Review Tuesday: The Lake of Dreams - #romance #family #memory #ReviewTuesday

The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards

Penguin Books, 2011

The summer after high school, Lucy Jarrett left The Lake of Dreams, the lovely upstate New York town that had sheltered her family for four generations. Heading west to college, she left behind her grieving mother, her half-Seneca boyfriend Keegan Fall, her hostile uncle and cousins, and her aching suspicion that she was partly responsible for her father’s recent death. Now, after more than a decade traveling and working around the world, she has returned to the rambling, time-worn lakeside house where she grew up.

She finds that much has changed. Her mother has a new male admirer and is considering selling the deteriorating mansion. Keegan is a successful craftsperson with a five year old son. Her brother has reconciled with and is working for her uncle. The military installation on the lake shore has closed, and conflicts about the fate of this fragile, valuable land are tearing the town apart.

Unemployed, restless, confused about her feelings for her family, the town and the half-Japanese lover she left back in Tokyo, Lucy stumbles upon a cache of objects locked in an old window seat that point to a mystery: a great aunt who lived nearly a century ago, who had been completely erased from the family records. Rose Jarrett fled from England to the US in the early years of the twentieth century, pregnant with the child of a wealthy landowner who paid her passage to make her disappear from his life. Grudgingly welcomed by her relatives in The Lake of Dreams, Rose gave birth to a beloved daughter Iris, but was forced to leave her when Rose became involved with the women’s suffrage movement. Iris grew up without knowing her mother at all.

Lucy becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth about Rose’s life and determining the fate of her daughter. Her inquiries parallel her personal soul-searching about her own life and her future. Somehow, uncovering the long-hidden secrets of Rose’s history and bringing the woman’s heroism and self-sacrifice to light become a path for Lucy to save herself.

The Lake of Dreams is a gorgeous book, lyrical and moving. We see the town through Lucy’s observant eyes, filtered through her love of nature and colored by her memories. Rose comes to life through the intimate letters Lucy discovers, letters Rose penned to her daughter but never sent. Her story ramifies and pulls others into its web, including a famous stained glass artist who created a stunning set of church windows celebrating the power of femininity. I found myself waiting breathlessly for the next revelation about Rose’s past and her legacy to the future.

At the same time, when I finally put the book down, I realized the plot was somewhat contrived and unrealistic. It’s too easy, ultimately, for Lucy to bring Rose back from obscurity. The epistolary record is too convenient, too complete. The startling twist near the end of the novel and the rather implausible happy ending were emotionally satisfying but intellectually a bit of a stretch.

Also, I felt that Lucy ended up with the wrong guy. I always laugh at romance reviews that complain about this sort of thing, but in this case, I felt quite strongly that she made the wrong decision, or at least, not the decision I would have made.

Of course, I’m not going to tell who she ultimately chooses, or what path her life takes. You’ll just have to read the book yourself.

Second Generation Storyteller - #FathersDay #Inspiration #Memory

 Image by Daniela Dimitrova from Pixabay

Today, Father's Day, is a bittersweet holiday for me. It has been more than ten years since my dad died, on his eighty sixth birthday. Oddly, I feel his presence today far more than his absence. I've come to understand, during the time since his passing, that he'll always be with me, in my memories and in my heart.

Dad lived a long, joyous and fruitful life, including more than a year that was grace, pure and simple. After a serious cardiac incident, he was sent home to hospice care, not expected to live more than a few weeks. He confounded the prognosticators by recovering significantly and thriving (relatively speaking) for another seventeen months.

I want to talk about my dad at least partly because he, more than any other individual, inspired me to read, and to write. He had the gift of words, and passed it on to his children. I recall him reading aloud to my siblings and me, folk tales, fairy stories, adventures like Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe. He told his own stories, too, invented worlds and characters for our pleasure. There were the Gulkons, terrible demons who lived in the fire on the hearth, and Houligan, the god of snow. (I grew up in chilly, stormy New England.) I still remember sitting spellbound (almost sixty years ago) while he recounted the story of the hapless wizard Thomas Carl Sefney who had to touch his wand to every one of the monster's thousand tentacles before it consumed him.

Both my parents encouraged me to write. My first poems date from about third grade. During my childhood I wrote fantasies about Martians and ghosts, and plays about the Beatles and politics. In my adolescence, too shy to speak to any of my crushes, I poured out my adoration in anguished free verse. In my twenties and thirties, I wrote science fiction and first tried my hand at romance. Finally, in my forties, I actually managed to publish something (other than in my high school newspaper). My first thought was to send a copy to my father.

My dad and I shared favorite books, characters and authors. When he

and I got talking about Sherlock Holmes or Frodo Baggins, H.P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allen Poe or Anne Rice, the rest of the family would roll their eyes and leave us to our obsessions. I never had any difficulty figuring out what gift to get him for his birthday or Father's Day. There was always some book that I had seen or heard about that I knew he'd love.

I never did introduce him to my erotica, though. I was so tempted to show him the pile of paperbacks with my name on the cover and the anthologies volumes I had edited. I wanted to autograph him a copy of my first novel, telling him how much he had contributed to my literary endeavors. I wanted him to be proud. However, I didn't want to make him uncomfortable. I recalled the way he reacted when I gave him Anne Rice's BDSM classic The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty - an embarrassed grin and a "oh, that's interesting". We didn't discuss that book much. Though I would have welcomed the opportunity to open up to him about my fascination with the erotic, I sensed that he would rather not know.

I guess that there are just some things you can't share with your parents, no matter how close you are.

Do I regret that he never knew about the my risqué alter ego Lisabet Sarai? Not really. The only thing that I regret is that I didn't get a chance to wish him a Happy Birthday one last time. I was just about to pick up the phone, on that May evening many years ago, when I got the call from my sister telling me that he was gone.

Still, in some sense, he’s responsible for every one of my books.

 

Stories We Tell Ourselves - #Memory #Craft #Fantasy #AmWriting

 Image by Khusen Rustamov from Pixabay

Fantasy versus reality. This is a recurring theme in our author discussions and blogs. As authors of erotica, do we have a responsibility to paint a somewhat realistic picture of the complexities of human desire? Or is our role to create engaging fictional worlds and people them with characters who have more and better sex than most of us actually experience? Should our BDSM stories portray the actual practices of the kink community, complete with negotiation and limits? Or should we allow ourselves to descend into dark fantasies of acts that might be risky, even physically impossible, because that's what pushes our buttons?

I don't intend to reopen this debate right now. Even if you're firmly in the “realism” camp, however, I'm sure you'll admit to consciously constructing your stories to enhance their emotional effect. You introduce elements of suspense. You gradually intensify conflict. Ultimately, you provide enough of a resolution to give readers a sense of closure. This is, after all, the role of the storyteller – to build a coherent whole out of an assortment of people, actions and events, a tale that will linger in the readers' (or listeners') minds and perhaps, change them.

We do this, often quite deliberately, when we write fiction. But what about autobiography or memoir?

Several years ago, I reviewed an anthology of “true sex stories”. Each author had written about some crucial erotic experience in her life, some encounter or relationship that had particular significance. The authors' accounts were well-crafted, diverse, and frequently hot. However, they were more or less indistinguishable from the fictional erotic tales that appear in so many collections from this same publisher. There was nothing about them that signaled that they were “true” or “real”. The tales had been subjected to the storyteller's craft – smoothed, tailored, refined – turned into works of art.

Please understand, this is merely an observation, not a criticism. As I contemplate the so-called true stories in this book, though, I wonder whether the phrase is an oxymoron, whether “story” and “truth” (in the sense of actual experience) can ever coexist. “Story” by its very nature implies an intervention to turn raw phenomena into narration.

Of course, many erotic authors – myself included - mine their own histories as material for their fiction. Much of my work is to a greater or lesser extent autobiographical. A few tales (I won't say which ones) are nearly literal accounts. In every case, though, I've applied my storyteller's lens to the details of my real world erotic encounters – bringing some aspects into sharper focus while blurring others. Some alterations are intentional misdirections to protect the so-called innocent, but most have to do with whipping the tales into a more literary shape, transforming them from anecdotes to stories.

As I contemplated the phenomenon of the“true” collection described above, however, I realized that I do the same thing with supposedly accurate descriptions of my “real” life. Between Oh Get a Grip, my personal blog Beyond Romance, the ERWA blog, my publishers' blogs, and my frequent guest posts, I produce quite a lot of material about myself and my past. I know I'm writing for an audience, and, without really meaning to, I adapt my life story to fit my perceptions about what they'll find intriguing. At this point, it's practically second nature to tweak a detail here, neaten up an ending there, to heighten the emotional impact.

I'm a bit disturbed to note that in some cases, the stories I've told you are now the stories I remember. I am not sure I recall what actually happened, only what I've told you happened. In fact, some of my fictional tales, even the ones not intended to be “true”, feel just as real.

As psychologist Daniel Kahneman points out, direct experience is fleeting. Memory is an act of creation – or re-creation – an effort to enforce some order on the fragmentary impressions left by our senses. There's no guarantee that our recollections are accurate. In fact research has shown that they can be systematically manipulated by changing our foci of attention.

https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory/transcript?language=en

There are two ways to react to these findings. We can panic, as the supposedly solid ground of remembered experience turns to perilous quicksand. If we can't be sure about our own life histories, is there any certainty at all?

On the other hand, we can embrace our storytelling genius, our genetic predisposition to rearrange and restructure the world into some shape that makes sense, as a gift. We all tell ourselves stories and create realities – whether we call them fiction or not. That may be unsettling. But it's also a kind of magic.

Naked Heart - #BDSM #Devotion #Memory #Art

Give me your body.

Give me your mind.

Open your heart.

Pull down the blind...

My head encased in fat 1970's era headphones, I hear only the music, but I understand that he is speaking to me through the lyrics. He's behind me, towering over me, his big hands resting on my bare shoulders as I listen to the album he has brought me as a gift, a British group called 10cc. I feel my heart pounding in my chest, in time with the bass. I don't know what he'll do next. The uncertainty is disturbing and thrilling.

His fingers trace a path along my upper arms, light, teasing, raising goosebumps. Then they lock onto my nipples. I gasp as he pinches hard, then twists. I remember what he told me about clamps. What he promised. He knows what I'm thinking—I'm sure it is just what he intends. I imagine his smile, behind me, full of gentle mockery.

I'm soaked and trembling. I am mortified by my own desires, desires I hardly knew I had until he exposed them and showed me who I really was.

His slut. His slave. We both know it, know that I'll do anything he asks. I trust him not to ask for more than I can bear to give.

I was twenty five. He was a year younger, but with knowledge born of years of study plus the experience of two other kinky relationships. He told me that he had had S&M fantasies for as long as he could remember. And me? I was a total innocent—not sexually, but as far as BDSM was concerned. 

Did he somehow recognize my latent submissiveness? Or was he initially just attracted by my ripe body and raging hormones, only later starting to wonder if my fantasies were the complement to his? He was my classmate in grad school. We used to flirt, but I never took him seriously. Then he left the university for a job on the far coast, and we began to write.

Postal seduction. Asking me how I felt about spanking. Sharing his desire to tie me up. Discoursing on homemade whips and the efficacy of birch switches. I pretended lightness, laughed off his outrageous suggestions, but they left their mark on my psyche.

He would call me late at night and tell me his plans for me, his intuitions about what I wanted. Did he plant my fantasies or simply lay them bare? He claimed that he was meant to master me, to open my eyes to my own perversity. Arrogant and charming by turns, he wooed me, instinctively pressing all the right buttons—buttons I didn't know were ever there. Finally, he invited me to come visit him over Thanksgiving.

Never having even touched him in a sexual way—rash, crazy, my inflamed imagination totally trumping my rational self—I agreed.

It was the best decision I ever made.

The first night, we had vanilla sex. The next night we tumbled together into a well of dark fantasy. He led me through a magic door into a world of intense sensation and raw emotion, power and surrender, trust and communion. Looking back, thirty years later, I'm still astonished by that sudden connection—so real and so true despite the fact that we were practically strangers.

He changed me forever.

Our lives ran in different tracts. We lived thousands of miles apart. I had other lovers, though he had a way of slipping into my head when I was in their arms, reminding me to whom I really belonged. When we managed to meet, our days together were a frenzy of kinky experimentation: leather belts, bungee cords, ping pong paddles, hot wax. Ultimately, though, it wasn't the physical sensations that bound me to him. It was the sense that he saw me as I was, as deviant and sluttish as he himself, and didn't condemn me. No, he liked what he saw. I could be truly naked with him; he would not condemn me. From the very first, I trusted him with my body and my fantasies. Eager to please him, I exulted when he shared his own and allowed me to fulfill them.

Our relationship wasn't easy. We were both too young to realize the value of what we had, I now believe, or to nurture it the way it deserved. Misunderstandings, recriminations—we drifted apart, and three years after our initial incandescent coupling, I married someone else.

Yet all these years later, we are still in touch, and I still consider him my master, though he would laugh bitterly at the epithet.

Lisabet Sarai the writer would not exist if it were not for him. My erotic writings began with the fantasies I sent him. Raw Silk, my first novel, is a fictionalized account of my own initiation into dominance and submission. I even borrowed some of the dialogue from his letters. From the perspective of craft, Raw Silk is nowhere near my best work. But anyone who reads it is touched by its emotional intensity.

I have tried to branch out, to explore other paths through the tangled forest of erotica. Still, dominance and submission, power and surrender, remain the themes that fascinate me the most. Sometimes I feel as though I'm writing the same scene over and over. My readers will certainly be bored. Not me, though. I'm breathless and wet as I relive those magic encounters of my youth.

Two Lights in My Life - #MothersDay #Gratitude #Memory

 
Mother’s Day always puts me in a pensive mood. I’m fortunate to have had two strong maternal figures in my life, but both of them are gone now. I miss them every day, but especially on the holiday that celebrates them.

Both my birth mother and my step-mother were very dear to me. Both women can take some credit for my successes and my overall happiness with my life. Yet they had radically different natures.

My mother was lightning—brilliant, intense, compelling, fascinating, sometimes scary. Passionate and emotional, she could be deeply nurturing or fiercely critical by turns. Mom could do anything. I don’t mean that as hyperbole. She sewed, cooked, gardened, refinished furniture, repaired electrical equipment. She was a painter, a sculptor, a writer. She sang like an angel and danced like the devil—swing, rock and roll, modern ballet, and belly dancing. She excelled at anything she tried.

Yet she was haunted by persistent feelings of inadequacy and frustration. She was never satisfied with her myriad accomplishments. Both then and now, I couldn’t really understand why someone so remarkable had so little appreciation for herself. Looking back, it seems that I spent a good deal of my childhood trying to make her happy, not grasping the fact that her dissatisfaction stemmed from self-perception, not reality.

After some rocky times, she finally found a spiritual center and some sense of peace. Then, tragically, she died of leukemia, at the age of fifty two. I didn’t have much chance to know her as an adult. She met my husband once, early in our relationship, but she didn’t last long enough to attend our wedding. I wish I could call her, chat with her, tell her I love her now and that I always did (though at one point in my life she felt I’d betrayed her). She’d be ninety now, but given her older sisters’ longevity, I wouldn’t be surprised if she retained her mental acuity to that age.

My step-mother was more like spring sunshine—gentle, warm, filling you with joy for no obvious reason. She had a true gift, the ability to make anyone she was with feel cherished and special. We all experienced the quiet blessing she bestowed: my dad, her children, her step-children (including me), her grandchildren, her students (she was a professor of nursing for many years), her next door neighbors, her friends at church, the clerk at the grocery store. A Christian in the truest sense of the word, she was one of the most generous and loving individuals I’ve ever met.
 
She wasn’t a wimp (or a saint); she sometimes got angry, especially about injustice or dishonesty. She tended to be disorganized. Her refrigerator and her check book were both disasters. She'd often overcommit, then worry about deadlines. She'd never turn down a request from someone in need.

We lost her four years ago, to cancer, but she had a full life. After I moved to Asia, I used to phone her long distance her every week or two. Sometimes I still think, “Oh, I should give Nan a ring.” Then I remember she’s gone. I go look at her photos instead.

I wish I could post pictures of them here, but that would be violating their privacy and threatening my own. Believe me when I say that both were beautiful women, each in her own way. Knowing them, loving them, has made my life much brighter.

All About My Mother (#MothersDay #gratitude #legacy)

Figure from life, drawn by my mother

Today is Mother's Day. Last Monday was the eighty ninth anniversary of my own mother's birth. The juxtaposition started me thinking about my mom—her strengths and her weaknesses, and how they've influenced me.

Mom died more than three decades ago after an ugly two-year battle with leukemia . She was more than a decade younger than I am now. Her death was a genuine tragedy, cutting her life short just as she was finally getting it together. After years of bitterness and anguish, seeking for meaning in gurus, art, politics, sex and the bottom of a bottle, she had succeeded in finding her spiritual center. She felt cherished and protected by her God and her church community, at home at last. To have that comfort and security snatched away—well, it hardly seems fair after all that she endured in order to achieve it. On the other hand, her faith made her last months and days easier to bear. It gave her the courage to let go at the end.

My mom was a multi-talented superstar. She excelled at anything she attempted. She got straight A's through high school, college and graduate school. She drew, painted, sculpted in clay and marble. She could sing like an angel and dance like the devil—jitterbug, rock and roll or the danse de ventre. She earned a life saving certificate. She refinished furniture. She knitted sweaters that made L.L. Bean look cheap and crocheted an afghan for each of our beds in the colors we requested. She created Halloween costumes that were the envy of the neighborhood. She could whip up a sumptuous meal from pretty much any ingredients that happened to be in the refrigerator.

She was articulate and compassionate, a champion for the underdog and a lifelong feminist. She demonstrated against the war in Vietnam, with her three kids in tow. She even ran for a position in the state legislature in order to fight for peace and justice.

Mom had a figure like Marilyn Monroe, all curves. (The drawing above is one of her works that I've salvaged. It portrays a studio model, but I think it was also in some sense a self-portrait.) She loved bright colors, short skirts, high heels and dangling earrings. I remember when she wore a yellow polka dot bikini—I'm not joking. She could be the life of the party.

When it came to emotion, she didn't believe in holding back either the positive or the negative feelings. So I also remember her screaming and crying, sulking in her room and throwing a plate of spaghetti at the wall. In the bad times, she was a volcano waiting to erupt.

For a chubby, shy, introspective kid like me, she was a bit intimidating. But I adored her. I'd do anything to win her approval and ward off her blues.

For most of her life, she was remarkably open about sex. She and my father divorced when I was a pre-teen. After that, she never tried to hide the fact that she had lovers. I didn't understand at the time that at least some of her sexual adventures were compensation for deep feelings of inadequacy. All I saw was a vibrant, desirable woman who wasn't afraid to take what she wanted.

I don't think she actually ever told me “the facts of life”–there were reference books available around the house—but I do recall our conversation around the time that I was besotted by my first lover. I was fourteen, I believe. Mom warned me to be careful, to remember that the first man with whom I had sex would have an emotional hold on me for the rest of my life. I note now that she didn't tell me NOT to have sex. Pretty remarkable. I guess she trusted me, or else assumed that a prohibition from her would not have had any effect. I've realized in retrospect that she and my father probably had a sexual relationship before they were married. For a nice respectable Jewish girl, that must have taken a good deal of courage.

I didn't understand until much later how fundamentally unhappy my mother was. Despite all her accomplishments, she was bitter and envious, convinced that she'd been handed a raw deal, robbed of the opportunities she deserved. Under her bravado lurked persistent self-doubts. She spent most of her short life searching for something that would convince her she was worthy. For years she was a secret alcoholic. Only when she got into a serious automobile accident did she “hit bottom” and start on the rocky path toward sobriety.

She found a Higher Power that soothed much of her pain. Unfortunately, she also repudiated the sexual openness of her earlier years. She criticized my lifestyle as sinful. When I showed her a nude photo taken during the same session as my Lisabet Sarai headshot, she condemned me as possessed by the Satan.

I suspect that if she were alive now, she wouldn't approve of my literary career. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't share it with her. Why cause her distress?

When I was growing up, I thought that she and I were quite different. Now I see how much we are alike and how much I've learned from her. Fortunately I seemed to have absorbed more of the positive than the negative. I'm fundamentally happy, content with my life and my choices—probably because I never doubted her love.

My mother is responsible for teaching me the value of thinking for myself. “Do you want to be a sheep?” she'd scoff when I complained that nobody else at school was wearing snow pants, or that all the other girls already had bras. She made me brave enough to make my own way without being influenced by the crowd.

Like my mom, I'm ready to try my hand at activities that I've never attempted. I may not be as skilled as she was, but that doesn't stop me from sewing, drawing, dancing or learning new languages. She never let anyone suggest there was something she couldn't or shouldn't do. When I'm feeling uncertain about some new venture, I remember her and think, what the hell. Why not?

I'm no Marilyn Monroe, but I inherited some of her curves and once I got to grad school and got over my shyness, I discovered that I could throw a mean party. I love bright colors and provocative styles, though I recognize that with each passing year, they look more ridiculous on me. Too bad.

I still have several pairs of her dangly earrings. (She pierced my ears with a needle when I was eleven.) I wear them on special occasions.

In fact, I think I'll go don a pair today, to celebrate Mother's Day.

I hope that wherever she is, she'll be pleased.

The Notebook

Like many authors, I have a notebook. I don't carry it around with me, though that's the usual recommendation. I have too much other stuff I have to haul from one place to another. (My husband jokes that purse could double as a boat anchor.) However, I do keep the notebook next to my bed, in case I'm struck by inspiration in the middle of the night. More than one of my tales has had its origins in one of my vivid dreams.

The most important purpose for my little book is to record my ideas while they're still fresh, before all the myriad pressures of my daily life push them out of my mind. Once I've scribbled down a title, or a plot premise, or a character sketch, I can let go of it and move on to the next challenge, knowing it's all there for me when I return. (Well, that's relative. Sometimes when I go back, I can't read my scrawls, especially if they were written in the dark!) That gives me a sense of freedom and relief.

I guard that notebook as carefully as if it were covered with gold leaf. It's the repository of my imagination.

When I'm feeling glum about my writing, I sometimes flip through the pages to revive my spirits. It's hard for me to find the time to write. I get frustrated because my output is so low. Then I look at all the story ideas in the earlier pages of the notebook that actually have made it onto the page and into the world, and I realize that, slow or not, I'm making progress.

The ideas waiting to be born - the stories I plan to write "one of these days" - also encourage me. Even if I never have another inspiration, I have quite a backlog to fuel my future efforts.

If you write, and you don't have a notebook, you might want to start one. It's more than just a practical tool; it can be a valuable source of moral support.