Nadine Feldman, Author

celebrating strong female characters and whatever else strikes my fancy

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Always a Book

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Hello, friends! Thanks for hanging in there with me as I come back from a long absence. I’ll try to be more consistent this time.

What brought me back? A lovely, haunting, heart-breaking book. Yes, it’s always a book. Throughout the past few years, books have been the treasures that keep me hopeful in uncertain times.

The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman is a stunner, and I’m happy to report, one of many wonderful books I’ve run across recently.

Lea Kohn is a young Jewish girl in Berlin during the Nazi regime. Her mother, Hanni, recognizes the danger they are in but is unable to leave because of her elderly, ill mother.

To save her daughter, Hanni tracks down a Rabbi’s daughter, Ettie, who agrees to create a golem, a being known to Jewish folklore. Ettie isn’t supposed to know how to do this, what with being a girl and all, but she’s managed to keep an eye on her father and his students long enough to pick up all she needs to know. Because there are women involved, this golem, who they name Ava, is uniquely feminine.

Lea and Ava make their way to France while Ettie plots her own escape. Ava, whose life was meant to be temporary, finds that the longer her mission of keeping Lea safe, the more she clings to life, with the potential to act in her own interest rather than Lea’s, creating additional complications. Throughout, Hoffman slowly doles out the atrocities of the Holocaust as it spreads into France. The result is a story that is rich but devastating.

Hoffman brings her signature magic realism to the story and uses it to perfection. There are no ghosts in the machine to save the day, but the magical elements add a breathtaking poignancy.

In our current political climate, some of us are accused at times of being alarmists. Hoffman reminds us that the Holocaust was not a single event, but rather a gradual ending of societal norms. But this is not a political book; rather, it is a story of love, of a mother’s sacrifice, and the extraordinary will to survive.

Jane, The Factory Girl (yes, I keep changing the title–I think this one is going to stick) is coming along nicely. I hope to send it to the editor for a second round by early February. Stay tuned for future announcements of release dates.

A Truly “Delicious!” Book

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The reading gods are continuing to smile upon me as I work through a trove of novels that are absolutely wonderful! I don’t often get a streak like this, and many times so-called must reads don’t flip my button at all.

This week’s selection is Delicious! A Novel by Ruth Reichl. This is her first novel, but she’s written a lot about food in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and more. She’s published non-fiction books as well, and I’m now eager to read all of them! So it makes sense that her first novel would be about, well, food.

Billie Breslin is a young woman with a perfect palette who doesn’t cook. We don’t know why, though I promise, all will be revealed. She has dropped out of college to take a job at Delicious!, a food magazine.

As Billie struggles to create a life for herself far from family, she builds a friendship with Sal and his wife Rosalie, making his cheese shop her second home. Then there’s Sammy, the eccentric and fabulous travel writer, and Jake, the owner of the magazine. Oh, and let’s not forget Mr. Complainer, a regular customer of Sal’s!

It’s hard to write more without adding a lot of spoilers, so I’ll just add that there’s a whole subplot devoted to certain letters addressed to James Beard, who in this novel once ran Delicious!. These letters, and the story that is revealed from them, are in my opinion the meat of the book.

Billie’s past will break your heart. But along the way, there is a lot of joy, friendship, and community, plus the smells and tastes of food that will make you hungry while you read. Yes, there are recipes at the end.

Buh Bye, Social Media!

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It’s a crazy idea for an author to leave social media. Or is it?

A few weeks ago I shut off my Facebook and Twitter accounts. I’ve tried this before and chickened out at the end (they give you 30 days to change your mind). So I’m not making any guarantees here.

But this last year has taught me how very important it is to stop the bombardment of messages we get, whether it’s from the news or social media. With an autoimmune disease out of control, an essential part of healing is stress reduction.

To that end, I’ve added two meditation sessions every day, plus a mindfulness practice. And I’ve shut off most of social media.

Authors often depend on social media to get the word out about their books, and I’m no exception. However, I have also found social media to be less effective at that than we might believe. It’s easy to get lost in the sea of posts. I’ve done a little Facebook advertising, but I frankly get annoyed at the number of ads that show up in my own feed. Why would I do something I find annoying when I’m on the receiving end?

I’ll probably hang out more at Goodreads. That seems to make more sense anyway, since I would be connecting more with book lovers. It’s a much more specific audience. As with all social media, the goal there is not to scream “BUY MY BOOK!!!” but to make friends. It’s a bit daunting to feel like I am starting all over again…but it makes sense to me.

I’m also going to trust the adage that the best way to sell books is to write more of them. Without the time drain of social media, I seem to have a lot more time to, well, write.

That’s another reason why I’m hanging out more on the blog again. Here, I can say what I want. People can read it or not, and comment or not. If I get ugly comments, I can delete them. It feels a lot more empowering this way.

Finally, of course, there’s the old-fashioned getting in front of people. That scares the hell out of me. I’m a big-time introvert…but I also think we as a society are losing our social connections, and that scares me more.

Have I cut off my audience? Time will tell. But I have always said that my mental and emotional well-being comes first. I write to express myself, and I hope at some point to find people who to take the journeys within my stories. It’s more fun that way. But making this decision, difficult as it was, feels good.

One More Walk with Julia

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She looked sad as she moved to the front of the room. For a moment I thought I saw tears in her eyes. Turns out I was right. As author and teacher Julia Cameron took the stage, she opened by telling us about a long-time colleague of hers who had died two days before. She asked us to send prayers and then bravely began the weekend workshop.

This is the level of authenticity I have respected and admired for more than twenty years. Julia has written more than forty books, and she has never tried to present her life as perfect. In her searing memoir Floor Sample, for example, she details her challenges with mental health issues. Yet her honesty never feels self-serving or pitying. It’s life, baby, and the cure for the pain is self-compassion and making art. On that she never waivers.

Having practiced The Artist’s Way all these years, I have experience firsthand how it changes lives. When I first pulled the book off the shelf in the summer of 1997, I was a writer who didn’t know how to start writing. Previous attempts had resulted in a great deal of creative wounding, even from so-called writing teachers.

Seeing Julia again (my third time), I was still surprised at how the simple tools of Morning Pages, Artist Dates, and fill in the blank exercises could pull so much out of me. Late in the weekend I felt breathless, stripped bare. Several days later, I am still processing what happened, noticing subtle and not-so-subtle shifts…everything from deciding to order a decent blender to digging in deeper to my novel-in-progress.

As a long-time veteran, I was pleased to meet so many people who were new to the book. Some had been given a copy years before and felt like the time is now. I was able to share the many changes life had brought as a result of doing this work: several books, with more in process; a college degree at age 45; multiple new interests, including gardening; an amicable divorce (a direct result of doing Morning Pages); and a happier, healthier marriage.

For an entire weekend I got to have “real” conversations with people, tossing aside small talk and pretense in favor of what was in our hearts. We laughed, we cried, we hugged, and we rooted for each other’s success, regardless of our chosen art form(s).

At the end of the weekend, I felt renewed. And Julia no longer looked sad. Her blue eyes were bright and merry in spite of her grief.

For me, the workshop was a chance to see the master in action once again, and to bring my love and gratitude. I came to The Artist’s Way because I wanted to write. What I gained was that and so much more.

Delight!

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When the Fair Folk, the Fae, the Fairies, showed up in the manuscript for Factory Girl, my first impulse was to shoo them away. I had an idea of what the story was about, especially since it is based in part on an actual life.

But the magic of the Fae will not be denied. As with other stories I have written, the story that wants to be told will stomp its feet and hold its breath until I pay attention. Woe be to me when I do not!

As I have finally surrendered to this development, I have moved beyond researching Scottish folk tales and into the play of it. I ordered fairy houses and other delights for my new garden. I am enjoying The Faerie Handbook: An Enchanting Compendium of Literature, Lore, Art, Recipes, and Projects by the editors of Faerie Magazine (now called Enchanted Living). Yes, there is a magazine! Who knew? I’m also reading Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee, filled with art and essays about the Fair Folk.

These new activities are activating something unusual in my ordinarily serious nature: delight. At 60, it appears I am finally reclaiming the joy of childhood.

Yesterday I added some text to Factory Girl where Jane sprouts wings for the first time. It was an extraordinary moment for me. Jane’s life is filled with challenges, and Factory Girl takes a hard look at life in industrial 19th-century Scotland. The magic of Factory Girl does not diminish the harsh realities or even make them easier to bear. Rather, it is about the curious thing that happens in our lives when great sorrow and great joy coexist side by side with each other.

Delight is not about ignoring the suffering of the world. It is about finding that which is beautiful so ugliness does not consume us. It is about finding joy that resides within us even when life is hard. It appears I still have much to learn from the Fae. I’m so looking forward to share with you what they are sharing with me!

Introducing Jane

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My great-great grandmother, Jane Thorburn, worked in the woollen mills of Scotland as a weaver. Here’s what I know about her: she was the oldest child of a coal miner and his wife. By the age of eight she was no longer living with the family, presumably to go to work (though I don’t know for sure). She fell in love with Robert Stein. Together they had a child, my great-grandfather Hugh, who came to America.

And I know when and how she died, though that would be too much of a spoiler alert.

Due to circumstances, she disappeared from the family tree until I stumbled across her in 2014 after doing some genealogy.

Now, I do not consider myself a great genealogist, or even a good one. I tip my hat to those who are. Their persistence and attention to detail is something to be admired!

I am too wired to be a fiction writer. For example, I discovered that a Stein family in that part of Scotland were involved in bad whisky making (and yes, that’s how whisky is spelled in Scotland). My imagination ran wild with all the possibilities.

Then, *ahem*, a distant relative gently suggested that there were no known links to this particular Stein family. I say, never let the truth get in the way of a good story, but that’s not good genealogy behavior.

I’ve been obsessed with Jane ever since. Factory Girl, or whatever I end up calling the darn thing (turns out there are multiple novels of that name), is going through the editing process. As I tried to tease out what Jane’s life might have been like, a group of fairies showed up and I had to deal with them, too. It’s meant reading old Scottish folk tales.

I’m grateful to have found an editor who lives in Scotland and who has even walked the Alva Glen where the old mill once stood, and where Jane, in my story, escaped to be in nature. With her loving care, the story is shaping up nicely, and she is undaunted by the sheer weirdness of this work. It’s outside of anything I’ve ever tried to do before. I am excited and freaked out at the same time.

Look for excerpts soon!