I had an interview that aired on Wednesday, July 2, 7 pm on KRCB 91.1 FM, a Sonoma County public radio station. (You can hear it by clicking on the podcast link on my news page, here.) It was a real honor to join host Gil Mansergh as a guest on “Word for Word: Conversations with Writers.” Gil was an intelligent, savvy host who asked a number of very good questions.

Mansergh’s movie review columns appear in four Sonoma County newspapers, and his Cinema Toast radio show has been a Thursday morning staple on KRSH-FM for seven years. Author or Book Doctor of over 50 books, manuals and curriculums, Gil was honored as a Freelance Success by Writers Digest Magazine. He honed his interview skills during five years as Director of the prestigious California Writers Conference [sponsored by the California Writer’s Club] at Asilomar.

Gil kept me on my toes, had me read from the book in a number of revealing places, and had really done his homework regarding Mary Shelley. I hope you’ll take a listen. Like the interview on KPFA, we covered a lot of interesting territory. He tuned right into the sensuality of the book, which was great. I really enjoyed talking about it. One of the things I’m discovering, is that my understanding of Requiem grows as I go through these interviews and see what others are picking up on. It’s a real educational process. It’s very powerful to have someone else suggesting the bits I should read. I find myself going, “woh, did I write that?”

It looks like I’m going to be a guest on the NPR show, New Dimensions sometime in the fall hosted by Justine and Michael Toms. I’m very excited about that.

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.

I’m jazzed. I’m excited. Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein just won an award. It was given the Historical Fiction Award by the Independent Book Publishing Professional Group, for their Next Generation Indie Book Awards, 2008/09. That’s so wonderful! And, according to their website, the award means my book will be looked at by a New York agent:

To help indie publishers and authors make important connections, the winning books will be reviewed by New York literary agent Marilyn Allen of Allen O’Shea Literary Agency for possible representation to publishers or one of Ms. Allen’s co-agents for possible representation in areas such as distribution, foreign rights, film rights, and other rights.

That’s just such great news!!

Here’s the link    Scroll down to the Historical Fiction category.

More News:

I was at the BEA (BookExpo America) in Los Angeles at the convention center this past week and did a book signing there. I don’t know if people knew about the award, but I had a big line of book sellers, librarians and media in line for a signed copy. I signed fifty books in my brief half hour. The way the process is set up, thirty people sign at a time and people line up to get books. It reminded me of being at the airport, lots of roped off alleyways leading to the authors. It was pretty overwhelming, apparently about 35,000 people showed up to the BEA. The convention center is huge. I spent most of the time wishing the place was smaller, and wondering where I was. But, it was a real taste of the industry and I did accomplish a few good things.

Oh, and one other tidbit of good news, the Sacramento Airport bookstore is carrying my book, displaying it face out. So, fly out of Sacramento!! It would be a great read on a long plane flight, really, especially on your way to England or Italy….

I’m giddy.

Here’s a link to Living Room, hosted by Kris Welsh for May 2nd. Originally, I was scheduled to be on Living Room on May 1st, but demonstrations and labor activities preempted the interview. We actually taped it Thursday afternoon and it ran on Friday. It’s been edited a bit to fit into a half hour, but I’m very pleased with the conversation Kris and I had about the book and the politics behind it. She took me in some very interesting directions. So, here’s the link. I’m going to try to get an audio of just the interview, until I do, click on the audio track for the show and then click about halfway along the audio bar image. You’ll see the time ticker on the right. My interview starts at 29.20 (29 min, 20 secs) into the show and runs about a half hour.

I’ve been invited to speak to the Marin Branch of the California Writers Club on June 22nd. I’ll be at Book Passage in Corte Madera, just north of San Francisco, from 2-4pm. I’m really excited to be talking to other writers. If you’re in the Bay Area, please come and let others know. This is the advertising that’s going out:

A Talk by Bay Area Novelist, Molly Dwyer

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.—Goethe

SYNCHRONICITY IS MEANINGFUL COINCIDENCE, an inexplicable paralleling of inner and outer events, and there’s usually a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow—especially if you’re a writer. Committing yourself to a story can awaken synchronicity. Mysterious coincidences begin to occur, forming a fragile, but identifiable structure of guidance and inspiration that can lead to unforeseeable incidents, meetings, and magic—both inside and outside the confines of your manuscript. Molly will share how she learned to recognize and respond to synchronicity, and how it helped her discover deeper truths as she researched her newly released novel Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein, about the life of Mary Shelley.

MOLLY DWYER has been a transformational educator for more than fifteen years, facilitating workshops and teaching English composition, creative writing, and literature classes in community college. Her first writing class was at UC Berkeley with the Irish poet laureate, Seamus Heaney. Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein is the fruit of over a decade of research. Molly’s second novel on the Romantics, The Appassionata, is set in the 19th century Paris of Liszt and Chopin.

Just a quick note. I’ve posted two audio pieces on my news page.  One is a podcast of the talk I just gave at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. The other is an interview with Cable Radio, Good News Broadcast, out of New York. I’m not sure why the quality of the audio is poor on the interview, but it is. After some effort to get the radio station to correct the problem (obviously unsuccessfully), I’ve decided to post it anyway because there’s some interesting talk in the interview. I’ve got other interviews coming up in the next several weeks, hopefully I’ll get something with better quality that I can post, but for now… this is what I have.

For the last several days I’ve felt like I was back in school, preparing a talk on Mary Shelley and the Romantic Imagination that I’m going to deliver on Tuesday evening at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. It’s been challenging and fun, actually. I’m pleased with what emerged. In the course of preparing the paper, I went back and read my A+ paper from Oxford, the one I wrote on Percy Bysshe Shelley in 2004 when I studied at Oxford as part of a summer program. I liked that paper too. So, I decided to make both available to anyone who might want to read them.

(I’m putting them up as pdf files, so you’ll have to view them in that format. They’re papers, each around 10-15 pages. If you do download, please remember they’re copyrighted, and attribute accordingly if you quote from them in your own work. Thanks)

MARY SHELLEY AND THE ROMANTIC IMAGINATION

THAT POWERFUL ATTRACTION:
SHELLEY AND THE POWER FLOWING THROUGH THE NATURAL WORLD

Here’s just a bit from my talk. I opened with an epigraph from my book, which toward the end I repeat. It sums up what I’m after:

“What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven, and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?” Samuel Taylor Coleridge looked up at his audience; there was a collective murmur. It was difficult to say if it was one of approval.

He found the eager gaze of Godwin’s daughter. Fourteen year-old Mary was enthralled. Well did she remember Coleridge reciting the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner in her father’s house. What happened that night had changed her life, precisely because she had plucked a strange and beautiful flower and awakened to find it in her hand.

Coleridge winked at her. “Imagination owes no allegiance to time or space,” he said.

(The flower was photographed by Diana Redwing, (check out her website) a friend who also took the pictures of me that are on my site and in my publicity. She’s an incredible photographer.)

This excerpt is from the middle, it details the way the Romantics tended to think about the imagination, influenced by Coleridge who lectured on the subject in London—which is what the excerpt from my book is tracking.

ACCORDING TO THE ROMANTICS, EXPRESSIONS OF CREATIVE GENIUS not only reflect our ability to create new unity out of existing things, but to become one with the source of all, that which brings nonexistence into existence. Romanticism tell us that neither the human, nor human imagination stands apart from Nature, that imagination has been present as the power in Nature from the beginning of creation. Imagination is a force, a capacity, not simply to produce imagery, but to manifest, to visualize or speak into being. And God said, let there be light: and there was light. John Keats is credited with some of the most famous—and analyzed—lines about the Romantic Imagination: “I am certain,” he wrote, “of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the Imagination—what the imagination seizes as Beauty must be Truth—whether it existed before or not… The imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream—he awoke and found it truth.” Keats is referring to Milton’s, Paradise Lost, (VIII, 460-490) where Adam dreams of the creation of Eve, and awakes to find her there.

The Romantic Imagination is not a human capacity, so much as is the human aptitude for experiencing mystical union, or in more secular terminology, aligning oneself with the creativity of the universe. For the Romantic, imagination is the generating force of the universe. William Blake explained it thus: imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow. Romantic Imagination emerges from the nexus of human consciousness and the fertile void that birthed the Big Bang—what religion calls the Divine.

If you live in the Bay Area and are interested, I’m speaking Tuesday night at California Institute of Integral Studies, at 7 pm in Namaste Hall. Address is: 1453 Mission, San Francisco.

Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein is being previewed in the current NCIBA newsletter. As bookseller, Linda Rosengarten of Cheshire Books in Fort Bragg, CA, told me, “yesterday I received an e-mail from NCIBA; their first “newsletter” from publishers offering advanced copies. Requiem was featured and the first three respondents gets a freebie to test for their stores. So, that’s a VERY good thing — it was chosen somehow.”

New Title Preview: Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein

“Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein, Author Molly Dwyer. Dwyer has reanimated the life and loves of Mary Shelley in this incredibly addictive, dual time-period novel. While Mary is penning her great works, Anna, in the 21st century is researching Mary’s life and experiencing realistic and primal dreams as Mary. This physical and psychic connection between the women culminates in a profound and thoroughly satisfying conclusion. Five Stars from Diane Honeysett, Copperfield Books.”

Mendocino Beacon, February 28, 2008
By novelist Charlotte Gullick, Author of By Way of Water;
Recipient of a 2007 Christopher Isherwood Fellowship

•••

Mendocino Arts Magazine, Spring 2008
By Suzanne Byerley, former codirector of the
Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, writer & editor

On May 1st, two things are happening. First, I’m being interviewed by Kris Welch of KPFA-FM in Berkeley. I’m going to be on Living Room between noon and one. I’m very excited to have such a big interview lined up, but it’s the synchronicity that’s really got me going. It centers around the second event, which is a reading at Mrs. Dalloway’s bookshop in Berkeley that same night. The two events came into being almost simultaneously, one because of the other.

Now, most people know, I’m pretty sure, that Mrs. Dalloway is one of Virigina Woolf’s characters. It’s the name of her best known novel, and Mrs. Dalloway, the character, is a key player in the film, Hours. Right? Okay. So, loosely speaking, you could say that Mrs. Dalloway is about the fluidity of time. Mrs. Dalloway is going through a day in her life. She’s on her way to buy flowers, and she’s remembering her past, which like William Faulkner said, is never really gone, it’s not even past. The book’s about a lot more than time, as Woolf herself said, “In this book I have almost too many ideas.” The same could be said of Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein, it’s a book of almost too many ideas and it’s a book that focuses on the mystery of the passage of time, in a very different way from Mrs. Dalloway, but then it’s a very different time and my experience of life has been significantly different from Virginia’s Woolf’s.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not claiming the books are on equal footing, nor am I trying to draw great parallels between Mrs. Dalloway and Requiem. I’m just pointing to the mystery and curiosity of it; the way it seems Virginia Woolf is playing her role both inside my novel and inside my life.

Mrs. Dalloway is not what’s on Anne Trevor’s mind. (Anna is the present time protagonist in Requiem.) But Virginia Woolf is. Anna’s story opens with her arrival at her Rose’s B&B in Hampstead where the room she’s staying in has two postcard pictures tucked into the bookcase; one of Mary Shelley and one of Virginia Woolf. Rose has put them there because she admires both women and thinks of herself as an “old feminist, I suppose.”

The curiosity of it is like a signal to Anna. She’s writing a paper about Mary Shelley that she’s been invited to present at a conference that’s taking a look at the progress women are making in reclaiming their literary history. It’s a conference about Shakespeare’s Sister. Shakespeare’s Sister is pure Virginia Woolf. Woolf told the story in A Room of One’s Own, which is a nonfiction work that talks about the fact that women will not create a Shakespeare until they know and can build upon their gender’s history, that genius is a collective expression, a gathering of the past into the present.

Anna and Rose discuss this concept and it sets the scene in many ways for what is to come. It’s enough in my mind that Virginia Woolf figures into Requiem to be pleased to be doing a book signing at Mrs. Dalloway’s bookshop, but that’s not where the synchronicity ends. I had developed the thesis about Virginia Woolf and was using it in my novel before I went back to England in the fall of 2003. (I first went to England to research Requiem in 1992.) In 2003, I was making a brief trip, almost a refresher course. There were a few very specific things I wanted to revisit or see for the first time. One of the places I stayed was in a Hampstead B&B that became the setting for Rose’s B&B. Why? Well, one of the main reasons was because there was, in fact, a small room where I stayed that had a bookcase with two postcard-sized pictures in it: one of Mary Shelley and one of Virginia Woolf.

The conversation Anna has with Rose is, in part, the conversation I had with the very interesting woman who ran that B&B. She said something like that to me, about being an ‘old feminist’ when I asked her about the pictures. My experiences that fall became formative in the final version of the novel. They changed its course. They redefined it. They were magical.

Am I making sense? What I’m trying to point out is the fact that Virginia Woolf, who tasked modern women with the chore of pulling our literary history out of obscurity, is once again moving things along here, at least symbolically, if not literally, somehow.

Virginia Woolf basically said that each women who contributes to the task whether she succeeds in some huge way or not, is adding to the psychic edifice that is necessary to bring forth the genius of the feminine, to create the necessary foundation for Shakespeare’s Sister to emerge and speak the fullness of her poetry, her eloquence, her vision of being. Woolf believed this genius of the feminine needed us all. In Requiem, Anna believes that this is part of her mission with Mary Shelley—that Mary Shelley’s life and writing is relevant because she contributed in a dramatic way to our intellectual history.

Anna believes that, because I believe it. I created Anna to believe it. But what fascinated me, and what fascinates Anna in Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein, is the way these ideas take on concrete expression in the real world in the form of coincidence and synchronicity. That I’d be invited to do a reading at Mrs. Dalloway’s the same day I’m invited to go on KPFA and potentially introduce my novel to a much wider audience than I’ve thus far been able, is remarkable, magical, coincidental—perhaps a sign I’m on the right path here. Yes?

In any event, it leaves me with the feeling that Virginia Woolf is watching over me, and, if I can be so bold as to claim it, is pleased with my effort. I believe Woolf would conclude that Requiem has value in its attempt to capture a piece of women’s collective literary history and bring it to light. It is the kind of thing that will ultimately make Shakespeare’s Sister’s creative life possible.

If you’re in the Bay Area, or have plans to be on May 1st, I invite you to come out for the reading. It’s a 7:30 pm and I intend to bring flowers for Mrs. Dalloway.

May 1, 2008. Berkeley, CA
Mrs. Dalloway’s, 7:30 pm
2904 College Ave
Berkeley, CA 94705
Reading & Book Signing

May 1, 2008. Berkeley, CA
KPFA-FM Radio, 94.1
Living Room with Kris Welch, 12 noon-1pm
Interview

******
and then of course, there’s Goethe, the grandfather of the Romantic Movement:

Until one is committed
There is hesitancy, the chance to draw back
Always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and Creation)
There is one elementary truth
The ignorance which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

That the moment that one definitely commits ones self
Then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one
That would never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision
Raising in one’s favor all manner
Of unforeseen incidents and meetings
And material substance
Which no one could have dreamt
Would have come your way.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

GOETHE

Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein has hit the bookstores! If your local store isn’t carrying it, please ask them to. Because the book is out and things are happening, I decided a blog is in order. I’m going to write about getting my book out into the world, which is a whole new experience. I’ve had two book signings so far and they’ve both gone very well. I was also at the San Francisco Writers Conference in February. So far, every event I’ve done has been a success, and has resulted in people getting interested and even excited about Mary Shelley and friends. It’s very satisfying.

Last night I was in Healdsburg, CA, a small wine country town, a tourist destination an hour or so north of San Francisco. I don’t know anyone in Healdsburg, but Copperfield’s is an independent bookstore that likes to host authors. They noticed author Jean Hegland had endorsed my book and knew that she lived in the area, so they set up my reading and invited Jean to come and introduce me. Jean was gracious enough to do so and to help get people to the reading. So I had a nice little crowd of writers and friends. I sold ten books. It was fun. I read the opening of my book and answered questions about my research process. One of the booksellers was almost finished with Requiem, about thirty or so pages from the end. She told me she “loved” it. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to hear a complete stranger, and a bookseller at that, tell me she loves my book!! It makes all my efforts seem worthwhile.

One last ps—I’m still building this blog, so it’s not completely functional yet. Patience please.