I spoke in Marin County yesterday—to writers

I was back at Book Passage yesterday to speak to the Marin chapter of the the California Writers Club. I had a really great time. My talk was on “Synchronicity and Sensibilité.” I got to talk about one of my favorite subjects—synchronicity—and how it plays into my writing process. I said quite a bit about how I think synchronicity can be evoked. Someone suggested the word, “courted,” and that seems a perfect way of looking at it. The more we court synchronicity, the more it appears and leads us on. I created a PowerPoint slide show to go with the talk and one of the most interesting aspects of doing so, for me, was that I spent some real time taking a look at just how prevalent synchronicty was in the writing of Requiem.

Someone asked if I was going to make the talk available, so I’m looking into creating a little movie/podcast, which will include the visuals. Hopefully I’ll be able to post it in the next week or so—it depends on how agile I am with the technology.

I’m also going back “over the hill” later this week, to Sonoma county this time, for a radio interview on a KRCB 91 FM, a Sonoma County public radio station. That interview will be aired on July 2nd at 7pm on Word for Word: Conversations with Writers.  You can listen online if you’re out of the area.

It does seem that Requiem’s Indie Book Award (see below) is giving new energy to the process of marketing my book, new interest and notice. I’m hoping to continue to establish myself in the Bay Area community of writers. I first moved to the Bay Area in 1970 and have lived there for most of my adult life, moving up and down the Northern California coast, from Mendocino, where I live now, to Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz mountains a couple of years ago, to Sonoma County when I was a student at Sonoma State, Sausalito in the 1990s, San Francisco in the late 1980s, and the East Bay before that. It feels really good to be making inroads, as a writer, into the greater “Bay Area,” (which in my mind extends from Mendocino to Santa Cruz).

One of the most satisfying aspects of having a book visible out there in the world, is that people keep popping up from out of my past. Yesterday, my ex-mother-in-law came to hear me. We hadn’t seen each other in years. It was really a pleasant surprise. I’ve heard from a number of people; it’s great. I’m also getting to know a lot of new people too, so if you’re inclined to say hello, please do!

In any event, keep your eye on the appearances page, I should be able to update it in the next couple of days with several new happenings. It looks like I might be up in Portland at the end of the summer.