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Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom ~~ Review

4 out of 5 stars ~~ Book Review

A much-awaited novel by Kathleen Grissom, who is well known and touted for her two previous books, The Kitchen House and Glory Over Everything. While she never mis-stepped when writing the latter and, as far as I could tell, got it mostly, if not entirely right, there were a few things that made me itch to correct her while reading Crow Mary. Maybe I’m overly sensitive as I myself lived on tribal lands (Makah Nation) as a young woman for over two years in Neah Bay, Washington. (Pacific NW.)

I had a problem with several nation lineage issues regarding Crow Mary’s knowledge of her own people. Wouldn’t Mary mention that the Crow People were originally a minor subset of the Sioux Nation and now were at war? The Crow had migrated from the Great Lakes area to the Dakotas and Montana. Know that in spite of the fact that the Sioux were now an enemy of the Crow People?

Secondly, Nakoda is spelled in the book with a ‘D’ when the correct spelling and the most commonly used name is Nakota with an ‘t’.

Mary is a proud Crow woman who really doesn’t take any guff off of any man, native or white. Yet she refers to herself and to her tribe as “Indians”, a derogatory term invented by the white man. I don’t know of any written history of where the People in question thought or spoke of themselves as “Indian”. I think the author also missed an opportunity to weave in Mary’s nation’s full name that the white man bastardized it to simply, “Crow”.

Please don’t misunderstand, this is a really, really good story, and maybe the average reader wouldn’t pick up on any of the things that bothered me but be that as it may…..I could not give the book the resounding 5 stars that I had anticipated doing.

Spoiler Alert: Don’t read the prologue. It’s a clear indication of how the book ends. (or one of the endings) Within the book itself once I read of the practice of the ‘wolfers’ using strychnine when trapping, I thought I knew how the book would end and that spoiled it for me somewhat.

Did you miss my interview with Kathleen Grissom?
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard May: Victoria Costello. June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Monday Motivation for Writers! #25

One of the main problems you may face as a writer is standing up to your inner critic. Being overly self-critical can be very dangerous; stopping you dead in your tracks. It is all too easy to tell yourself to give up, that there is no point, that you will never get anywhere.

But saying things like this to yourself is untrue and the kiss of death to your creative spirit!

So how do you control your inner critic and learn how to shut it down when it is threatening to ruin your writing career? Here are some examples of what it might say, and exactly how to respond.

‘You’ll never be as good as [insert name of your favorite author)’. We can’t help but compare ourselves to authors who have been and gone, ones who’ve had successful and seemingly effortless writing careers, whose fans adore them, who are praised by the media and their peers, who win awards and make millions. Of course, there are going to be writers out there who are more successful than you, but this shouldn’t stop you from writing. Nor should it give you any reason to think that you can’t be that successful too.

There is no one right way to write, many different authors have become successful for various reasons. Write for your audience and yourself and know that you are unique, your stories are written just the way they should be and comparing yourself to others will get you exactly nowhere.

‘Your book will be a flop.’ Your self-critic will always try to make you feel like a failure and will fill your head with thoughts of giving up.

Don’t let it win.

Your inner critic has many tricks up its sleeve. They’ll range from petty insults to targeting your biggest fears and insecurities. However, knowing how to respond, to shut it down and feel positive about your writing will only help spur you on to become a better more productive and more exciting writer.

So whatever you do stand up to your inner critic, and never let it stop you from writing!

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking.” Unknown

“It’s okay that I am a little strange, I’m a writer.” Satine
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard, May: Victoria Costello.
June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Interview with Victoria Costello (conclusion)

Q. Are you working on something now or have a new release coming up?

VC. My new book comes out on June 13, 2023, and I couldn’t be more excited to bring it to readers. As mentioned, it evolved from the true story of my tragedy-plagued Irish American family I told in A Lethal Inheritance, but with me giving myself permission to ask, What if? What if the youngest family members dared to confront and reverse this legacy of violence and madness? The result is Orchid Child, a mix of history and fantasy inspired by Celtic folklore, along with science, and bits of mystery and romance. It’s a story told in three voices, one per generation, over a century.
Teague is the novel’s orchid child, who hears voices and talks to trees, but rarely people. Bullied back home in New York, he finds validation when his Aunt Kate takes him to West Ireland, where neo-Druids identify his strange perceptions as the gift of second sight, putting Teague at odds with Kate who sees his mental differences as a medical problem to be fixed.

Kate is the family success story, whose rising star in neuroscience has crashed in a sex scandal. She vows to salvage her career by taking on a study on the epigenetics of family mental illness in a rural Irish county. Only to discover she’s unknowingly come to her ancestral homeland, meaning she’s studying her own genes. As Kate’s research is blocked by hostile locals, Teague drifts further into his pagan fellowship, pushing Kate to confront the limits of science and the power of ancestral ties. Ellen is the apothecary’s daughter who will become Kate’s grandmother. Forced to flee Ireland for New York City after her beloved, also a holder of second sight, is accused of betrayal in the 1920 Irish Rebellion, Ellen lives to her eighties as the matriarch who struggles with the burden she’s accepted to keep the gift alive—until the family wound, past and present, can be healed.
I’m feeling gratified by the early positive reviews, the feeling that the story you’ve slaved over for ten years, is touching people, making them think and have hope when times are tough.

Q. When did you begin to write seriously?

VC. A weird thing about me is that even as a kid, when I kept a diary, or scribbled poems, I always took my writing seriously. It probably has to do with the fact that I’m a Scorpio and writing has always been my secret life. And that’s probably why it took until this year, when I’ve just turned seventy, to share my most secret story with actual readers around the world.

Q. Do you think we will see, in our lifetime, the total demise of paper books?

VC. I, for one, love paper books, especially hard cover, fine paper books, but I read e-books and listen to audiobooks more often

for practical reasons. I imagine I’m typical that way. So until we run out of trees, that will probably stay the norm.

Q. What makes a writer great?

VC. Oooh, hard one. Maybe the courage to bare their soul, regardless of what anyone thinks or says. The ability to find the right, and the fewest, words to express the ineffable.

Q. and the all-important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like for you?

VC. It all comes down to perseverance. Orchid Child took ten years from beginning to end. You have to want it more than anything else in your life during that time of writing, revising, querying, and promoting. There may not be room in your life while you have young kids to raise. That’s why I think a lot of women publish later. But I believe our books are richer for it.

Q. How have your life experiences influenced your writing?

VC. It’s all there in my writing.

Q. What’s your downtime look like?

VC. Walks with friends in our wonderful downtown Ashland, Lithia Park. Hikes in the hills. Cat play. I really don’t have what you would call hobbies. I eat but I’m not a cook. I read and watch endless Scandinavian and British mysteries, from Shetland to Inspector Morse, I find are the perfect diversion when my mental energies need a rest.

Q. Have you or do you want to write in another genre?

VC. Being new to fiction, I’ll stick with it for the time being as my main creative output. I’ve also been writing essays on craft and theory of fiction and especially autofiction.

Q. Note to Self: (a life lesson you’ve learned.)

VC. I’m good enough. Pretty enough. Smart enough. Why, oh why, did I, like most women, take so long to learn this? Being enough is wonderful. Try it!

Did you miss the beginning of this interview?
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard, May: Victoria Costello. June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

A chat with author, Victoria Costello (part 2)

VC….While working on my memoir, I did a ton of freelance writing, mostly science and psychology for outlets like Scientific American MIND, the kind of writing where facts and evidence reign supreme. I plan to stick with fiction from here on out. Just last year, I started teaching writing and I find that I love it. I’ve now taught both in person and online, through Southern Oregon University, and this Spring, for WritingWorkshops.com. The course I’m teaching now is called When Memoir Becomes Autofiction and it’s for memoirists who, like me, want to fictionalize their life stories to one degree or another. I’m having a blast and I’m sure it’s making me a better writer.

Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?

VC. I know many smart people say you should just sit down and do it, free write whatever comes into your head. Others listen to music or read poetry. For me taking a walk is the best thing for getting past a major block, or that blah, I have nothing worthwhile to say feeling.

Q. What comes first to you? The Characters or the Situation?

VC. I usually begin with a feeling and then connect it with a character and a situation, in that order. For Orchid Child that feeling was one of disconnection, of not belonging anywhere, something I felt which I gave to Kate, along with her Daddy issues.

Q. What first inspired you to write?

VC. I think it was my early conviction that I was a weird kid, so I better tell no one what I was really thinking. It was safer to write things down.

Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing?

VC. Aside from the moment when I laid eyes on my first-born son, getting lost in writing has been the best feeling I’ve ever had. I think it’s the same for artists working in any medium, and for athletes, too, although I wouldn’t know about that. As a writer, losing time and space while getting lost in my stories is everything. The euphoric feeling that carries you along, the words and sentences that seem to come out of nowhere, or from someone long ago. Not that this happens all the time. or even a lot. But when it does, it’s the payoff for suffering through all the drudgery of blank screens, and mornings when you have zero inspiration, not to mention the feelings of insecurity that are part and parcel of the writing life. That said, this high can conflict with other parts of life, like mothering and partnering, so it becomes a challenge to set boundaries, both for yourself and others.

Q. What compelled you to choose and settle on the genre you now write in?

VC. I, and, maybe, most writers, tend to circle around the same themes no matter what we’re writing. For example, there’s a scene in Orchid Child that first appeared in my memoir, A Lethal Inheritance. It’s a traumatic childhood memory I’ve carried forever about finding my father passed out in our flooding basement. In the memoir I told it in the voice of my seven-year-old self as best as I could recall. In the novel, this same memory is shared by my protagonist Kate, a brilliant neuroscientist with serious Daddy issues. As Orchid Child opens, Kate has lost her job in the wake of an affair with her married lab director. Later, Kate tells her drunken dad story to Ryan, a work colleague and her soon to be love interest, who responds empathetically. Indeed, Ryan’s availability for relationship tests Kate’s predilection for doomed affairs. Like all unrecovered sex and love addicts with Daddy issues, Kate—like me for much of my adult life—resists a healthy relationship with an available man.

Suffice to say, I’ve struggled with this issue in therapy for decades but, oddly. it was only after I went to the bottom of it in fiction that I finally felt done. So, for me writing this novel has had a profoundly healing effect. I’m also gratified when I hear from readers who email to say that reading Kate’s story has helped them process their own issues. It’s also a lot of fun to make up stuff after spending decades adhering to the facts.

Q. Do you have pets? Tell us about them and their names.

A. Now that I’m living on my own, I relish the company of my two, four-year-old Maine Coon sisters. Venus is the wary, mischievous one, while Queen Luna is the epitome of sweetness and calm who believes I exist solely to meet her needs.

Join us next week for the conclusion. Did you miss Part 1?
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard, May: Victoria Costello.
June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Monday Motivation for the Writer! #24

HATS! This morning was typical…as an indie author. Wearing many, many hats! There’s a hat for writer, blogger; one for editor, proofreader, and publisher.

Check emails for that BIG break! A Hollywood film Co. wants to make my book into a movie, a ‘big-name’ Publisher stumbled across my novels and wants to publish me.
Nope! Not yet!

Next, Edit and proof the short play I’m working on….rewrites, rewrites, rewrites, rewrites,….did I say rewrites? Submit edited play to my publishing platform and wait for the proof to be approved or for more changes.

Work on my book of poetry and get it launched onto Amazon.com

Work on postings for my Blog. This is a job that doesn’t go away if you want to be considered someone with ‘viable content‘ by search engines.

and after all those chores are complete…..Do some creative writing….never neglect this! Write Every Day!! Also found time to write 10,000+ words of book #12 in a true crime series.

“I’m not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help.”~~ A.N. Wilson

“Contrary to what many of you may imagine, a career in letters is not without its drawbacks – chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is
frequently called upon to sit down and write.”~~Fran Lebowitz

“Writing is Not a Calling. It’s a Doing!” Trisha Sugarek
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard, May: Victoria Costello.
June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Interview with author, Victoria Costello

Victoria was the kind of kid who would sit high on a tree branch for hours at a time, lost in thought. Unsurprisingly, she became a writer, beginning with reams of poems never seen by a living soul. She “also thought it would be cool to be read.” In high school, she started an underground newspaper which caused a sensation and got her suspended.
As an undergraduate, she studied journalism at American University in Washington, DC, where her career started in TV news and documentary. After raising two sons and working as a freelance TV writer/producer in LA and San Francisco, she returned to college for my MFA in writing from Mills in Oakland. She wrote what became her memoir on nights and weekends. A Lethal Inheritance was published by Prometheus Books in 2012.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, or special space for your writing? Or tell us about your ‘dream’ workspace.

VC. My current writing space is a cozy loft, big enough for my desk and a small bookshelf. But it gives me a gorgeous view of Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley, at least my chunk of it, from the north hills of Ashland, across the I-5, to Grizzly Point.

Q. Do you have any special rituals or quirks when you sit down to write? (a neat workspace, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, a glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

VC. After feeding the cats and drinking two cups of coffee, but before I start writing, I try to spend twenty minutes meditating at the ancestral altar I’ve erected in the attic.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

VC. My brand of spirituality is a bit unusual in that I’m a high church Episcopalian and a pagan. The progressive Episcopal congregation I attend in Ashland, Oregon offers both traditional and Celtic Christian worship and gives me an avenue for doing community service. Then twice a month, I attend a Crone Soul Circle, an online gathering of wise women at the Sacred Wellness Grove, who meet my need for non-patriarchal, Goddess-centered earth worship and visionary feminist thought on issues of our day.

Q. What tools do you begin with? Legal pad, spiral notebook, pencils, fountain pen, or do you go right to your keyboard?

VC. I’m a keyboard kind of girl for actual writing, starting with my first draft. In the research and thinking stages, I gather piles of books and source materials on which I exhaust numerous yellow highlighters while filling spiral notebooks. I can’t even imagine writing, let alone the endless rewriting I do, without a computer. I have nothing but awe for authors who came before us and toiled by pen and paper alone or even a typewriter. White-Out is a nightmare I’d just as soon forget.

Q. Do you enjoy writing in other forms (playwriting, poetry, short stories, etc.)? If yes, tell us about it.

VC. Early on in my career, I made several documentary films and videos on social and political issues like abortion, nuclear power, and climate change. At a certain point, I got tired of shlepping around the world with crews and heavy equipment and I was happy to return to the solitary writing life. I also had two sons I had to raise, primarily as a single mom.

See Part 2 next week.
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard, May: Victoria Costello.
June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Monday Motivation for the Writer! #22

You’re a great writer.
Not an aspiring writer, a mediocre writer, or a someday, somehow, almost writer.

You’re a great writer right now.
People are going to line up ten deep to tell you that you
aren’t good enough. Don’t do their work for them.

Maybe you aren’t published.
Maybe you aren’t successful.
You definitely aren’t perfect.
But you’re a great writer.
Being great doesn’t mean you won’t continue to improve or be excited and passionate.

My awesome takes nothing away from your awesome;
your awesome takes nothing away from my awesome.
Awesome is not a finite resource.

So say it. Out Loud. Every day.
“I’M A GREAT WRITER!!!” (and improving every day that I write.)
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard
May: Victoria Costello. June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Monday Motivation for the Writer! #20

R U Passive? waiting for your muse to strike and help you write your novel or story? Back in the day, a muse was thought to be a creative spirit that unleashed your creativity. If you weren’t creative, it was the muse’s fault.

R U External? Setting an external reward for completing your daily writing task. Usually food, drink or an activity such as watching your favorite TV show.

R U INTERNAL? Ah, now we’re talking! Writers need to examine their own brains to get that motivation working. Your pain/pleasure receptors, in your brain, need adjusting if writing is painful. If your writing causes you more pain than pleasure, waiting for a muse or an external reward is all you have.

You need to write for the sheer joy of writing. Writing becomes the motivation for writing. Writing becomes your addiction. Turn off the negative voice in your head that tells you you’re a crappy writer, have no talent…you know the voice I’m talking about. Reinforce yourself by making positive statements, to yourself, about your writing. Take the time to admire that well-turned sentence, page, or chapter that you just wrote!

“Writing is a journey of discovery because until you start, you never know what will happen, and you be surprised by what you do~~expect the unexpected!” Mini Grey

“Writing is not a calling…it’s a doing!” Trisha Sugarek

Monday Motivations for the Writer! #19

I love this wonderful graphic (by Sudio Sudarsan) of a ‘writer’s ice berg’. Not many people, aside from we who write, know this world. It’s lonely, scary, humiliating, and painful. It’s also uplifting, soul filling, mind-stretching and wonderful.

I count myself the luckiest of women that I developed my craft and didn’t give up when people said ‘no’. I am the most fortunate of writers to have realized that the process has to be planted in good soil, watered, and given lots of sunshine. Even when I am writing from a dark place.

We writers should never sit back and say, ‘I have arrived. I don’t need to grow anymore. I am at the top of my game.’ If you’ve read any of my interviews with really famous authors, they aren’t smug….far from it…they are striving to be better just like you and I are. I’ve found in my interaction with these authors that the more successful they are…the humbler they are.

“I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.” Shannon Hale

“As a writer, I marinate, speculate, and hibernate!’‘ Trisha Sugarek
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A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Monday Motivations for the Writer! #17

TS. My friend and best-selling author, Jodi Thomas, did me the honor of contributing to Monday Motivations.

‘The hardest thing a writer does each day is sitting down to work. In 28 years as a working writer, I’ve published 45 books and 13 novellas. The hardest thing wasn’t learning to write but learning to manage time. I picked up a few tricks but it is still the dragon I fight every day.

Build your nest. I find this makes it easy for me to step into fiction. It doesn’t matter if your nest is in a secret room in the attic or a small desk in a hotel room. It needs to be your nest. I usually start with a notebook.

My facts book, my bible for the series. It includes all characters’ names and basic facts. Maps of the area—if you’re making up a town, make up the map.’ ~~Jodi Thomas

‘Peace and rest at length have come, All the day’s long toil is past; And each heart is whispering “Home, Home at last!‘- Thomas Hood

‘Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.’- Robert Frost
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard May: Victoria

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

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