Seeing Red -- A novel of love and artistic discovery

Readers praise SEEING RED!!

2012-01-02T06:54:00.000-08:00

"Settled in to enjoy Seeing Red on 12/26'2011. I did not want to put it down! Finished it the next day. Claudia, the book is fabulous...I loved every minute of it. It was food for my soul. Thank you so much for writing and it and for seeing it through to publication! MORE! MORE!" -- Michelle Doucette, Wilmington, VT

“I have finished reading Seeing Red as part of my summer reading. It's a book that I couldn´t put down until the end. As always, I love your fantastic use of color, especially when the describing beautiful scenes in Spain. The characters are very strongly portrayed. It’s almost like the reader knows them as individuals. I´m glad that the book had a happy ending. It was a wonderful read filled with many of the people and things dear to your heart. I felt closer to you after reading the book. Please, do write many more! – Dorothy Stage, Molnlycke, Sweden

“In the novel Seeing Red, by Claudia Ricci, readers follow Ronda on her adventures of love, passion and self-discovery. Sounds hokey and unoriginal on the surface, doesn’t it? But let me just say that Ronda has issues, and they are very interesting issues. Instead of pursuing a career in dance at the age of 19, Ronda got caught up in a relationship with her college professor, got married, and raised two boys. Now 18 years later, Ronda is newly divorced and dealing with her sons’ transition into adulthood. Life is forcing her to examine her marriage, her unfaithfulness, and her changing relationship with her children. At the same time she must come to terms with these changes and her own infidelity, Ronda finds a renewed passion for dance and gives herself over to the study of flamenco. However, her life takes a twist when her lover, Jesus, disappears in Spain. With a book as artfully written as Seeing Red, it only takes a few pages to become immersed in Ronda’s world. For a time you won’t even know you’re reading; you’ll just feel like you’re there.” -- Emily Suess, Indianapolis, Indiana, Suess' Pieces

"I just finished Seeing Red -- I won the "who gets to read it first" battle with my husband Andy -- and I LOVED it! I had trouble putting it down, and now I'm grieving my loss because the story is over. Seeing Red is about passion, but not only the romantic kind. Readers follow Ronda through Spain on her journey of love and self-discovery as she explores her marriage, motherhood, infidelity, and loss, all the while nurturing a once-forgotten passion for dance that transforms and empowers her. It is impossible not to experience Ronda's joys and pain, as well as reflect on your own, due to Ricci's gift for transporting readers via accurate and vivid details, along with her depth of insight and knowledge. Claudia Ricci is such a gifted and amazing writer. And the cover choice is perfect. I was transported, both there, AND to many personal memories. I love it when an author can do that for me -- although it is very emotional and draining, I love it. P.S. Ricci's first novel, Dreaming Maples, is also a must-have for mothers and daughters." --Kellie LaCoppola, Palatine Bridge, New York

“You may not want to sit down with Claudia Ricci’s new novel Seeing Red with an e-reader. You may prefer to take hold of this book with your fingers, your hands, your arms. It’s that human. This is a book that makes us wonder where much of our fiction would come from if it were not for those two species: “men” and “women.” We easily identify with imperfect characters and their messy lives because they’re thinking about the very things we think about, all the time. Ricci has not only crafted wonderfully-flawed characters, she has brilliantly painted in the scenery around those characters. To the best of my knowledge, the author has not lived in Spain. To my certain knowledge, I lived there for four years. So how can she be creating descriptive landscapes from all across the Spanish countryside that elicit such vivid recall in my memory? How does she do that? There is much to reflect on in Seeing Red. And several life lessons to consider. My favorite: ‘The memories of him as a little boy have taught her that nothing lasts, that life is a flood of ephemeral moments that fly by.’ In Seeing Red, Claudia Ricci has much to say, not just about the human condition, but about human beings. About ourselves.” -- Sandy Prisant, Boynton Beach, Florida, Wordsmith Wars

“Well, Claudia, I just got done crying, at 12:30 a.m. after finishing Seeing Red. I stayed up late four nights in a row reading Ronda's journey, and out of all it, it was Jack that got me sobbing. I enjoyed Ronda's journey through Spain, the process of her learning todance, her friends in Spain, the trip in the caves! I love her driver! I love her figuring out (through Leely) that men have dictated so much of what she thinks about herself. I like that she had a lot of doubts, I never trust characters who have a few paragraphs of doubt and then move on, charging ahead. Most of us revisit our doubts a lot. It's part of the process and you conveyed that well. And I really like that her journey had so many detours. It wasn't just “go to Spain, take on a few hurdles, and voila, the results are in.” It was a lot of detours and I like that. I love the part about the shawl and her dancing, so powerful!!! You really conveyed that transition and the power of the shawl very well. (And I believe a light, flowered shawl is symbolic of being wrapped in love.) Also, I love the party! Wow, what a book!!!” -- Liza Frenette, Albany, N.Y.

“I finished reading Seeing Red a few days ago. Thank you for a wonderful story! Ronda is a scrappy heroine with whom many of us can identify. She reinvents herself, with some uncertainty, but with determination, too. Her husband is such a jerk! The oily Enrique is thoroughly detestable, too. Leely and Freida are spirited, assertive ladies who refuse to fit a mold. I know I must now read Dreaming Maples. Keep writing Claudia!”

-- Christine McKnight, Schuylerville, N.Y.

“I've been meaning to write you. I read your book. Great story. I would love to see her dancing so let me know when the movie comes out. I've loved flamenco since I first went to Spain in my twenties.” -- Jan Tramantano, Albany, New York

“I just finished reading your wonderful book, and I can't tell you how very much I enjoyed it. I thought it was a terrific read and beautifully written. You took me on a fabulous trip to Spain and introduced me to a fascinating group of people. I certainly feel as though I know them all now. Loved Jack! Awesome!” -- Paula Nelson, Purchase, N.Y.

“I marvel at Claudia Ricci’s ability to weave this tale, with so much mystery - language - geography and beauty. I am generally not a fiction reader, but having spent a good bit of time in the Marbella/Malaga area of Spain (I never made it to Ronda as I was scared to death), I was thoroughly intrigued and kept turning the pages. The author developed story line, character and interest with such clarity and suspense! The ending is perfect...uplifting and promising. The best section of the book, I thought, was the drama that unfolded in the hospital room. It brought tears to my eyes, and a lump in my throat. All the passion, emotion and feeling that generally lie dormant in one's subconscious were brought forth in this crisis situation and handled superbly.

Claudia Ricci writes magnificently and it is always a joy to have a book of hers in my hands!” -- Joan Wiener, White Plains, New York

“Just finished reading Seeing Red and wanted to thank you for writing it. It is a wonderful book. It has inspired me to go to Andalucía in June! And I am going to a flamenco concert at Listner in D.C. this Sunday. So, yours is the book that will keep giving. I admire your courage and commitment to publishing this!”

-- Sue Chinn, Washington, D.C.

“Claudia Ricci tells such a good story - and she knows how to keep a narrative moving - not all good writers have that gift. I cared about the people in her book - I needed to know what happened to them. And she is able so well to convey the magic of flamenco. I went to a non-tourist flamenco club in Seville once - and also saw flamenco in a club in Madrid. I was taken there by Spanish friends who told me I was seeing a superlative dancer. I remember the stance, and the expression on her face, and how she moved her body. Seeing Red brought it all back to me and made the experience all the more meaningful.” -- Betty Himmel, Purchase, New York

“I've just read Seeing Red and was totally immersed in the story of Ronda's quest for happiness and independence. Her character reflected the choices we make that often take us on detours as we live our lives. She/you showed us that with courage and by being true to oneself, the journey can have a happy ending. As a lover of reading, thank you for several days of ‘a good read.’” –- Christine Hmura, Westborough, MA

“I finished Seeing Red yesterday and it is a page turner! I really enjoyed it. It made me think of the summer I spent in Spain 22 years ago. It also made me think of my friend from Maine-Helena-who does belly dancing and flamenco. There were so many things in your book I could relate to, the location, the culture, even the food -- Spanish tortilla and paella are so good!” -- Cheryl Rotondo, Exeter, New Hampshire

"On this snow-white day, I’m SEEING RED. I am so deeply impressed with Ricci's skills as a writer. There is so much *life* in this book. Every sentence is injected with texture and sparks. Even the way she describes a woman’s sadness is filled with color and vitality. Bravo and bravo!” –- Nancy Dunlop, Delmar, New York

“I wanted to tell you that I’m still reading your book. Slowly, though. Savoring it bit by bit. There is something about your writing that demands the reader, this reader at least, to read small chunks. I feel that the words poured out of you, and I can see how an active fiction reader (i.e., someone who devours novels all the time) would get caught in the strong forward and hypnotic currents of your voice and read it straight through without many reading breaks. But for me, it’s different. I am at heart a poet, I guess. So I read you at a sentence level. And every one of your sentences counts. Each sentence has a sensory charge. It is like an exquisite presentation of food, and I savor the bites. Does this make sense?? I also like how Ronda is a woman who is emotionally troubled and in the shadow of grief, but you surround her in sensory beauty. You ground her in the material realm. It’s a healing book. I can understand, now, how you talk about writing as a healing process that you are able to get lost in.” -– Nancy Dunlop, Delmar, New York

"Excellent book! I just loved it – so many parts of it resonated with me, a mother of two boys (one with red hair!) who are growing up too fast and a person trying to find my own interests and passions in life… It was really lovely and I’ll be ordering Claudia’s first novel too!" -- S. L. Garrison, Silver Spring, Maryland

"I have just read Seeing Red -- I read it in three days and it was great! I loved it and I couldn't put it down until I finished it. And when I did I relived it through my mind, wishing I could have slowed it down or made it longer because I wasn't ready to leave Ronda and Jesus' characters! I really enjoyed it and want to know, will there be a Part two? Thank you for this great book!!!!!!!!" -- Rachel Roland, Fredericksburg, Virginia

“I finished Seeing Red last week and loved it! Some of the imagery and the incorporation of the dance were particularly striking. I've been studying bellydance for about two years now and I understand somewhat about doing something you love just because it's a part of who you are.” -- Leslie Larsen, Albany, New York

"Claudia, I love your book! It's such a great, unique and dramatic story & your writing is so vivid -- very passionate, as befits the story & Ronda & Jesús & flamenco & Spain & a mother's fierce love. BRAVA! I really found it hard to put down as soon as I started reading it. And it's so glorious to read a real woman's story in this world where we're so bombarded with male-centric everything." -- Mauri Small, Tarrytown, New York

"I have just finished SEEING RED. It was hard to put down. You keep your reader enthralled with a plot that is never without a strong narrative issue and another hurdle for Ronda to get over in her quest for self-realization—self-construction, one might even say. Ronda is an interesting case. A woman of great spirit, she nevertheless finds that she has to define herself in relation to a series of men. They are all vividly characterized." EUGENE GARBER, Award-winning author of "Metaphysical Tales"

"I just finished reading Seeing Red, and really enjoyed it. What genius – the story carries forward wonderfully. What a gift you have for vivid detail and visceral prose. I especially liked Part Three with its flamenco dancing, was cheering for Ronda the whole time. And of course the cover scene of Ronda dancing in the moonlight! you have really captured what it FEELS like for these characters. Great work. Mazel Tov!"-- Sharon Flitterman-King, Ph.D., Author of “A Secret Star.” Hillsdale, New York

"“I just started reading Seeing Red and have fallen in love. Your imagery is breathtaking and I love that you have incorporated ballet (my passion!) into the story!!” -– Victoria Schramm, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

“When I read a book I want it to move me to reach in and take me out of my world for a while and make me a part of another world. Some books can be well written but they make me feel nothing. From the beginning, Seeing Red had me. I was feeling Ronda's feelings with her, living through each situation, fighting her internal battles with her. I love this book and I loved Dreaming Maples, too, because both novels carried me on wonderful adventures in my mind. These books are why I read!”-- Tyler Malik, Great Barrington, MA

Writer Emily Suess Reviews Seeing Red!

2011-07-23T04:35:00.000-07:00

By Emily Suess

In the novel Seeing Red by Claudia Ricci, readers follow Ronda on her adventures of love, passion and self-discovery. Sounds hokey and unoriginal on the surface, doesn’t it? But let me just say that Ronda has issues, and they are very interesting issues. Instead of pursuing a career in dance at the age of 19, Ronda got caught up in a relationship with her college professor, got married, and raised two boys.

Now 18 years later, Ronda is newly divorced and dealing with her sons’ transition into adulthood. Life is forcing her to examine her marriage, her unfaithfulness, and her changing relationship with her children.

At the same time she must come to terms with these changes and her own infidelity, Ronda finds a renewed passion for dance and gives herself over to the study of flamenco. However, her life takes a twist when her lover, Jesus, disappears in Spain.

With a book as artfully written as Seeing Red, it only takes a few pages to become immersed in Ronda’s world. For a time you won’t even know you’re reading; you’ll just feel like you’re there.

Emily Suess is a freelance writer based in Indianapolis, Indiana. This piece appeared first on her blog, Suess' Pieces.

Flamenco Book Party in Lenox!!

2011-06-27T04:46:00.000-07:00

Big thanks to flamenco guitarists Lee Rausch, left, and José Miralles, for making Sunday's flamenco book party such fun! And thanks to all who came!

It was a bustling afternoon in The Bookstore in Lenox, MA. The café there, called "Get Lit," was chock full of visitors drawn to the sweet sounds of alegría, soleares, bulería and other beautiful flamenco melodies.

Thanks to Jo Ann Losinger, who owns the painting, "Shattered Cups," the Seeing Red reading was held in the presence of the marvelous painting by Pittsfield artist Kellie Meisl that adorns the book's cover!! This is a painting with an amazing story behind it!

In the photo below, Kellie (left) enjoys a glass of sangría with Jo Ann (center) and musician Sandy Lord.

Chapter One, "Sex and Cinnamon"

2011-06-24T07:45:00.001-07:00

By Claudia Ricci

Years later, she tries to focus on the details: the cinnamon sugar sticking to her shoulder. The thick fold of leaves overhead.

The cold buttered toast wrapped in tin foil. The smell of his sweat mixed into the smell of pine needles. The feeling of him feeding her the small concord grapes. And especially, the watery green sunlight, the way the rays of light angled, dissolving into gray forest shadows.

She concentrates on the small details because she hates to look at the bigger picture. When she does, she is sure to get into trouble. She is likely to look back and agree with her therapist, who once pointed out that the first time Ronda had sex with the man who became her husband – the man who fathered both her sons – she was, for all intents and purposes, raped.

Ronda cannot face that, so she focuses instead on the cinnamon and the leaves, the grapes and the light. The way the rays of the sun filtered through the trees and seemed to hang, like fog or mist or smoke. Lying on the blue blanket with Ben that day, she recalls passing her hands through those slanted rays. Watching the light as she sliced her cupped fingers through it.

Sometimes she allows herself to recall this: how he whispered to her as he slid his fingers into the waistband of her sweat pants that morning, and quickly worked them down and over her hips. “I really think I’m in love with you Ronda. Can you hear me Ronda Cari, I’m saying that I love you.”

Lodged as she was beneath his heavy frame, she coughed up a reply, “Ben, I am not ready. I really don’t think I want to do this yet I am just not...” He kissed her then, and she must have swallowed that last word, “ready.” By then his urgency and his thick hands took over. He settled himself between her thighs.

“Please stop,” she yelled, but by then, she wasn’t deciding anymore. She was feeling his fiery skin and the sandpaper of his face and she was hearing his urgent breathing as he pushed inside her.

She heard him exhale and say a single word. “Amen.”

What filled her mind then was the sound of the bird, the bird that he had called the red-eyed vireo. She heard the vireo warble its sweet morning song in the tender canopy overhead.

Later, on a night when he should have known better, when everything about the new baby was painful and exhausting and wrong, Ben dared to say that he hadn’t realized that she wasn’t sure, that he never knew that she hadn’t wanted to do what he made her do that morning on the mountain. He hadn’t realized that she had been so terribly frightened that first time. He implied, simply, that after all was said and done, her feelings on the mountain that morning didn’t add up, or worse, that they just didn’t matter to him.

That night with the baby was one of those evenings when Ben Junior simply couldn’t be comforted, no matter what she did for him. Ben Senior had come home from campus to find her with the baby in a T-shirt and diaper, face down across her knees.

The infant was wailing, a long, low persistent screech, and she was in the rocking chair, bouncing him face down on her knees and rubbing circles on his bony back. Now and then she’d lift him to her shoulder and he would stop crying for a moment and then he would pull his legs up, and hiccup and puke a stream of white curdled milk onto the wood floor, and then he’d start screeching once more.

Ronda was frantic even before Ben Sr. arrived home and placed a long kiss on the crown of her head. But things didn’t improve after he walked through the door. She told him she was totally spent, and he made some comment about her needing to join him in their bedroom for “a little love and affection.” Which she interpreted to mean that she needed sex, which she absolutely knew she didn’t need. Lately, he’d been alluding to the fact that they hadn’t made love for months.

“Maybe you need sex, Ben, but that’s not what I need. That’s not going to fix things. Honestly, Ben, when you see me struggling like this, how can you even talk about sex? Don’t you see I’m drowning here?”

She held the newborn to her shoulder. Ben Jr. was barely seven weeks old and she was sore and still bleeding and constantly feeding the baby and crying and feeling depressed all the blessed time. And even though the semester was over, Ben was spending less time at home. Things between them had gotten so tense that for several nights she had been sleeping on the single bed in the baby’s room.

He was leaning on the door of the nursery, the room that for a few short months before the baby came had been her ballet studio. A studio minus a mirror.

“Let me take him for a while,” he said. He reached for the baby, and held him. The baby’s cries softened for a moment, but then he began bawling again. Ben walked back and forth across the nursery bouncing the infant against his chest. The baby quieted again.

“See, he needs his daddy is all,” Ben said, in a low voice.

Ronda sat in silence in the rocking chair, glaring at him.

“And all I was saying before is that it’s time you come back to sleep in our bed,” he said. “That’s all.”

“Oh, so is that for your comfort or mine?” she shot back. “Because who gets up four or five times every night to feed this child? Not you, surely not you.”

He stopped walking. The baby started crying. “Ronda, I don’t want to fight, honestly I don’t. I just want things to be right between us again. The way they were.”

“When was that exactly Ben?”

He closed his eyes. Stood there. “Please Ron, I know you are stressed to the max. I know you are exhausted and furious and …”

“You know that but what do you do about it?” She started rocking in the chair. There was no way forward, nowhere to go with this discussion. “You take care of you, period. But then, that’s all you’ve ever done. You want me back in bed so that maybe we can screw. What difference does it make to you that I’m falling apart? It never has mattered, how I feel. That very first day, way back when, up on the mountain. You just did what you did, because that’s always what you do. Just exactly what suits you.”

“Ronda, stop this nonsense. You were there because you wanted to be. I didn’t force you to come.”

Her eyes flared. “You forced yourself on me, Ben. You didn’t care a bit how scared I was.”

“Great, now you bring that up again. It’s a little late to be talking about that, isn’t it? Besides, you seemed to enjoy yourself just fine the second time that morning. How was I to know? How bad could things have been the first time if you were so gung ho the second time through?”

Ronda set her head into her hands. “I don’t believe you, Ben. I do not believe what you say to me.”

“All I’m trying to say is that it’s in the past, Ron. We have a son now.”

“It’s not in the past,” Ronda yelled. “Yes, we have a son, but he’s a son I take care of, night and day. You drop in now and then, but when you do, what help are you?”

Ben seemed genuinely shocked by the last comment. He dropped onto the bed, and held the baby, who once again quieted. As if somehow the infant knew at that moment, that his parents needed him to be silent.

The two of them, Ben Sr. and Ben Jr., just sat there, father and son in statue.

“I try to be helpful Ronda,” he said simply. “I have a job. A career. But I do try to help you with him when I’m here.”

“Well, good for you,” she snarled. “It has been a lovely year for me, being pregnant, dropping out of school before my sophomore year, and now, having this…this dreadful…” Her words melted into a whisper. She shook her head. Sometimes she said things that she felt in the moment, but that later, she absolutely knew she didn’t feel.

The baby wailed sharply then and Ben handed him back to Ronda as if he was on fire. She hoisted him to her shoulder. She was starting to cry. She wiped her nose with the sleeve of her bathrobe. Here it was six o’clock at night, and she was still in the bathrobe she had been wearing since the morning.

Ben retrieved a box of tissues from the changing table, handed it to her. Then he sat down on the bed. “I know you are angry, Ronda. You hate to talk about all this.” He paused, waited for her response. She said nothing. She sniffled. He leaned closer.

“Ron, you made the decision in the end to have this baby. I know sometimes you wish you hadn’t. But I told you then when it happened that I’d support whatever you wanted. And this is what you said you wanted.”

Ronda brought the rocking chair to a halt. And in what amounted to a second miracle, the baby stopped crying, again. But that just got Ronda crying harder.

“Think about it, Ben,” she sobbed. “I was barely 19. I had never even seen a man, naked. And you, you just moved in on me that morning and …and you took over. And there I was lying in that goddamn forest on that goddamn blanket, completely vulnerable, with you, 20 years older than me, a professor I hardly knew, and there you were doing things to me I never dreamed of doing and there I was terrified, so terrified…”

****

There hadn’t really been anyone before Ben. Only a boy. A rangy high school beau named Robbie who she’d known since seventh grade. The two of them had shared popcorn at Saturday night movies. They had gone to football and basketball games, parties, the prom. But they’d always had a curfew. They had always lived under the ironclad scrutiny of Ronda’s mother. Mama Marie, as Robbie had always called her.

And then Ronda went to college. All of her dorm mates had lost their virginity by Thanksgiving. She had hung on, though, writing long letters to Robbie at Cornell. Looking forward to some vague future she wasn’t sure was ever going to happen.

Her second semester, though, she had met the infamous and handsome Professor Ben. Philosophy 114, Morals and Society. And when he actually noticed her, when he had complimented her writing, when he scrawled on the bottom of her first essay, “Please come see me, as you seem exceptionally talented,” she raced to his office. At which point, he spoke to her not about Nietzsche or Kant or Hegel, but about ballet, asking how many hours a day she worked her pliés and arabesques and battements. About how sore her legs were at the end of an afternoon on toe.

By the end of the spring term, Ronda had earned an A plus. And as soon as the final grades were in, the very next night, Ben invited Ronda over for warm Japanese Saki and to share his passion for astronomy. They spent the evening on the roof of his apartment house, studying the moon through the telescope he had made himself. Staring into the black velvet sky, he explained that four billion years before, the earth and the moon were one.

By 8:30, they were indoors, lying on the sofa together. She read to him: “Ode to the West Wind” by Shelley. The following night, Ben fixed her dinner: homemade pasta, garlic bread, porcini mushrooms, fresh tomato sauce with basil. And when she’d eaten only a bite or two, and claimed she was full, because she had to watch her weight, because she was a dance major and being a dancer, she had to stay slim, then, he fixed her a gigantic Caesar salad. As he tossed the dressing into the crisp green lettuce, Ronda noticed how wide his shoulders were, how the sides of his eyes crinkled when he laughed. That’s when she blushed warm, and a new thought rushed into her mind, “I could fall in love with this man.”

Two weeks later, they had dated 18 times: seven lunch dates, four more times on the roof tracking stars, three movies, including one antiquated drive in, two times bowling, once roller skating, and once a canoe ride that ended with her diving over the side and swimming to shore. One warm clear night, they swam at Craft Pond, and afterward, they stayed up on the roof talking the whole night, lying beneath the white light bulb of a full moon. By May 17th, Ben had already asked her three times to go up to Greylock with the soft blue blanket. She kept saying no, because she knew about that blanket. Because he had used it with innumerable other girls. So widespread were the rumors about Dr. Fallon’s famous Greylock breakfast picnics that a couple students one year had pitched in and bought him a basket with a checkered cloth lining in the same sky blue color as the blanket.

She held out until May 28th. The following week, she was supposed to move back home for the summer. To live with Mama Marie. To be a lifeguard at the local pool. And maybe because of that, maybe because she couldn’t face life without Ben, couldn’t face life erased of all emotion, all warmth, all light, all male touch, she agreed that “maybe” she’d go up to Greylock. She would think about it overnight, she said, and let him know the following morning.

“Call me early,” she said on Wednesday night when he had walked her from the ballet studio back to her dorm. “And then, I’ll be all ready, or I won’t, and then we’ll go. Or we won’t.”

“Fine,” he said, folding his arms and squinting into the sunset at her, and then, when she just stood there, looking at her Dr. Scholl sandals, her bare toes, he reached over, grabbed her. “Come over here,” he whispered, pulling her into the arms he had built up so systematically, with push-ups, and late night workouts in the college weight room. “Your body is gorgeous,” he said as he kissed her face and raced his hands up and down her torso, which was tightly encased in a black leotard.

“This isn’t the best place,” she said, chuckling, struggling out of his grasp. “I mean we’re right out in the open, Professor Fallon.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Which is why I’d like you to come up to Greylock with me. In the wee hours of the morning it’ll just be me and you and maybe a few bears.”

She went.

He had packed carefully. The freshly squeezed orange juice he poured into stemmed glasses. A thermos of coffee and for it, real cream and mugs. Whole strawberries laid out on a flowered china plate. Grapes that he squeezed, jokingly, from his lips and teeth into hers. Small triangles of Swiss cheese and squares of cold buttered toast. And the cinnamon rolls. He bought two, on the way, at 6 a.m. when the Cinnaman Bakery first opened its doors in town. She ate a bite of one. He ate his and had begun to work on the rest of hers. It was then that she poured herself more coffee, lay back on the blue blanket. Played with the rays of sunlight. Then closed her eyes. Figured he was eating, so she would just rest. Let the sun pour down on her face. That’s when he cupped his hand gently over her breast.

She lay there, trying to decide what to do. Before she could reach a decision, he had lifted her T-shirt, and slipped his other hand inside her bra. All the while he kept his eyes fixed on hers. Saw that she saw. Saw that she saw that he couldn’t wait.

“Ben?” she whispered. “Is this…is this…” what she was going to say was, “is this a good idea, I mean, right this minute?”

What he said instead was: “Don’t worry, Ms. Cari, this is not a test. Or a quiz. Or an essay. Or a philosophical debate. This is just when I make love to you in the sun. Because I’ve been waiting for you. All semester. Every fucking day since I first saw you waltz into my classroom in a goddamn leotard. For chrissake do you realize what you do to men wearing those goddamn dancer’s clothes? I want you to know it was torture sometimes trying to keep my mind on the books. Surely you realize now how I feel.”

“But isn’t it always this way for you,” she said in a low voice. “I mean, right? Every semester it’s a new girl.”

“No. I know what you’ve heard,” he whispered, his face buried in her chest. “But I promise you, I’ve never felt like this.”

And so in a great fever and no time at all he removed her T-shirt and soon enough her bra, and she discovered how much she liked him licking her torso and nipples. And before she knew it, he took the white paper bag, the one that said CINNAMAN BAKERY in red letters on the side and he tipped the bag upside down and he shook it so that cinnamon sugar sprinkled onto her shoulders, her flat belly, her breasts. Throwing the bag aside, he proceeded to suck the sweet brown powder off her skin.
She was in ecstasy. She was in doubt. She wanted to get up, run out of the forest. She wanted to stay all day, lying there curled up with him. She moaned out loud.

That’s when he rolled on top of her. That’s when he began undressing the bottom half of her, saying, “I really think I’m in love with you Ronda. I love you. Can you hear me Ronda Cari, I’m saying I love you.”

“You do?” she whispered, in a tone that meant, “You really mean this? You don’t say these very same words to every girl you bring up here?”

“I do. I want you. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anybody before.”

It was at that moment she murmured “Ben, I am not ready. I really don’t think I want to do this yet I am just not....” By then though he was inside her body and then he exhaled the word Amen. Then all she could do was listen, and watch. He was powerful. The pain was sharp and tight and ripping but she focused instead on the vireo, its sweet warble, and what came to mind was how she first saw Ben, facing the blackboard, strong. A big reddish blonde head and a blocky, square body. There in front of the classroom, a coffee mug in his right hand and scrawling with his left, something from Plato’s Republic.
Why when Ben was first inside her was she thinking about the curious way he had of erasing the blackboard, from the bottom up, the short up and down strokes. Why was she thinking about chalk dust at a time like this?

Later, as he was lying beside her, as she looked at the clear glisten on her belly, as she felt tears gather in her eyes, she decided to listen to the vireo only.

Ben Fallon was trying to kiss another purple grape, a grape the same color as the stain on her lips, into her mouth, but she wasn’t sure she wanted him to. Her eyes blurred, and she sprang off the soft blue blanket. Stepped lightly over Ben, and fled through the forest. There, she crouched low, hovering over a mossy spot. Eyes closed, clouded, she breathed steadily, gathering herself into a still moment. And then, not knowing why she had to dance, she did. She rose in the sunlight, a flower unfolding, and bent at the waist, twisted, circled once quickly, arms clasped over her head. Again and again and again, she rose, threw herself into a wild series of relevés, each time she came down feeling the thick wet moss between her toes. Each time she rose, feeling her abdomen go up, up, up, and down and up, up, up. Up and out of itself, again and again and up some more.

Finally, when the dead feeling down between her hips had melted, when the stiffness had poured out of her lips, when her eyes had dried, when she was winded and no longer scared and she could feel her lower half alive again, at that moment, she stopped. Still on toe, her breath going quickly in and out of her mouth, and so much sweat on her brow that it began forming small beads, at that moment, she twirled again, bending alternately forward and backward at the waist. As if she were a leaf.

As if the tree overhead had hold of her hands. As if she was attached by a stem, and she was caught in a wind and blowing in every direction. Like all the leaves, all of them whispering and waving overhead.

A steady clapping began. She looked up, and there stood Ben, in his blue jeans only. His zipper undone, his belt dangling on his hips. Embarrassed, she dropped onto her knees and leaned over so her forehead touched the ground.

“That was incredible,” he said, lightly touching her hair. “Really.” He spoke in the most polite voice she’d ever heard from him.
“I don’t know much about dance, but I think you are terrific. I mean, if you want to, I bet you could be a really great dancer.”

“You think so?” she asked, looking up at him. She recalled then what her father had said when she was eleven, just a few months after she had started on toe. “Gironda,” he said, “You are so beautiful dancing. You are a real ballerina.”

“Yes,” Ben replied, taking hold of her hand, and pulling her to her feet. A smile played at his lips. “You would be especially popular if you always danced like this. Buck naked.”

Her gaze fell. Ben kissed her mouth and then both breasts. He turned and led her back through the forest to the blanket.

Together, they sank. She was hot and flushed. Without knowing why, and with something new and totally unfamiliar rushing through her, she pushed herself on top of him. Taking hold of his hands, she stretched their arms out together. Wide.

“I feel right now like I could fly,” she whispered, her legs stretched out behind her. Warm light bathed her back. Energy pulsed from her pelvis straight down through her thighs into her toes.

“I feel like I could screw you again,” he whispered.

She went up onto her elbows. Stared into his gray blue eyes. The salmon-colored curls ringing his sweaty forehead. She saw the earnest look in his face.

“So I think I would like the same thing,” she said, not knowing her own voice. “Screwing, I mean.” She leaned her lips right into his ear and breathed out, hard. “Only this time, Professor Fallon, please. Make sure that I’m along for the ride?”

"Seeing Red" Book/Guitar Party in Lenox Bookstore June 26th!!

2011-06-06T05:13:00.001-07:00

"GET LIT" TO FEATURE FLAMENCO BOOK/GUITAR PARTY

JUNE 6, 2011 -- The Bookstore in Lenox will bring a taste of romantic Andalucía to the Berkshires on Sunday, June 26th when a local author will be joined by two local flamenco guitarists. Novelist Claudia Ricci will read from Seeing Red, a novel of love and self-discovery set in the Berkshires and Southern Spain.

Ricci, a student of flamenco guitar for 12 years, will be joined by two area flamenco guitarists, Jose Miralles and Lee Rausch. The Pittsfield visual artist who created the powerful cover art for Seeing Red, Kellie Meisl, will also join the celebration of art and culture that takes the reader from the slopes of Mt. Greylock to the deep gorges of Andalucía.

As one reader wrote about Seeing Red’s heroine, “Readers follow Ronda through Spain on her journey of love and self-discovery as she explores her marriage, motherhood, infidelity, and loss, all the while nurturing a once-forgotten passion for dance that transforms and empowers her.”

Seeing Red will remind you of that trip you took to Spain or it will inspire you to visit for the first time. As another reader wrote, “I finished Seeing Red yesterday and it is a page turner! It made me think of the summer I spent in Spain 22 years ago. There were so many things in your book I could relate to, the location, the culture, even the food -- Spanish tortilla and paella are so good!”

The Seeing Red reading and book party are part of a new series of book events that Matt Tannenbaum is holding at his new wine bar, “Get Lit,” which adjoins the Lenox Bookstore. “I am excited about giving Berkshire County residents a chance to enjoy great literature, music and a glass of wine as a wonderful cap to a summer Sunday afternoon,” Tannebaum said. “Ricci’s prose – both powerful and poetic – will move her listeners and transport them for a few moments to sunny Spain.”

The reading and flamenco will be held from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 26th at The Lenox Bookhouse’s Get Lit wine bar, 11 Housatonic Street, Lenox Massacusetts. For directions or more information call (413) 637-3390 or visit the bookstore’s website at http://bookstoreinlenox.com.

2011-03-06T05:23:00.000-08:00

"At first I thought I would not be able to read on screen, but when something catches your interest, on screen, or in print, you will read it! The story so far is excellent. Something any age could enjoy. Especially me as a college student (where Ronda's story began). Can't wait to read the next chapters! :D"

--Jesenia Mejia, Albany, N.Y.

"I personally LOVED this! It kept me wanting to know more about Ronda and about her family. I kept asking myself so many questions about Ronda as well as about her sons.

As for reading online, I like it so much more than holding a book. I spend so much of my time on a tight schedule and I am always using the web for something such as research and so forth, so I really do think that reading online is a great option for people like myself."-- Dilis Tolentino, Albany, N.Y.

"Love the bytes of story! Keeps me wanting more, the proverbial cliff hanger. Here [in "Wretch!!" Ronda literally cannot "stomach" what's happening to her life -- body wisdom speaking. Just wondering if you wrote this with the intention of serializing? It seems to lend itself to this format very, very well. Love to read, and find time is limited so having this as an option is perfect! Thanks Claudia!" --Yoga Judi (Judi England)

"I'm so pleased to have the opportunity to read a novel in this format (and, so far, I'm enjoying this one quite a bit!), and I really hope this kind of thing takes off because it can benefit two entirely different kinds of people: readers and non-readers. Non-readers can appreciate the fact that someone is breaking up a book into manageable pieces for them, avoiding that sometimes-daunting task of finishing a whole book when you're busy. Plus, there's a lot to be said for short-attention-span management. There's also the time-management benefit, which would appeal to avid readers. How many times do you sit down to read just a little before bed and wind up still awake and reading over an hour later? While that speaks volumes for the content of the book, it's nice to have no choice but to read what's given to you and then be forced to wait. It's a little bit like "to be continued" TV episodes or finishing a book in a series and then having to wait until the author writes the next volume. I tend to find myself bouncing back and forth between these types, so this works out great for me, either way. :-)"

--"SlinkyGirl 816"

What I love about Claudia's writing is she can run you through the gamut of emotions in a single page. Things are pretty bleak for Ronda but how is it Claudia get's me laughing when I get to this line:Karen and Jack each get an arm under Ronda and move her slowly down the stairs, Ronda stumbling, her legs coming forward on automatic, as if she's Raggedy Ann and her red- and white-striped legs are stuffed and made of cotton.

I agree with Lynn, MORE! This is great reading the book online!

-- Kellie Meisl, Pittsfield MA

Chatham Courier Features "Seeing Red" on the Front Page!!

2011-02-27T13:42:00.000-08:00

NOTE: The following article appeared in the Chatham Courier and on-line at both the Chatham Courier and the Hudson-Catskill Register Star.

By Karrie Allen
Hudson-Catskill Newspapers
Published:
Sunday, February 27, 2011 2:08 AM ESTSPENCERTOWN — The same day Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Huffington Post, announced AOL’s takeover of the news website, which would revolutionize both media giants, the website also started serializing the book, “Seeing Red,” written by Spencertown resident Claudia Ricci. When the Huffington Post published the prologue of her book the first week of February, it was a first for Ricci and the news website.

Ricci, who has actually been writing for the Huffington Post since April 2008, approached Nico Pitney, national editor for the Huffington Post, and suggested serializing her novel, which had just been published in early January.

“He loved the idea and had me work with a book editor at the Huff Post,” said Ricci. She posts her novel, chapter by chapter, three times weekly — Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday — and will continue posting until her entire book is online.

While serializing her book is a new venture for Ricci, writing is not. After graduating with a master’s degree in journalism from U.C. Berkeley, she started her career at the Chicago Sun-Times, where she covered environmental issues. “My team project on toxic waste disposal was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize,” she noted.

*
She then went to the Wall Street Journal and worked as a staff writer in the New York bureau. She left when her oldest daughter, Jocelyn, was born. In 1996, she got her Ph.D. in English from the University at Albany, where she has been teaching English, creative writing and journalism since 1998.

In January 2009, she and her husband, Richard Kirsch, moved for a year to Washington, DC, where she taught English and journalism (on sabbatical) at Georgetown (while her husband worked on national health care reform). They moved back to Spencertown a year later and she resumed teaching full time at UAlbany.

Ricci and her husband moved from New Jersey to Spencertown full time in October 1985 and have raised their three children here. “We have just celebrated 25 years in our Spencertown home. … We have considered this home for a very long time!” commented Ricci.

So what inspired Ricci to write this book and where did the title come from? A growing passion for flamenco music — and her “patient” flamenco teacher.

Ricci and her husband saw their first live performance of flamenco in Scottsdale, Arizona many years ago and then they saw Maria Zemantauski play flamenco guitar at a Spanish restaurant in Albany. In 1999, Ricci approached the Troy-based virtuoso guitarist about taking lessons and so Ricci has been learning how to play flamenco music from Zemantauski ever since.

Her music teacher was not only an inspiration for her book, but also for her life. In 2002, Ricci was undergoing chemotherapy to treat her lymphoma and one day, against her doctor’s wishes for her to “give it a rest,” she decided to go to her music lesson anyway — but she was unable to play; her arms hurt. Zemantauski told her to just hold her guitar and after a while, Ricci actually began to strum the guitar.

“The next thing I knew, I was playing and the pain had receded,” she said. And she is now, “thank God, very healthy.”

Ricci also found inspiration for her book after a trip she and her husband made to southern Spain. They visited Andalucia, to an “extraordinarily beautiful little town called Ronda, perched on a 300-foot cliff; it was very dramatic and stuck with me,” said Ricci. “At some point, I had an image of a woman dancing flamenco while standing under the stars,” so she originally called the book “Eyes on Orion.”

But about a year ago, Ricci asked Zemantauski if she could rename her book after her music teacher’s CD. “I listened to Maria’s music writing each and every chapter of ‘Seeing Red.’ My ritual was simple: I would turn on the music, slip the headphones on, sit down and follow Ronda Cari [the main character in her book] through her wild adventures across Andalucia,” said Ricci. “I want to say that without [Zemantauski], and her music, this book would not be.”

The music, noted Ricci, “inspired the character and the mood and it opened up a creative space in which I was able to write the book.”

Ricci described the premise of the book on Huffington Post in this way: “Protagonist Ronda Cari is married and the mother of two and, oh yes, she also dances flamenco! Pretty soon she has a Spanish guitarist lover named Jesus and he’s got eyes — what else, the color of melted chocolate!”

She noted that while the book has plenty of romance and some decidedly hot encounters, it is definitely not a romance novel. “It’s a story about a woman’s passion for her dancing and her discovery that art — and friends who do art — can help us heal from the worst of heartbreaks,” she said.

Ricci’s collaboration with her guitar teacher has led to a collaborARTive group of women artists — musicians, painters, writers, photographers — all of whom would support each other’s work. “We have teamed up with artist Kellie Meisl from Pittsfield, whose art is on the cover of the novel.” The cover art is actually one of her pieces, titled “Shattered Cups,” which was created for the 2009 Think Pink Breast Cancer Awareness Art Exhibit. (Meisl’s explanation behind the piece can be found in the back of the book.)

“Seeing Red” is not Ricci’s first book, though. Her first book, “Dreaming Maples,” was published in 2002. The mother-daughter novel takes place in a Vermont sugarbush and pits young Candace Burdett, an artist, against her mother, Eileen, who abandons Candace as an infant and returns to claim her daughter 10 years later. The book weaves around the diaries Eileen kept while pregnant with Candace.

Her first novel earned Ricci a nomination from a large New York publisher for a Pushcart Prize, which rewards a book that an editor feels is highly deserving of publication.

When Ricci’s not writing books, which she loves, or blogging, which she also loves, she enjoys writing columns and all sorts of feature articles for the Huffington Post. In addition, she has published several short stories in literary magazines around the country and actually has a third novel she finished, but is yet \unpublished.

She is also in the process of writing two other books, both on blogs and both connected. One is called “Sister Mysteries” (www.renata1883.blogspot.com) and the other is “Castenata” (www.castenata.blogspot.com).

“Blogs make it possible to do hyperlinks and also to accompany text with lovely images (I take photos and load them into the books). I am hoping to package these books at some point for an iPad format.”

This idea has inspired her to contact a company that is designing “apps” for the iPhone and iPad to see what it would cost.

“I would be very interested in publishing other novelists in this serialized format and I am exploring how it might be done in a cost-effective way,” said Ricci. “I believe heart and soul in publishing and in seeing stories told,” which is why she has her own community writing blog, My Story Lives (www.mystorylives.blogspot.com).

When asked about the future of serialization at Huffington Post, she said she certainly hopes they will start a fiction section and serialize other novels. But so far, she noted, they haven’t said anything about doing that.

However, Ricci has already been approached by another novelist from Missouri (who already has four books in print by major publishers) about serializing her book, “Spiritkeeper,” on Ricci’s blog.

“I plan to start publishing her book as soon as she is ready to begin sending chapters,” she said. “She has commissioned a dust jacket (cover image) precisely for this purpose!” Ricci’s also very interested in publishing other novelists in this format.

When asked about the future of print, especially for books, she said, “I believe that serialization, online and on phone apps are definitely a major part of the future of publishing. It’s been very common in Japan for some time now for people to read novels on their cell phones.

“I really really hate to think we will lose print books entirely. After all, print books are fabulous and wonderful. However, the publishing industry certainly seems to be moving quickly toward digital and electronic formats.”

As if Ricci hasn’t accomplished enough, she was also behind the success of a children’s book about the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedy. She has had a small publishing company, Star Root Press, for 10 years and back in 2001, this children’s book fell into her hands at her synagogue in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. She published the book, “On That Day” by Andrea Patel, and in six months, the book sold 3,000 copies. “Many many adults bought it as it was an amazing book,” said Ricci.

In January 2002, “Reading Rainbow” named it one of the most successful children’s books about the tragedy. Later that year, they sold the book to a larger publisher and you can now find the book at Amazon.com.

When Ricci teaches, she focuses a lot on storytelling, since she is, after all, a storyteller herself. “I tell my students that we may lose paper newspapers and we may lose books in paper form, but we will never stop telling stories. Storytelling is wired into the human brain; we make sense of the world by telling stories.”

Ricci will be signing actual print copies of her book, “Seeing Red,” at the Chatham Bookstore from 1 to 3 p.m. today. She noted she will probably do a reading around 1:45 p.m. And if you can’t make it to the book signing, be sure to read the serialized version of her book at huffingtonpost.com.

A WONDERFUL PARTY TO CELEBRATE "Seeing Red" and Women Supporting Each other's ART!!

2011-02-06T17:49:00.000-08:00

Readers who bought the book at the party have started calling.

Flamenco guitarist Lee Rausch (photo below)is a student of Maria's -- called to say that he had finished the novel in two days -- he really enjoyed it!

Lenore Flynn, who is teaching a weekly Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction class to my Happiness students this semester, left this comment on the Huff Post blog today:

"I got the novel last Sunday at Claudia's book signing party along with [Maria Zemantauski's] flamenco guitar CD "Seeing Red" -- I have been playing the CD and reading the book. Claudia told us all she played the music while writing. Claudia is such a wonderful writer, I am envisioning the scenes in the book with a sound track! I have not been able to stop reading it; I am savoring every word! It is great that people can read it on the HuffPost. Thank you Claudia!"

Thanks Lenore and thank you Lee!

A HUGE THANKS TO MARIA ZEMANTAUSKI AND TO KELLIE MEISL FOR SUCH A GREAT FLAMENCO-BOOK-ART PARTY!!!

MARIA -- Your music was "beyond words" magnificent, as always!

KELLIE -- Your collage, "Shattered Cups," was even more breath-taking in the "flesh" than in the photos! What a superbly original and inspiring artist you are!

THANKS TO ALL OF YOU WHO DROVE FROM NEAR AND FAR to The Book House in Albany, New York to celebrate Seeing Red, and the "novel" way that women can help energize and support each other's art! It was a great party and fabulous to see you all there! At the end of the party, Maria and I decided it's time to bring a group of women artists together to energize and inspire each other's ART!

JUDI ENGLAND BRINGS AMAZING RED TULIPS -- THANKS JUDI!! KELLIE AND MARCIA BRING GORGEOUS RED ROSES THANK YOU KELLIE

AND MARCIA!

TIMES UNION MASTER BLOG EDITOR MIKE HUBER BRINGS HIS ADORABLE DAUGHTER JULIA!! THANKS MIKE AND JULIA!!

MY UNCLE PAUL AND AUNT ANNAMAE ROTONDO DRIVE ALL THE WAY FROM CANTON, CONNECTICUT (NEAR HARTFORD) -- AND STOP TO PICK UP MY PARENTS, RIC AND DENA RICCI!! MY UNCLE LOUIS ROTONDO CAME TOO -- WE ALL WENT OUT TO DINNER AT CRÉO TO CELEBRATE AFTERWARD!!

A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY SUNY EOP COLLEAGUE NANCY DUNLOP AND HER HUSBAND, STEPHEN GILHOOLEY, WHO HAD A STUNNING RED BOUQUET DELIVERED TO THE BOOKSTORE AS THE PARTY STARTED!!

THANKS STEVE! THANKS NANCY!! You WERE DEFINITELY here in spirit!

What a splendid launch for this book! I am so grateful to all who came to participate!

Rhanks for this photo Kellie! And A BIG KISS AND HUG AND THANKS to my husband, Richard Kirsch, for all the photos and for all your help putting on the party! All those many trips back and forth to the car you made on a treacherously icy path and driveway, WHEW!

This week, "SEEING RED" Becomes the FIRST SERIALIZED NOVEL EVER on The Huffington Post!!

2011-02-04T04:59:00.000-08:00

The Huffington Post has revolutionized journalism in the last few years by taking over the news and news feature delivery business. (Read "The New Yorker's" excellent piece,"Out of Print," for more details on the demise of newspapers and, simultaneously, the meteoric rise of the Huff Po phenomenon!)

Now the blog has decided to venture into the fiction-publishing business! Starting this week, Seeing Red becomes the first novel ever to be serialized on The Huffington Post.

Serializing novels in a chapter-by-chapter format isn't new. Not at all. Charles Dickens and Mark Twain and many other Victorian writers published their stories in installments in weekly and monthly magazines back in the 19th century. Readers lined up to get new installments of the novels that Dickens and others wrote.

With the book publishing business in peril, and electronic books on the rise, it seems timely totry experimenting with books on a blog! We hope you'll join us in the first Huff Post blog-book!

What follows here is the first installment (the Prologue) of Seeing Red, a love story just in time for Valentine's Day.

Protagonist Ronda Cari is married and the mother of two and, oh yes, she also dances flamenco! Pretty soon she has a Spanish guitarist lover named Jesús and he's got eyes -- what else, the color of melted chocolate!

But while this book's got plenty of romance, and some decidedly hot encounters, it is definitelynot a romance novel. It's a story about a woman's passion for her dancing, and her discovery that art -- and friends who do art -- can help us heal from the worst of heartbreaks.

We hope you'll take a few minutes to read the Prologue. Here's a note from a reader:

"I just finished Seeing Red and I LOVED it! I had trouble putting it down, and now I'm grieving my loss because the story is over. Seeing Red is about passion, but not only the romantic kind. I followed Ronda through Spain on her journey of love and self-discovery as she explores her marriage, motherhood, infidelity, and loss, all the while nurturing a once-forgotten passion for dance that transforms and empowers her. It is impossible not to experience Ronda's joys and pain, as well as reflect on your own, due to your gift for transporting readers via accurate and vivid details, along with your depth of insight and knowledge. I was transported, both there, AND to many personal memories. I love it when an author can do that for me -- although it is very emotional and draining, I love it." -- Kellie LaCoppola, Palatine Bridge, New York

New installments will follow three times weekly, every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Enjoy!

Prologue

Later, much later, Ronda came face to face with the Spanish girl. She peered into the young woman's eyes, green and full of strange glittering light.

"What could you possibly want from me?" Ronda whispered.

The girl remained silent for a moment. But her eyes bore deeply into Ronda. She fixed her sight so tightly that Ronda felt pinned, and inside her blouse, sweat sprouted across her chest and in her armpits.

Ronda turned to Hernán, the man she had hired to drive the Mercedes. "Can you please ask her?" Ronda said. "Ask the girl what she wants from me."

Hernán nodded. Straightening up, he turned to face the girl. He cleared his throat and then, bending forward slightly, he spoke a few hurried lines of Spanish, all the while gesturing with one hand toward Ronda.

The girl lifted her head. Answered slowly. And defiantly. Hernán's eyes widened. His gaze dropped to the ground. He shook his head.

"What?" Ronda insisted. "Hernán, tell me. What does she want?"

He looked up at Ronda. He said nothing at first, as if he was deciding what to say. Finally he spoke. "She wants to know, señora, if...if when you go back to the United States, if you would be willing to take the little girl. The baby, that is. With you. To...to keep."

The words hovered around Ronda's ears, but they didn't go deeply enough. She didn't hear them. Or maybe she did, but she couldn't possibly process them, not so that they made any sense. She felt them twirling around in her brain, the same way she herself had been twirling these last months, her feet and legs learning to dance the complex steps of the alegría and the bulería and the fandango.

Ronda shuddered slightly and just stared at the girl. With no warning, the girl reached out and grabbed Ronda's hands in her own grimy hands. She held on. Despite the blazing heat, the girl's fingers were sticks of ice, as frigid as the pond back in Ronda's yard in New England.

Ronda struggled to break the fierce grip, tried to pull her hands away, but the girl just held tighter. She made one giant fist out of her own hands and Ronda's, and she shook fiercely, as if she were forcing them into a pact. Ronda shuddered again and wrenching her hands free, she stepped back.

"No..." she whispered. "Never."

She gave the girl one more look: the bronzed weather-beaten face, the green eyes, pleading.

That's when she noticed. The girl's lips. How could she not have noticed before? The lips were faintly purple now, and the pallor seemed moment by moment to be getting darker.

Ronda felt her stomach tighten. She turned toward the car, and as she did, she started to feel lightheaded.

"Hernán, I really need to...leave. Right away, we need to, please. Now."
'
Immediately Hernán was beside her, opening the door of the Mercedes and Ronda, casting one last frightened look at the greenest eyes she had ever seen, slipped inside the limousine.

Stay tuned, Chapter One is coming Sunday, Feb. 6th!!

This post appeared first on the Huff Po athttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/claudia-ricci/starting-today-read-a-nov_b_817247.html

A "Novel" Way to Read a "Novel" -- "Seeing Red" to become the First Serialized Novel on The Huffington Post

2011-02-01T09:52:00.000-08:00

Charles Dickens did it. So did Mark Twain, with both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn!

Back in the Victorian era, many writers published their fiction chapter by chapter, in monthly or weekly magazines like "Household Words."

Readers LOVED the stories.

Readers flocked to buy the weeklies.

Dickens' good friend Wilkie Collins was so popular after he started writing The Woman in White -- an epistolary novel considered to be one of the first MYSTERY or detective novels -- that readers lined up to buy the next installment!

Among other writers who published in serialized format in the 19th century: George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, George Meredith and Robert Louis Stevenson. Later, much of Joseph Conrad's fiction was first published in British and American periodicals (Both Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness was serialized in three parts in Blackwood's Magazine.

THE HUFF PO IS AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE PUBLISHING REVOLUTION!!
Just as the Huff Po is helping to revolutionize journalism by taking over the news and news feature delivery business, the blog has now decided to venture into the story publishing business!
We are in the throes of a publishing revolution. As book publishing is changing in monumental ways, it seems time, and timely, to try the serialization format again, only this time, the "household words" will be electronic!
Starting this week, my new novel, Seeing Red, will become the first novel ever to be serialized on the Huff Po.
Seeing Red is a love story, and it takes the reader on a wild adventure across the warm and sunny and very romantic region of southern Spain known as Andalucía (a wonderful time of year to get away to Spain :)!!
It's a love story just in time for Valentine's Day.
But it's much more than a love story. It's a story of discovery. It's a woman's journey to find herself as an artist, and her slow and often painful realization that even though she adores her guitarist lover Jesús, and even though she has chased him half-way across the globe (he has those eyes like melted chocolate!) in the end, she doesn't need him to be happy.
As I say in the promo for the book on the Seeing Red website, Ronda Cari spends half a lifetime searching for true love, and then she discovers it, in the magic of her own (flamenco) dancing!
The Huffington Post isn't alone dabbling in serialized fiction online. A group of science fiction writers are hard at work composing Mongoliad.com, billed as a "rip-roaring adventure tale set in 1241." According to its writers, Mongoliad.com is not only exciting reading, it's "also the beginning of an experiment in storytelling, technology, and community-driven creativity."
It's an experiment worth pursuing!
Books in print may disappear someday.
But stories never will. As I say in my other experimental online book, the "blogga saga" Sister Mysteries, stories are what make us human.
Storytelling is as old as human beings; stories are how we make sense of the world and its chaos.
So get ready for another experiment in storytelling and digital technology! We hope you'll be a regular reader -- if you want to sign up to receive notices of new chapters of Seeing Red, email My_Story_Lives@yahoo.com.

Follow Claudia Ricci on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RicciCJ
This post appeared first on The Huffington Post.

A Reader writes: Seeing Red is "PERFECT FOR YOUR VALENTINE!"

2011-01-30T07:13:00.000-08:00

Please join us at a flamenco-book-art party at The Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, New York, on Sunday, February 6th, at 3 p.m., when Seeing Red author Claudia Ricci joins virtuoso flamenco guitarist Maria Zemantauski (whose CD "Seeing Red" inspired the book!) and visual artist Kellie Meisl (whose astonishing image "Shattered Cups" graces the cover of the book). Have a glass of sangría and toast this unique "collaborARTive" event -- a celebration of three women and their art!

A READER WRITES:

"I just finished Seeing Red -- I won the "who gets to read it first" battle with my husband Andy -- and I LOVED it! I had trouble putting it down, and now I'm grieving my loss because the story is over. Seeing Red is about passion, but not only the romantic kind. Readers follow Ronda through Spain on her journey of love and self-discovery as she explores her marriage, motherhood, infidelity, and loss, all the while nurturing a once-forgotten passion for dance that transforms and empowers her. It is impossible not to experience Ronda's joys and pain, as well as reflect on your own, due to Ricci's gift for transporting readers via accurate and vivid details, along with her depth of insight and knowledge. Perfect for your Valentine. Claudia Ricci is such a gifted and amazing writer. And the cover choice is perfect. I was transported, both there, AND to many personal memories. I love it when an author can do that for me -- although it is very emotional and draining, I love it. P.S. Ricci's first novel, Dreaming Maples, is also a must-have for mothers and daughters."
-- Kellie LaCoppola, Palatine Bridge, New York

A READER WRITES: Seeing Red is "PERFECT FOR YOUR VALENTINE!"

2011-01-13T04:50:00.000-08:00

"I just finished Seeing Red -- I won the "who gets to read it first" battle with my husband Andy -- and I LOVED it! I had trouble putting it down, and now I'm grieving my loss because the story is over. Seeing Red is about passion, but not only the romantic kind. Readers follow Ronda through Spain on her journey of love and self-discovery as she explores her marriage, motherhood, infidelity, and loss, all the while nurturing a once-forgotten passion for dance that transforms and empowers her. It is impossible not to experience Ronda's joys and pain, as well as reflect on your own, due to Ricci's gift for transporting readers via accurate and vivid details, along with her depth of insight and knowledge. Perfect for your Valentine. Claudia Ricci is such a gifted and amazing writer. And the cover choice is perfect. I was transported, both there, AND to many personal memories. I love it when an author can do that for me -- although it is very emotional and draining, I love it. P.S. Ricci's first novel, Dreaming Maples, is also a must-have for mothers and daughters."

-- Kellie LaCoppola, Palatine Bridge, New York

Seeing Red is a love story, but more importantly, it's a story of discovery. It's a novel about a woman's journey to find herself, and to believe in the power of art to sustain and restore the human heart!

When she sets off across southern Spain in search of her romantic guitarist lover Jesus -- he's got eyes the color of melted chocolate -- Ronda has no idea what's in store. Her whirlwind trip takes her to the warm and sunny and VERY ROMANTIC region of Andalucía, full of sunshine and vast white beaches and Moorish castles and spectacular churches and Arabian palaces.

But what Ronda discovers in Spain is far more important than the tourist attactions.

Once the secret her lover has been hiding is revealed, Ronda is quite suddenly lost in a foreign country, in more ways than one.

But soon she is launched on another far more important journey, a slow and often painful recovery from heartbreak. What she realizes in the end is that she doesn't need her guitarist lover to be happy.

Ronda Cari spends half a lifetime searching for true love, and then she discovers it, in the magic of her own dancing.

BUY SEEING RED AND GET A FREE TRIP TO SOUTHERN SPAIN!

If you haven't been to Andalucía -- I went to research the book -- SEEING RED WILL MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE THERE!

All those Moorish castles and spectacular churches and cathedrals and dazzling tiled palaces -- remember the Alhambra? -- and white sandy beaches and gargantuan caves and food! Arid hillsides full of olive trees. All sorts of gardens, filled with orange trees! Restaurants and cafes serving paella and an array of tapas and gazpacho and garlic soup (amazing!) and THE most incredible wines and dark delicious coffee! Oh, and the gardens! Hillsides of purple bougainvillea

bright red geraniums and hibiscus of every color, flowers growing everywhere you turn!

Thank you Maria Zemantauski, for "Seeing Red"!

2010-12-29T04:51:00.000-08:00

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’m not sure I can explain exactly how my love affair with flamenco began. I know it was way back in 1995, deep in January, and there was ice and deep snow outside the window. I know I was lying on the floor doing my leg lifts. I know I was listening to the radio, when suddenly I heard something flamenco.

The deeply passionate music set my heart beating faster. The music bypassed my brain and felt like it could melt the ice on the windows; something inexplicable caught fire in my soul and wouldn’t let go.

The Spaniards refer to “duende” – a spirit or force that inspires spontaneous artistic expression. Federico García Lorca, in a famous piece of theoretical writing in 1933, suggested that duende infuses the blood, and spawns the struggle – often dark and tortured— toward authentic creation.

After my husband and I saw our first live performance of flamenco in Scottsdale, Arizona, he too became an aficionado. And then we saw Maria Zemantauski play flamenco guitar at a Spanish restaurant in Albany, New York.

Like so many of her fans, we were awestruck by Maria’s artistry, her virtuoso performance, her amazing music, her cheerful disposition. At the time, I couldn’t read a note of music. I couldn’t keep a beat to save my life, but I had been playing chords on the guitar since college. One day in 1999, I walked up to her after a performance and introduced myself and asked if she took students. She did, and so began my study of flamenco.

After almost 11 years of instruction, I can read (some) music. I can (sometimes) count the complex “compås” (rhythms) of the many styles of flamenco. The patience that Maria brings to teaching her students is beyond anything I’ve encountered in my own teaching. She has never once made me feel like an idiot for studying a form of guitar that is way beyond my ability. Indeed, the most telling incident of Maria’s approach to teaching emerges from a day in July, 2002, when I was in chemotherapy treatment for lymphoma (I am now, thank God, very healthy.) But that sweltering July day, I could barely lift my right arm. I wanted desperately to go to my lesson, in part to defy the doctor at Sloan Kettering who had told me to “give it a rest,” meaning, stop playing guitar.

When I got to Maria’s apartment in Troy, she welcomed me with her brilliant smile and her incredible (and giant) dog, Paco, and instantly I knew I had made the right decision to go. I sat down and told her that my arms hurt so much that I couldn’t lift them. “I don’t think I can play today,” I said, swallowing over the knot in my throat.

“Oh well that’s fine, just sit there and hold the guitar,” Maria said, keeping her attitude upbeat and cheerful. And so I did, I held my guitar in my lap, and we chatted about this and that. And without thinking about it, I suddenly found myself lifting up the instrument. And then I was strumming.

Maria noticed. “Hey, you know, you could try to set your fingers going, and just see what happens.”

The next thing I knew, I was playing, and the pain had receded.

I want to acknowledge Maria Zemantauski not only for her extraordinary musical talent and her abundant gifts as a teacher. I want to say that without her, and her music, this book would not be. I listened to Maria’s music writing each and every chapter of Seeing Red. My ritual was simple: I would turn on the music, slip the headphones on, sit down and follow Ronda Cari through her wild adventures across Andalucía.

But that’s not the only role Maria played in bringing this book to life. At some point in the last year, after trying unsuccessfully to find another literary agent, I told her I wasn’t going to publish the book.

Instantly she raised a loud protest. “You have to publish this book, Claudia,” she insisted. “You have to believe in your own art.” And then she reminded me that she had been publishing her own CDs for years.

It was a struggle. My husband, Richard Kirsch, a loving partner for the last 34 years, and himself a great writer, was as adamantly supportive as Maria. Richard has always encouraged me to stick with the writing in the face of rejections. He too insisted that I publish the novel.

It was after rereading the novel that I came to understand that they were right. In particular, I listened to one character, Leely, tell Ronda that she had to believe in her dancing. Leely’s character was in part inspired by Maria. Both of them are strong women who believe passionately that females in particular must fight the societal forces that are always ready to shut down artistic creation.

Once upon a time, this novel was called Eyes on Orion. But I changed the title in part to honor Maria’s music and her CD, “Seeing Red.” She was gracious enough to allow me to share the title.

There are others who have helped bring this book to life. Artist Kellie Meisl, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, was so generous to allow me to use her remarkable collage piece, “Shattered Cups,” as a cover image. The first time I saw the image, it took my breath away. What is so exciting is the collaborARTive nature of this venture: an idea that started with Maria’s music then inspired my book, and is now linked with Kellie’s visual art. I’m hoping that this unique collaborARTive venture can bring all of our work to wider public attention.

I am also deeply grateful to graphic designer Jodi Frye, of Amsterdam, New York, who took Kellie’s image and turned it so deftly into a magical cover. Thanks for the quick turnaround, Jodi and for being so nice to work with! Renee Geel, thank you so much for helping to edit the book. You have showed me that less is more! And to my two Spanish-speaking readers of the novel, EOP colleague Gladys Santiago-Tosado and Lyda Vanegas, at Mary’s Center in Washington, D.C., muchas gracias amigas!

Finally, I want to thank my husband for reading endless drafts, and my mom, Dena Ricci, who also read the manuscript. Mom, your enthusiasm for selling books – even at the doctor’s office and the beauty shop -- means more to me than you will ever know. A huge thanks to my children, too, for being there, supporting me as a mother and an artist, in so many loving ways. Lindsay Kirsch, I so appreciate your reading the manuscript and giving me important suggestions for revision. And thank you Jocelyn Kirsch for stirring up so much interest in my novels among your co-workers at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Your love and support mean the world to me!

September, 2010

SEEING PINKY ORANGE :(

2010-12-04T02:17:00.001-08:00

December 4, 2010

Hey Andy, your email is just extraordinary and the timing of it couldn’t be better, or worse. Well, it is a bit eerie actually – you are writing so thoughtfully about publishing issues at a very difficult moment in my writing and publishing life.

I know you and Kellie are impatiently awaiting Seeing Red – well, so was I. And then the cartons of new books arrived two days ago, and I am trying to figure out whether to accept the shipment from the book-making company because the cover of the novel is seriously flawed.

Let's just say that the way the new book looks, the novel’s title Seeing Red

should be revised to read "SEEING PINKY ORANGE."

The "why's" of this very depressing situation have everything to do with your thoughtful questions about the state of publishing, and the situation with a shrinking reading audience. No, the sad fact is that most people are not like you; most readers today want as you say, “candy,” and that’s making it harder and harder to write and and publish and sell serious fiction.

Where do I begin?

When I launched my tiny publishing company, Star Root Press, to publish Dreaming Maples in 2002, it was after several extraordinarily difficult years trying to get a contract with a mainstream publisher. I am not sure if you know this, but when I finished the first novel in 1996, I had Joyce Carol Oates’ agent (with the John Hawkins’ literary agency – the one Jack London used way back when) trying to sell it.

My agent Ellie – and the second NY agent who tried to sell my book a couple of years later -- used to tell me that a decade before, Dreaming Maples would have sold in a heartbeat. (I did get a Pushcart Prize nomination from Ballantine Books after it was all over.) As it happened, though, I was attempting to sell my first novel -- a good read but still, literary fiction -- at a gruesome time in the book publishing industry. The book business was going through huge upheaval; the nosedive has only accelerated since. As consolidation in the publishing industry intensified, and the number of publishing companies kept shrinking and readership continued shriveling, publishers began frantically hunting for more blockbusters (the rise of Barnes and Noble and Borders only hurried that situation along.)

In the old days, publishers would keep in their “stable of writers” all kinds of serious authors who were so-called “mid-list” writers. These authors sold tens of thousands of books, not millions. Starting about two decades ago, though -- just about the time yours truly began writing fiction -- publishers began avoiding the serious but moderate-selling authors; bottom-line economics drove publishers more and more frantically toward publishing the big BIG books that the reading public likes to gobble up the way they gobble up Burger King whoppers.

Today, the blockbuster thing has just taken over. Publishers drool for big sellers like John Grisham and Steig Larsson and Tom Clancy. They yearn for novels like Lovely Bones and The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo even though you, and many many serious readers like you, aren't interested.

Publishers -- trying to boost their frightfully sagging bottom lines -- are desperate to appeal to the lowest common denominator. They know what the reading public wants. They are marketing to your dad (who I'm sure must be a great guy if he’s YOUR dad. ☺ But here is what you write about your Pop:

“I think of my dad, for whom we bought a Kindle because he loves the blockbuster best-sellers. He'll throw me a title (James Patterson, Stieg Larsson, Tom Clancy, et. al.), and tell me it's great, but I just can't get into it. (Didn't you have a dilemma with "Eat, Pray, Love" that you blogged about?) I'll throw him some authors, and he just can't get into them because "I just want a good story."

The publishers see what you see among your friends and family: “most people unfortunately have no patience for complex character development and what I like to refer as "look-in-the-mirror" reading: how many of this character's traits do I share and do I like/loathe that part of my psyche?! And how can I alter my behavior to fix those parts I don't care for or accentuate those I like?”

I sit here shaking my head when you ask this simple question: “I guess what I'm asking is, how do we raise the bar on what constitutes good literature?”

In my classroom, of course, I raise the bar by requiring the students to read “good” books, just like you say you “try to expose "good" music to my students.” But I am not at all hopeful that I am turning out a ton of sophisticated readers. Once these kids leave the University, they have little or no interest or incentive in reading, and certainly not in reading the likes of David Markson. The internet, while amazing and fabulous for connecting us to each other, and putting any piece of information we want immediately at our eyes and fingertips, is also encouraging a kind of dumbing-down effect. Let’s put it this way, the brief exchanges that pass for communication don’t help develop deep critical-thinking skills. This semester, in one freshman English literature class, I had only three students who scored above a C plus on a simple essay that required them to compare two characters. This sorry grade spread is the worst thing I've seen in a dozen years of teaching at the University!

So, on a more positive note, David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress sounds like a fabulous and thought-provoking novel and as soon as this crazy semester ends, I will give it a try. It’s really so wonderful that you are such a serious reader. I sure wish we had a lot more readers out there who want the kind of demanding complex literature that you enjoy! How do we develop them? Sigh. I am not really sure.

And I'm not really sure how we should save the publishing industry either!

With all the self-publishing options out there today, you would think it would have been a cinch to produce Seeing Red at a reasonable price.

It wasn’t at all. After researching the self-publishing market, I found a local company to produce the book, and now it looks as though they really were not capable of handling the job. As I said, the cover is a real problem; not only is the color a bit pukey, but the covers on the handful of books I took home are, after only a day, starting to curl! Bad deal. Bad choice of paper, I guess. Hard to say what exactly the problem is, but it's a big problem for me, because I was expecting to launch the book this week in a big pre-Christmas marketing effort. (Seeing red is what, after all, we do at Christmas, right?! :)

In April of 2002, when I published Dreaming Maples, I got up at 6 a.m. and drove 40 miles to Albany just to stand beside the huge Heidelberg press at Digital Page to watch that beautiful cover image come into being. It was thrilling (a bit like one of those exciting birth scenes in Dreaming Maples :). But it was also important to be at the press check -- it gave me a chance to tell the printer how to tinker with the ink colors so that the image would perfectly match my cousin, Pat Rotondo's dazzling forest painting.

This time around it wasn’t possible to do a press check. It was just too expensive for me to work directly with a printer, so I chose another route; I worked with a book-making company that brokered (sub-contracted) the printing out. They did a lovely job designing the book, but when it came to printing it, well, we haven't got a book yet :(

Meanwhile, the economics of this little enterprise are dicey too.

I was forced to price Seeing Red at $19.95 per book, four dollars more than Dreaming Maples. And the saddest part is that: I am going to lose almost $2 for EACH BOOK that I sell on Amazon!

That’s because Amazon splits the cover price of the book with the author on a 50/50 basis.
Each copy of Seeing Red costs me a whopping $11.70 to produce, but would only generate $9.98 from an Amazon sale. So you see now why I intend to BEG people to buy Seeing Red from my website (where I am selling the book for $17.95!!)

If I had chosen to publish on iUniverse or on the other biggie, Xlibris, the economics were much, much worse!

I think this sad state of self-publishing affairs is part of what is driving me to experiment so intensely with my new blog books, Sister Mysteries and my crazy nun novel, Castenata! (I think Markson would have loved what I am attempting to do, blur the line between truth and fiction, a line that the internet is blurring more and more effectively every day!)

So it’s perhaps a crazy idea I have, but I feel that there has to be a way to get good imaginative literary writing out there to the reading public who wants it. Maybe my new writing – full of lush images and links – will appeal to readers on-line? Maybe I can figure out a way to sell the writing at some point perhaps?

Will I make money? Probably not a lot. But I’ve got to write, I can't live without writing. I just hope that one day there will be a way to encourage good writing for the e-book market, which is booming.

By the way, I am looking for an app writer, if you happen to know one, who could write code that would package my new books, Sister Mysteries and Castenata in a format for say, the Ipad. Then I could bypass the paper cover printing world and get my lushly-illustrated books out there to folks who, like you, really do appreciate good writing.

I’ve been getting up at 4 a.m. every morning to write these new books. I wasn't going to do that today, but when I woke up at 3:30 this morning I started tossing and turning. I started fretting about those awful Seeing Red covers. I got up just to check my email, just to see if my painter cousin Pat, the woman who did the image for the first cover, and who knows the printing business inside and out, had had a chance to look at my sorry book cover. I am awaiting her opinion before I decide whether to tell the book-making company that I won’t accept the books.

Well, so it’s five a.m. now, so I still have time to go back to sleep.

I can’t thank you enough Andy for your amazing letter. At a time when I am feeling discouraged about the publishing THING, it helps enormously to have a reader (and friend) like you dive into the issues that are making life so tough for serious writers like me. And no, you don’t owe me “at least one semester’s worth of tuition” for addressing your “quandaries.”

I owe YOU for a paragraph like this one:

“Could you imagine Shakespeare being translated into "text-language…James Joyce redone by David Baldacci??! Monet redone by Thomas Kinkade??? Michelangelo's David redone by a craft-fair hack potter? An all-Bach night on American Idol??”

My heavens, Andy, if these are the issues that Markson’s book raises for you, then you have done me an enormous favor by suggesting my first vacation read!

By the way, it would be so much fun to have you and Kellie out to the house for dinner. It would be even more fun if one of the kids were back home, so that they could visit with the man who was their absolutely favorite music and band teacher of all time. :)

I’m sure Rich would love to cook up one of his enchilada dinners. And I will make the guacamole and dessert. So consider this an invitation over the holidays! (Maybe by then I will have solved the Seeing Red dilemma!)

Happy healthy holidays to you and the familiy!

Claudia

P.S. I just went to Amazon.com (yes, of course I love Amazon :) and read the first page of Markson's book and I ordered it with one click, it's astonishing, and quite coincidentally, he is writing about someone living in a MUSEUM AND THAT WAS AN IDEA I HAD FOR A NOVEL. I love painting, I hung my first show last night in Great Barrington, and as you know, my first novel, Dreaming Maples is all about a young painter. In fact, she delivers her BABY beneath the famous "Blond Bather" -- a Renoir at the Clark! While we are on the subject of connections, I noticed that another of Markson's books is called This is Not a Novel, which could very well be the title of Sister Mysteries, which for years I TRIED to write as a novel. Now I am writing it as a multi-genre piece of fiction. I will order THAT BOOK BY MARKSON SHORTLY! Before his death, he was apparently really big into genre-bending writing.

ANDY DO YOU REALIZE THAT YOU HAVE HELPED ME DISCOVER A NEW MUSE? A NEW INSPIRATION? wow. Something is in the air lately. Every time I turn around, I get another email communiqué from a friend who makes me see new connections in my writing. The connections -- all courtesy of the internet -- are perhaps coincidental, but they just keep happening. Read Sister Mysteries to see (and maybe we are headed for another chapter on the matters here!) THANKS A MILLION ANDY!

Andrew LaCoppola, a high school music and band teacher at Johnstown High in Johnstown, New York, was a teacher at Chatham Middle from 1993-2000. My children were there during that period, they never had a better and more fun-loving, upbeat teacher! Thanks Andy LaCoppola, for all you do to make music come alive in the classroom and in the hearts and lives of young musicians!

How an Amazing Piece of Art Becomes a Book Cover

2010-11-06T17:59:00.001-07:00

The first time I saw Kellie Meisl's collage, "Shattered Cups," it took my breath away. I knew that it would make an amazing cover image for my new novel, Seeing Red. Kellie was so generous to let me use it. I want to say a huge THANK YOU to her, here, for sharing her art, and her incredible vision. What follows is the story that Kellie wrote about how she came to make "Shattered Cups." It is a terrific story, and I'm delighted that it too appears in the novel. As Kellie points out, we are indeed launched on an exciting collaborARTive journey, together with flamenco guitarist Maria Zemantauski, whose music inspired the novel. The piece you are listening to right now, "Tinto Verrano," was composed by Maria Zemantauski, and is taken from her wonderful CD, "Seeing Red." More on Maria's music, and how it fed the "muse," coming soon!

The Story Behind the Cover Image, “Shattered Cups”

By Kellie Meisl

I began creating ‘Shattered Cups’ after what I call a “waking dream,” a series of related events that carry a message about loss and healing. In this case, the waking dream began one day in 2003, when a shelf in my china cabinet collapsed suddenly. Sadly, many pieces from my great grandmother’s china collection, including all the teacups, were shattered. The following day, another shelf in my cabinet gave way. I wrote to friends saying that I was unnerved, and wondered what the third “crash” would be; shortly afterward, a teacher at my son’s school was killed in a head-on car crash, only minutes after I had seen her leave the school. She had just dropped off a couple of school children at play practice in her little red Subaru. I had been sitting on the lawn beside her car with my son and his first grade classmates and I had waved goodbye to her just moments before she was killed. One of the nicest moments this woman and I had shared together the year she was my son’s kindergarten teacher was an elaborate tea party that I helped host in her classroom, replete with china pots and cups.

“Shattered Cups” emerged in part from the sorrow tied up with this loss. I created the piece for the 2009 Think Pink Breast Cancer Awareness Art Exhibit and used the piece to pay homage to the teacher, to my great grandmother, and also, to my grandmother and mother, who both appear in the upper left corner of the piece. In creating the piece, I also wanted to pay respect to all of those brave women who have faced breast cancer.

Before this collaged work of art emerged, however, I wrote a story about the “waking dream” that connected the broken china and the auto crash. In 2005, my article, entitled “Dream Themes: Crashing Teacups,” appeared in Dream Network Magazine. Last year, that article became a chapter in the book I wrote and published with my friend, Connie Caldes; the book is called Dream Stories: Recovering the Inner Mystic (available through Amazon.com.) When I produced Artemis, as she came to be known to me, I decided that she should wear an actual broken teacup from the first crash in my china cabinet. When I created her, I did not expect that she would help another woman’s dream come to life! In true Artemis spirit, Claudia Ricci was not only generous but fearless in selecting my piece to serve as a cover to wrap her novel, Seeing Red. (We all know a book is judged by its cover.)

I am grateful to Claudia for her willingness to share this artistic journey with other women; she provides for us a safe haven to share what is our birthright, out art, in its countless forms. Some beautiful color changes have been made to “Shattered Cups” (and a couple of new pieces now reside with Artemis) thanks to the help of a sensitive and gifted graphic artist, Jodi Frye.

For sure, the dream continues to unfold! I have replaced many of the broken pieces of china, with the help of my loving mother-in-law, and I was delighted to learn recently the name of the china pattern: “Triumph.” You might think this story is exceptional, and it is, but I have learned that by awakening to my “day” dreams and the stories contained within, we can all tell our stories about what has been broken and then open ourselves to healing. The message is clear: We are but one collective vision; by sharing our stories, and our art, we live on.”

Artist Kellie Meisl holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from MCLA, formerly North Adams State College. An artist who relies on dreams as a springboard for her work, she uses paint, reclaimed wood, found objects and collage, and has created most of her pieces over the past decade for community causes. She is an annual contributor to the Think Pink Breast Cancer Awareness Art Exhibit in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and this year her intricate wire sculpture, a mermaid called "Awareness," was purchased by Pittisfield Mayor James Ruberto. Kellie has shown her work at her local municipal gallery, the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, where she teaches DreamArt classes in her native Berkshires. In 2009, she published her first book, Dream Stories: Recovering the Inner Mystic. The cover features her first painting for Think Pink, entitled, “Hummingbird Medicine.” Kellie can be reached through her website: www.kelliemeisldreamart.com.