tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81522306023437381172024-02-18T18:34:16.149-08:00In the Spaces Writing ThoughtsChristin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8152230602343738117.post-64334142379984104262018-06-05T12:24:00.000-07:002018-06-05T12:24:52.082-07:00WomanChrist: The 30th Anniversary Edition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijuGzALKPI7m1H-YsmyE4YIK99n_awabUgXZ4jI1NfdzCL50JdN51R3CUTJAgH4aEhMTICkfcRpmwI_RplihLcfetFJz6gto5kX2Hk0ks8JIc2NeIiDJzZOD2oqEjYpgAdGRtOV_4rbo8/s1600/WC+BookCoverPreview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="930" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijuGzALKPI7m1H-YsmyE4YIK99n_awabUgXZ4jI1NfdzCL50JdN51R3CUTJAgH4aEhMTICkfcRpmwI_RplihLcfetFJz6gto5kX2Hk0ks8JIc2NeIiDJzZOD2oqEjYpgAdGRtOV_4rbo8/s400/WC+BookCoverPreview.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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A few weeks after my novel, <i>Widow's Walk,</i> was released I was visiting with my neighbor, Cecile. She was c<span style="font-size: 11pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">urious about one of my first published books, <i>WomanChrist,</i> and asked if I had a copy. I did. It was a second-hand
Amazon.com copy, rather battered, with a sticky-note inside the cover that read:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Cheryl--yes,
this book is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Really </u></b>weird! (I
had no idea when I bought it </span><span style="font-family: "segoe ui emoji" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">😊</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">) But bear
with it—she has a lot of good ideas about being a woman today while also being
Religious. Hope you enjoy it— (it’s not just to skip around and browse
through)!!” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Cecile might get a laugh out of that, I thought. Her
reaction after reading the book was, “This is your best book! It’s so current. How could you have
written this all those years ago? It’s actually prophetic.” She was the first one
who told me to republish it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">It had been written on my very first computer, more like a glorified typewriter and neither DOS-based nor Windows-based. I had only the published book; if I intended to publish a new edition, I would need to retype the entire thing. Okay. I started typing. After weeks of typing, I reached Part Two, and breathed a sigh of relief. That weekend Microsoft downloaded a massive update which collided with my virus program and wiped out my entire project. Must be a sign, I thought, and gave up. The next weekend, at Art Presence, a gallery where I've done readings, I was talking with Hannah West, a web designer in Jacksonville, Oregon, who listened to my woes and suggested that she might be able to scan the entire published book into an MS Word format. I was back in business.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">(The following is from the Introduction in the new edition) </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">ore than thirty-five years have passed since I began
writing <i>WomanChrist</i>, and it has been
out of print for many of those years. From time to time, though, people have
reminded me of the power it exercised and not just in its early years. When
Harper, San Francisco offered me a contract for it, I confess that I was quite
overwhelmed. Somehow during the excitement of acknowledgment by a major
publisher, plus my conviction that this vision was one needing to be shared, I
failed to consider how controversial it would be. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> The book was not yet released when I took
galley proofs with me to a retreat for professional women ministers in
Grailville, Kentucky. The participants represented a variety of Christian
denominations from Catholic through both liberal and conservative Protestants.
Those of a more Fundamentalist belief system tolerated me—for a while. Then a
group of them took me aside for my first real dressing down. Listening to these women who were devoted
to their own Christian faith as I was to my own, I realized what a gulf existed
between basic conclusions we had drawn about the meaning our differences
presented for the world in which we, as women, lived. I had upset them in a
radical way even just by the word, WomanChrist. It was heresy in their eyes.
They said I was more Pagan than Christian, and I really
should not be leading the retreat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> They
weren’t the last. After the book was published I was invited to give the
keynote lecture to the pastoral ministers in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis/St.
Paul. All went well at the talk, but not long afterwards a conservative
Catholic organization brought their concerns to an auxiliary bishop there who
condemned me and the book in the diocesan newspaper. I countered with an op-ed
of my own. The bishop relented just a bit by admitting he hadn’t read the book
himself! Something about this book really rankled some folks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> Other
people saw it as profoundly significant. Deep in the winter of 1988 I was asked
because of my authorship of <i>WomanChrist</i>
to participate in an international seminar on Catholic feminist theology and
social justice. We met in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the College of St. Catherine,
to engage in study and discussion of women’s issues based on our research,
theological study, personal experience, and professional ministry. Two bishops
from the United States joined us as listeners. The participants came mostly
from the Americas (North, Central, South and Canada). Africa also was
represented. At last, I mused, we are making an impact—we’re on the edge of
deep and lasting change. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> It
was a beginning, I think now, wondering what each of those talented and active
women took back to their communities from our discussions, even sometimes our
inability to reconcile our differences. The world is vast, and change takes
more time than I imagined.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> In
1998 I was writing my first novel, <i>Altar
Music</i>, and belonged to one of the first Internet lists discussing the role
of women in the churches. Suddenly it seemed I was someone they knew. These women had read <i>WomanChrist</i> which had been in print by
then for over ten years. They were women in the trenches, most of them hiding
there, keeping silent about their church’s treatment of them over the years.
“That book saved my life,” one woman wrote. Another woman, hoping that women’s ordination
would arrive soon in the Roman Catholic tradition as it had for the
Episcopalian women, graduated from seminary at the head of her class, but had
to be satisfied with carrying the cross at the head of a procession of her
classmates, then step aside as they entered the sanctuary to be ordained. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> Just
as at the seminar, there were women from around the world on that list, and for
most of us it was our first experience of the Internet and being able to share
our frustrations as well as our wisdom beyond the boundaries of home, church,
and neighborhood. They critiqued my novel, and I shared in discussions about <i>WomanChrist.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> After
the book went out of print, and then was available only in the second-hand
market, I continued in other ways to live and share the vision I’d written so
many years before. I began to make distance between myself and the church as an
institution which still blocked our gifts from being shared. In 2010, though, I
was asked to give a retreat on Spirituality and Beauty. I agreed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> Just
a few days before the retreat a priest, the other half of the retreat team,
came to me with a question: “Are you a believer in Jesus Christ?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> “What?”
Why in the world would he ask me such a thing? We’d worked together on the
content of this retreat, and he had to know the answer to that question so well
he should not have needed to ask it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> He
told me, somewhat apologetically, that a group of women had come to him,
complaining about my qualifications for leadership. They had looked me up on
the Internet and found <i>WomanChrist</i>
along with all Google’s references to the book and to various people’s
interpretations and judgments about it. It seemed to appeal to groups these
women considered not only “not Catholic,” but heretical. Might it be dangerous
for them to read what I’d written or listen to lectures I might give? I was pretty sure that, like the bishop back
in the 1980s, these frightened and angry people hadn’t read the book, nor
considered the reliability of their Internet source. The priest shrugged,
saying he’d picked up a used copy and couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
It seemed orthodox enough to him. Together we gave the retreat, and I’m pretty
sure none of the dissenters attended.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><i style="font-size: 11pt;">WomanChrist </i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">remains controversial. </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">The paperback is now available at Amazon.com and at CreateSpace.com. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Click on </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/WomanChrist-Christin-Lore-Weber-D-Min/dp/1546541357/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526076965&sr=1-1&keywords=WomanChrist+30th+Anniversary+Edition" style="font-size: 14.6667px;">WomanChrist</a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8152230602343738117.post-25435564605174606362018-01-05T09:33:00.000-08:002018-01-05T09:38:47.016-08:00WIDOW'S WALK IS PUBLISHED<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcI-bSz4qLKSrgeNKaUmQHD_ugGf-lI81uRgeuZopReUu4o_7YpyhbfyP5KNvMsnfaHguCi-UBQy5ki-phSTfZ2_WTwYfwtcT1fM7hJfGGkhIkHA8q4ZxCIwSmnUMaTsKY-zoLG-Nz5_s/s1600/DSC_9430+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="957" data-original-width="1600" height="382" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcI-bSz4qLKSrgeNKaUmQHD_ugGf-lI81uRgeuZopReUu4o_7YpyhbfyP5KNvMsnfaHguCi-UBQy5ki-phSTfZ2_WTwYfwtcT1fM7hJfGGkhIkHA8q4ZxCIwSmnUMaTsKY-zoLG-Nz5_s/s640/DSC_9430+%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>I</i> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Have Always Been With You</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Artist: <a href="http://www.shilohsophia.com/">Shiloh Sophia</a></span><br />
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<a class="_2yug" href="https://www.facebook.com/CyberScribe/" style="color: #90949c; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap;" target="_blank">WIDOW'S WALK, A NOVEL</a><span class="_4_mg" style="font-family: inherit; padding: 0px 6px;">·</span><a class="uiLinkSubtle" href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/widows-walk-a-novel/writing-widows-walk-thoughts-from-the-author-christin-lore-weber/167187477271708/" style="color: #90949c; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 2018</a></div>
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A sense of loss followed me like a shadow all my life. Real loss. Actual dead and gone kind of loss. Maybe it’s like that for everyone; who can know unless they tell you? From early childhood I knew I’d have to do something about this haunting or it would eat me up. There’s an old 16 mm film of me as a three-year-old circling the tiny grave of a bird that died--a tiny yellow chicken that my neighbor Minnie Osborn gave me from her coop. I’m performing a kind of ritual, like a priest circling the altar with incense. You can see the tears on my cheeks. </div>
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As life goes on we lose a lot of who and what we love, those people and things that make us what we are. Maybe every experience of love continues as a part of us. Maybe we are made of the bits and pieces of the content of every moment we’ve lived--all we’ve seen and heard and touched and smelled, every gaze, embrace, word, sound. Every tree we’ve leaned against has blessed us. Every breeze. Do you ever sit in your favorite chair remembering the look in the eyes of someone you loved for a lifetime or an instant just before they turned and walked away? Or closed their eyes that last time? </div>
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I tried a lot of things to preserve myself from these turnings, and later to save myself from their hauntings. In youth I tried holding tight to what I loved. Then I tried isolation. I tried dissolving into nature and when that was not enough I tried imagination. Then I turned to religion with all its symbols, rituals, and stories--with its gods. I tried varieties of those. I read thousands of books, and wrote a few myself. I gazed into many, many eyes. </div>
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Some were the eyes husbands dying. I was widowed twice. Two amazing men who loved me and I loved. Grief over the turnings in life can overwhelm. There are things no one tells a widow: secrets of the body, soul and spirit that are just too intimate to share. There are memoirs anyway--some raw and aching, not quite getting deep enough for the second turning. The re-turning to a new self always there but never before quite seen . I thought I’d write a memoir of each husband, but the story wasn’t so much about the husband as about the widow struggling in my soul. She couldn’t be accessed in memory. Only the spiritual leap to the edge of being, the novel with its daring kind of truth that transcends fact could spin the story into words.</div>
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One day I heard her voice deep, deep in me, and I put my fingers on the keys. She said:</div>
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“I woke alone, thinking nothing had happened, thinking the green curtains an ocean as they waved, forgetting where I was and why and with whom I might be living—a stranger I imagined I knew but never knew, pretending then, pretending now, constructing our reality on a breath, on a wave, and believing it...”</div>
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And the adventure of the WIDOW’S WALK had begun.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Order from</span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Widows-Walk-Novel-Christin-Weber/dp/0983550050/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1515096873&sr=1-7" style="font-family: inherit;"> Amazon.com </a></div>
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<br />Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8152230602343738117.post-24955712993437458352017-12-15T08:11:00.000-08:002017-12-15T08:11:46.418-08:00Getting Close<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2H4z7jY4Ot3RrExXIF1appexU1B4Sao5JmWHSolH4i90g7BRHNSYBKxvJw18v6M4TCZQSV4I_F7OAumo639AE40XIio2nW43dvjkiB69oTkdHpNv-JGbDp2BRPPg1pSlz66uMGVAtltg/s1600/Widow+front+Cover+Final+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="449" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2H4z7jY4Ot3RrExXIF1appexU1B4Sao5JmWHSolH4i90g7BRHNSYBKxvJw18v6M4TCZQSV4I_F7OAumo639AE40XIio2nW43dvjkiB69oTkdHpNv-JGbDp2BRPPg1pSlz66uMGVAtltg/s400/Widow+front+Cover+Final+%25282%2529.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
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The printer’s proof is in the mail on its way to me. And
here is the book’s cover with Shiloh Sophia’s painting. To my eye She is the
perfect image of the Widow in all her paradox. She is the meeting place of
opposites: the fiery annihilation of all that was formerly known, meeting the
transformation in the present moment; the interpenetration of all colors and
forms; the stillness of inner being with the evolution of new life; the
suffering heart out of which grows the Tree of Life; the breath of Divine
Spirit from which emerges the personal story; the sacred Rose, woman’s mandala
of integration and wholeness. She is Wisdom, the brilliance of love, truth and
beauty. </div>
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After examining my options for publication and balancing them
with my understanding of how my writing life fits into the variations of
energies in this world, I’ve chosen to continue publishing independently, using
CreateSpace as printer, and John’s and my CyberScribe Publications as my
publishing imprint. Since 1983, when my first book was published by Loyola
University Press, I’ve had experience with virtually every form of publication:
large and small traditional publishers, three different literary agents, and
finally independent publishing. All of these forms have actually been
wonderfully exciting and I’m glad to have had the experience when it was
presented. As I age I want my work to increase in simplicity as it also
increases in depth. I want the process to be calmer. I’ve come to experience
that the encounter between the author and the reader is sacred. No matter which
form of publication is chosen, this is so, but I am more conscious of the
potential encounter and it’s blending of souls when my spirit is more still<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif";">—</span>when silence has become an open
heart. When I publish independently I can approach each detail in a spirit of
meditation which becomes a blessing from my heart to the heart of each reader
who by some miracle happens upon that book.</div>
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Last week John received an email from a man in London. John’s
book, <i>Yearning for the Father,</i> had
fallen into this man’s hands, and he’d read it closely and with deep
meditation. His letter of gratitude highlighted the sections he felt had graced
his life. Even one encounter such as this is a source of wonder.</div>
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If we should meet some moment in a sentence or a word, I
greet you there, and wrap your spirit in veils of grateful wonder. </div>
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Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8152230602343738117.post-67980539613140424162017-11-27T11:23:00.001-08:002017-11-27T11:23:51.789-08:00SORTING THROUGH OPTIONS<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuEZqWJXyGwhzGJjKKqg6Fynf7zayuuxgNEw5YA0nYkd2aVfsdRF2avY4ddNnsbBc23GdiImen2xV75twUi1dEMBUoSRuFxzA6NpKF_4lGkPylz1qFk-Pru22Jm4WwWdAj2y-1DJsmOdo/s1600/20171122_072305.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuEZqWJXyGwhzGJjKKqg6Fynf7zayuuxgNEw5YA0nYkd2aVfsdRF2avY4ddNnsbBc23GdiImen2xV75twUi1dEMBUoSRuFxzA6NpKF_4lGkPylz1qFk-Pru22Jm4WwWdAj2y-1DJsmOdo/s320/20171122_072305.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">MORNING INSPIRATION AT CASA CHIARA</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The options for publishing WIDOW'S WALK seemed to be three: 1. A big publisher such as I had for ALTAR MUSIC, but this would require getting a new contract with my former Literary Agent. 2. A small literary publisher with a long queue of already accepted manuscripts. I was told to expect a 3 to 4 year wait. 3. Independent Publishing.<br />
<br />
The agent didn't even acknowledge receipt of the manuscript. I was told by a writer-friend that non-response is the new normal. Maybe that is true. I'd promised myself that I wouldn't spend too much of my precious and limited time trying to find a new agent.<br />
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And I really like Independent Publishing! Marketing is difficult for me, but even the large publishers now expect authors to present a marketing plan. So...I will learn. And I brought up my <a href="https://www.amazon.com/author/christinweber">Amazon.com</a>/CreateSpace account. They have acted as printer for six of my books, and I've enjoyed the process. The only problem is that I haven't sold many. Marketing again! My technique leaves a lot to be desired.<br />
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When I taught high school English and was about to plan a new section--The Romantics, for instance--I began with a bulletin board design. So in publishing I start with the book cover. I Googled images, and I looked in my own photographs. Nothing satisfied. Then I thought of <a href="http://shilohsophia.com/">Shiloh Sophia</a>! Now an artist of international renown, she and I met in the mid-1990s and became close friends for over ten years until life with its resettlements left large spaces of time when each of us followed separate dreams. We did come together briefly for shared creative work. Neither of us ever doubted the love and responsiveness of the other. So I emailed her.<br />
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Her generosity was overwhelming. Not only could I use one of her paintings, she would also give me ideas for a marketing plan! This comes as good, good news.<br />
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WIDOW'S WALK should be out in the beginning of the new year.Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8152230602343738117.post-20314406942992473152017-11-03T06:56:00.000-07:002017-11-03T06:56:49.023-07:00The Generosity of Readers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghJJpjDYlyiUgZCNavhWwjAiC4mANajPnj7yYn8IufWnSZ_S9AvFN-TTpfxvRCj8BObtK9KjfoxxWbcW4ImjRxnx2KTtoeDOJb257hrLf7dikyWnoNEaKCyWwu3dkoDaq8p4olSkQx_3U/s1600/20171023_172811.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghJJpjDYlyiUgZCNavhWwjAiC4mANajPnj7yYn8IufWnSZ_S9AvFN-TTpfxvRCj8BObtK9KjfoxxWbcW4ImjRxnx2KTtoeDOJb257hrLf7dikyWnoNEaKCyWwu3dkoDaq8p4olSkQx_3U/s400/20171023_172811.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
The light and shadow, solidity and wisp, Autumn. I had more brilliant pictures of Fall color more intense than any here since I arrived eighteen years ago. But this one captures best the complexity of my readers' comments and the effect they have had on my re-write of <i>Widow's Walk. </i>Five talented and generous people have now read my first draft, and a few more are right in the middle of it. Already their comments are giving the narrative more depth and filling it in where I took too much for granted.<br />
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I spend from three days to a week or more with each reader, returning to the narrative through their eyes, listening as deeply as is possible for me to their questions, suggestions, confusions, reactions. Each reader has his or her unique gift that motivated me to request their assistance, from personal experience with the flow and content in this novel, to a particularly accomplished sense of literary structure, to a creative ability with language, to a habit of reading contemplatively. None of them disappoint, and all are focused and keen in their critique.<br />
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I am so excited! Here I am, experiencing my novel again and again with the comments of each reader, It's a bit like this: if I were a painter I would be pondering my canvas and another very skilled painter would be standing at my shoulder pointing out this and that. A stroke of aquamarine, perhaps, or a thread-thin line of crimson cutting through. Soften the sharp edge of orange. Apply a tiny bit of gold leaf, just here, like sunlight in the summer field.<br />
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Do my readers know how much they give to me? Because of them I continue. They are so close to me as I undertake this task that I feel them, each of them, in my heart and mind, my fingers and my soul. With each of them I write this book again. I see the difference even a comma in the absolutely right place makes. (Do you see how I scrambled the words of that last sentence against all the rules? I love doing that!)Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8152230602343738117.post-19015452908137065262017-10-22T14:46:00.001-07:002017-10-22T14:46:51.721-07:00The Vanishing Point<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilxKsN72R3JqPER-IlPAk7hSZyJCFkQIKVlZdD4gSGRdPZNaLK61xdyzodbohIN1aBQ-hU065vEJe8hiWmGsSZEQpTqNoU7C23A2EZ8I6yrEhZVhlHnreZmQJN_oOXwVrkyPhiyOu368E/s1600/20171010_183951.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilxKsN72R3JqPER-IlPAk7hSZyJCFkQIKVlZdD4gSGRdPZNaLK61xdyzodbohIN1aBQ-hU065vEJe8hiWmGsSZEQpTqNoU7C23A2EZ8I6yrEhZVhlHnreZmQJN_oOXwVrkyPhiyOu368E/s400/20171010_183951.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Vanishing Point</td></tr>
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Here's a photo snapped at sunset off the Oregon Coast while my author husband and I were spending a few days on a writing retreat. My new novel, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Widow's Walk, </i>had just reached a scene in which the main character, a widow, is instructed to look into the vanishing point. How could I communicate how terrifying this was for her, but at the same time, compelling?<br />
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John and I had just finished an early dinner at the Asana Bistro and returned to our cabin to sit on the bench while the sun went down. We'd watch for the green flash. But what I saw was something that, because of the story I've been trying to tell for months now, felt even more stunning. I was looking right out over the ocean at was was clearly the vanishing point. The clouds, the water, the point of light, all those colors around that SPACE just shook me with a realization that I needed, somehow, to get into my book.<br />
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Twice in this life I have been widowed. I know the secrets that widows hesitate to tell. About a week after the death of my first husband another widow took me off into a corner and in a low voice said, "Honey, no one but maybe I will tell you this, but..." and then she told me one detail of her own reaction to her husband's death that stopped my breath for a moment. If she could do as she had done, then it might be possible for me to also do what I needed to survive.<br />
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Two years after my second husband died and I had just married my third (!), I thought I might write a trilogy of husband books. After the first one, <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Root of Beauty</i>, I hit a wall of impossibility. And then it came to me: This isn't about the husbands. This is about widowing itself. It needs to be a novel. I sat down at my computer and the first lines of <i style="font-weight: bold;">Widow's Walk</i> emerged.<br />
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"<i>I woke thinking nothing had happened, thinking the green curtains an
ocean the way they waved, forgetting where I was and why and who I might be
with<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif";">—</span>a stranger I imagined
I knew but never knew. I'd slipped my hand from his, pretending then,
pretending now, constructing our reality on a breath, on a wave, and believing
it.</i>"</div>
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I'm hoping to share bits of this writing experience here from time to time. There's so much I still haven't imagined. </div>
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<br />Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8152230602343738117.post-7750560319594899362015-07-09T10:36:00.000-07:002015-07-09T10:44:46.881-07:00Carol in the Hand of God<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6KPTc5f_0MVsTGTWqukIKvLcnfdrwk35xO-ZEhDXU6Hk1bUnFbOHukWncsdmbuE9XD8_S-wLfKQ1REy4YfaVEraH_Arf2m5bmmwAbjz2QtuuW4VSdDJrcGDTb5obYZen99ZH2HK_iWnQ/s1600/20150707_205551_Richtone%2528HDR%2529%257E2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6KPTc5f_0MVsTGTWqukIKvLcnfdrwk35xO-ZEhDXU6Hk1bUnFbOHukWncsdmbuE9XD8_S-wLfKQ1REy4YfaVEraH_Arf2m5bmmwAbjz2QtuuW4VSdDJrcGDTb5obYZen99ZH2HK_iWnQ/s400/20150707_205551_Richtone%2528HDR%2529%257E2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Carol in the Hand of God</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">My friend Carol died yesterday. She'd been ill for a while and was on dialysis, but none of us thought her passage would come so soon. She already was on her journey from this world to the next when I took this picture of storm clouds at sunset Tuesday evening, just hours before her death the next day. At first I saw only the amazing combination of clouds, rainbow and color. And I saw the strange burst of light. But not until yesterday evening, after I heard she had dropped her body and was on her way, did my eyes adjust to see that Hand formed by the clouds. Nor did I see that the light seemed to have a human form, leaning foward, a spirit taking flight. Carol?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Some of us do this--see the Virgin Mary in the ice crystals on a window, Jesus in the bark of a tree. Normally we'd see ice; we'd see the tree. It's the timing that makes the difference. It's the coming together of two realities, normally disconnected, but suddenly one event that explodes in the mind with the force of Truth. I caught my breath. Ah!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"> I've no trouble at all believing that Carol's in the Hand of God. I've no problem visualizing her flight into that Beauty. She who was the most common of women, the most loving, among the most compassionate and joyous and funny of any person I've known. In my vocabulary, "common" is a high compliment, deriving from "one with all, with everyone and everything."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">We grew up together and attended school in the little border town of Baudette, Minnesota. She made her lifelong home there. She died there. From there she took off for the heavenly realms. We wrote our stories back and forth in emails almost twenty years. From her words I carry so many pictures of her life, her beloved family, her neighbors, her friends to whom she was more than commonly loyal. She once told me that to find God, to be close to God, all she needed to do was take a walk and look at the sky. Walls cannot contain God, she said. God's everywhere.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Of course. And so, now, is Carol. I wonder if I'll miss her. Today I do. But maybe all that's needed to be with her is that I take a walk, raise my head, and look at the sky.</span></div>
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<br />Christin Lore Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02076721419707983985noreply@blogger.com2