollinator Garden makes the point that this isn’t so much a ‘bee hotel’ as a permanent home for these bees. I love this stuff!
(c) Sherri Matthews
They seal up each tube with mud. There, over eleven months, the eggs develop into larvae, a dormant pupa stage and then to fully formed bees the following spring.
Isn’t nature wonderful?
These solitary bees have done their work and have gone now. Thank you, bees, for all you do and the joy you bring. I can’t wait to meet the next generation next spring.
The joy of bees aside, these are strange times.
On the memoir front, an opportunity has come my way for ongoing book development as I continue to hone my pitch for my next round of literary agent submissions. It’s work and I’m ready. I’m not giving up!
Meanwhile, I’m thrilled that my non-fiction piece Behind The Mask is featured in This is Lockdown, a beautifully crafted anthology published by by M J Mallon, Author and Poet . It is an honour to feature alonside so many wonderful writers.
Thank you so much, Marje, for all your hard work putting it together. The official book launch is July 20th, but pre-order is available now.
Other writing news, I’m over at Carrot Ranch this week with my Unsung Heroes post, The Silent Ones Who Change A Life. I would be thrilled if you joined me there.
It saddens me to sign off blogging for a while. With the easing of lockdown, uncertain times lies ahead. Covid-19 has not gone away, vigilance is key. I am a carer and I need to get well. I miss my boys, I miss the sea, and everyday challenges mount up.
I need to focus and it isn’t easy right now!
My plan, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise (again), is to return energised, walking and raring to go in September.
Until then, I thank you all, dear friends, for your support and readership. I bid you all a happy, healthy summer. And as always, keep safe.
Love Sherri x
A View From My Summerhouse 