Spirited Woman Blogger Team

Armchair Travel Around The World

Every once in a while I like to remind you (and myself) that you don't have to travel to be a spirited traveler. If you read my posts very often, you'll know that I'm referring to armchair travel. As a travel author, myself, I have a special love for travel literature. Reading is a good, cheap way to be whisked away to exotic lands--and all without having to get shots or deal with extra airline fees!

Sometimes I've listed my top three favorite books in a particular category, but today I'd like to show you how to find great reviews of travel literature so you can pick your next read based on your own interests and mood (give a girl a fish and she'll eat for a day, but teach her to fish and she'll read for a lifetime....or something like that).

Here are my most recent favorite online travel book review sites:

1. A Traveler's Library - This blogger, Vera Marie Badertscher, reads and reviews dozens of books a year! She covers novels, memoirs, adventure, and political stories. And she's prolific. Return every few days to find some new morsel.

2. The Travel Lady Magazine has a huge armchair travel list. I still haven't gotten through all of the reviews on this page, but I have found several books to put on order through my local independent bookseller!

3. Story Circle Book Reviews is a great site for readers in general, but their travel/adventure page is full of terrific suggestions. A team of reviewers takes on cooking, relationships, spirituality, misery---you name it. As long as it's related to travel, they'll review it. Read them all and see which of the reviewers' tastes you favor.

Happy traveling/reading!!!

- Cami Ostman, www.7marathons7continents.com, www.camiostman.net
Click here to read more of Cami's posts

Spirited Author Christina Britton Conroy - Proves Determination Pays off

Christina Britton Conroy has a somewhat different background than other writers Her mother was the famous movie/TV actress Barbara Britton. As a child, she began her training in music, acting and dancing. Years later, in 2008, she published her first novel One Man’s Music - loosely based on her life. If you love music and a touching love story, this book will captivate you.

Q. Why did you want to tell this particular story?
A. As a professional musician, I wanted to give a Valentine to other musicians. This delicious fable is all about us. I also wanted non-musicians to enjoy a spicy love story and learn about the lives of working musicians.

Q. What is your musical background?
A. As a child, I studied music, drama, and dance at Juilliard Pre-College, and Interlochen Center for the Arts. Later, I earned a Music Bachelors from the University of Toronto, and still later, a Music Therapy M.A. from NYU. I spent 15 glorious years touring the globe singing operas, operettas, and musicals. I soloed at Radio City Music Hall, and folk venues, accompanying myself on the guitar and Irish Harp.

After years of classical singing, I was hired for the chorus of a Broadway musical, On The 20th Century. The stars were Rock Hudson, Imogene Coca, and Judy Kaye. My salary was three times what I was used to earning, and I was miserable. Sitting backstage, listening to movie stars sing their solos, and hoping the actress I understudied would catch cold, I thought about all the gifted singers, dancers, and musicians stuck in ensembles, earning a living, but never the respect and appreciation they deserve.

Q. Is the main character, Jenna Adams, modeled after you?
A. Absolutely! I lived the music business – that is exactly from life. My parents were too nice for interesting reading, so I made Jenna’s parents horrible. The characters of Eric and Josh are compellations a hundred real men.

Q. There’s a heartbreaking scene where young Jenna’s birthday party is postponed because her mother is getting an award. Was this pulled from life?
A. Fortunately, no. My mother was movie/TV star Barbara Britton. Her work was mostly in NYC, where we lived, so she was home most nights. I was dying to go on the stage, but she despised spoiled “child stars” and wanted to me to stay normal. I did some acting/modeling work and earned my first union card when I was eight.

Guest Blogger - Julia Ibbotson - It May Be Mid-Life But It's a New Beginning!

An English grandmother with a long academic career behind her, Dr Julia Ibbotson decided to return to her creative roots, both mentally and physically. When her husband retired they bought a Victorian rectory in the middle of the moors in central England, and without any previous experience set about renovating it. To be truthful they did not undertake the physical work themselves but closely project-managed it. As a result, Julia created two new careers for herself: as a writer when she determined to write about this period of her life, and as a “home cooking with love” advocate.

This is the first post in Julia's delightful three-part weekly series exclusively for Spirited Woman.

Hot flushes came and disappeared. Retirement beckoned. I was a grandmother, for goodness sake (although I still felt 30!). My long academic career was losing its excitement as the new young blood was no longer mine, but that of others needing to be mentored. Could I find a fresh impetus in my life before I took to my stair-lift and zimmer frame?

To me one of the essences of a Spirited Woman, of whatever age, is to be creative, to be proactive, and to be persistent against all odds. I needed to find a focus for my own creativity: to ground myself in place, history, the cycle of nature and human lives.

And so it was that in the cold English winter of 2008, my husband and I found a rather dilapidated Victorian rectory, dating from 1860, in the middle of the moors, with a couple of acres of land. We bought it! This stark statement perhaps reveals the amazement I felt at possibly the first ever spontaneous decision, entirely emotional, that my husband had made. He is normally a cautious man, so it was a surprise to me that he was as swept away as I was by this very unpromising building. Maybe later he came to regret his quick decision when he discovered how much renovation would be entailed, but I was delighted. To me, this would be not only a project to get my teeth into, but also a new style of life. 

We moved to the rectory and thus began three long years of renovation work. I became immersed in the history of the house and of the village a mile away. I imagined the previous occupants over the years since it was first built. I researched into the lives of those who inhabited these rooms during times of despair, danger, war, industrial change, exciting inventions and “progress." I made notes on my discoveries.

Travel Books for the Armchair Traveler

I like to travel any way I can. I'll go by boat, airplane, car or, just as happily, by book. I love to read about women (and men) finding their way through the unfamiliar, coming to terms with their own limitations or being awed by new and wonderful people and landscapes. Not surprisingly, I've got a pile of travel books next to my bed, a queue at the library and a virtual list of soon-to-come out books on Amazon. Here are a few I'm looking forward to reading, along with their publishers' description:

Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents by Elizabeth Eaves. - "Spanning 15 years of travel, beginning when she is a sophomore in college, Wanderlust documents Elisabeth Eaves’s insatiable hunger for the rush of the unfamiliar and the experience of encountering new people and cultures. Young and independent, she crisscrosses five continents and chases the exotic, both in culture and in romance. In the jungles of Papua New Guinea, she loses herself—literally—to an Australian tour guide; in Cairo, she reconnects with her high school sweetheart, only to discover the beginning of a pattern that will characterize her life over the long-term: while long-distance relationships work well for her, traditional relationships do not."

"Wanderlust, however, is more than a chronological conquest of men and countries: at its core, it’s a journey of self-discovery. In the course of her travels, Eaves finds herself and the sense of home she’s been lacking since childhood—and she sheds light on a growing culture of young women who have the freedom and inclination to define their own, increasingly global, lifestyles, unfettered by traditional roles and conventions of past generations of women." 

Full disclosure on the above: Seal Press published my book. And full disclosure number two: I'm a sucker for a book that takes place on several continents.

Men’s Other Alzheimer’s Disease

Recently sex scandals have filled newspapers’ front pages --  the French IMF head and the ex-governor of California. Earlier and then much earlier, we also learned that at least two other ex-governors, and an ex-presidential candidate were all frolicking in beds other than those they shared with their respective “old ladies.”  

To be blunt, men can control a state, complicated finance, the whole country, but cannot control the part under their belt. Or put it in another way, most men’s instruments suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease. In my new novel Song of the Silk Road, there is a paragraph of the protagonist Lily Lin’s monologue.

"In my opinion, men, young or old, handsome or plain, rich or poor, all have Alzheimer’s Disease. I didn’t mean the disease of their brains, but their penises. Even a snake will always slid back to the same hole. But a penis’ karma is to wander and forget which hole -- especially the most familiar one – it is supposed to return to."

This was because Lily’s then lover was a married man with a child.

There maybe cure for the brain’s Alzheimer's Disease, but I don’t believe there is any cure for the Alzheimer's of that other part.

However, there was a cure in traditional China: men who could afford it could have as many wives and concubines as they wanted. As near as my parents generations, polygamy was common and a way to keep all men’s sexual ADD within the confine of his own house. Personally I know three girlfriends whose father had more than one wife at the same time. You might think that these women would all be bitterly jealous and almost kill each other competing for the favor of their communal husband. Maybe and maybe not.

One of my girlfriend’s father had three wives and three families – they only saw each other during the two big occasions – weddings and funerals. Other than that, half-brothers and half-sisters were near-strangers. So one time my girlfriend jokingly said, “I pray that I won’t fall in love with someone and then he turns out to be my half-brother!”

Another girlfriend’s husband had two wives, but contrary to the first girlfriend’s situation, the two women became the best of friends, especially after their husband passed on to his heavenly reward. They lived together, helped each other, and went together to honor their husband on grave sweeping day.

A third girlfriend’s father had three wives and sixteen children. Because my girlfriend was the fourteenth child, and followed by twin girls, the father had finally lost count. So she told me that her father just called her “girl before the twins,” and her two younger sisters “Big Twin” and “Small Twin.”

All the result of men’s other Alzheimer's Disease.

- Mingmei Yip, http://www.mingmeiyip.com
Click here to read more of Mingmei's posts.

Big Stone Gap, Virginia - A Little Place with Lots to Do

In my last post, I wrote about my northeast adventure in Massachusetts.

After leaving Massachusetts, I rode with my dear friend, writer Wendy Welch down Highway 81 toward western Virginia to a tiny little town where she lives called Big Stone Gap (made famous by author Adriana Trigiani in the book of the same name) and by Trail of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox Jr (1909). As much as I loved the big town experience of Boston, the small towns, such as Big Stone Gap with 5400 people has a delight all its own. Typically from great shopping to beautiful scenery - what I find the most amazing about small towns is that people know each other and function as large families (albeit, sometimes dysfuntional).

Wendy's lived in the community for a long time, and since she and I go wayyyyy back, she can introduce me to the inside life of her town, the nooks and crannies it's hard for the stranger to find. And now I can introduce you. 

Wendy and her husband, Jack, run the only bookstore in Wise County, VA. It's called Tales of the Lonesome Pine: Used Books, Music and Internet Cafe. They are the hub of their community, hosting everything from Quaker meetings to weekly needlepoint gatherings, which you are welcome to join. If you're traveling through Virginia, stop and tell them Cami sent you via the Spirited Woman blogger team, and they'll invite you in for a cup of tea and a chat. If you're in the area on August 20 of this year, show up for the Celtic Festival held at several sites throughout the town (it won't be hard to find, there are only a couple of streets) or, if you aren't available in August, get to know Jack in one of his annual tours of Scotland (he's a native Scot).

Big Stone Gap is also famous for an annual outdoor drama that runs all summer on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights called Trail of the Lonesome Pine after the book. It takes place in the historic district across the street from the bookstore.

Mingmei Yip Interviews Elizabeth Kerri Mahon - Author of "Scandalous Women"

Last year I met Elizabeth Kerri Mahon at the Romance Writers of America's New York Chapter. A professional actress, Mahon has recently published Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women, a non-fiction book which was the extended work from her popular blog with the same title. 

Q: In terms of "spirited women" how do the women in your book relate?
A: Well, considering the book is called Scandalous Women, there are many 'spirited women' in the book. Over the course of history, a 'spirited woman' or a ‘scandalous woman’ was often one regarded as troublesome or unfashionable. All the women in my book buck the status quo of their particular era. Many  women of the time, such as Camille Claudel, paid a high price for being at odds with what was acceptable for women at the time. Some were able to constantly reinvent themselves over the course of their lives. Josephine Baker, for example, went from just being a novelty act to one of the most accomplished performers in Paris, to a spy during World War II, and then a civil rights activist after the war among other roles.

Q. When did you know you wanted to be an author?
A: I’ve always known deep down that I was meant to be a writer, as a child when we had to write 500-word compositions for English, I always ended up writing first chapters. I submitted my first manuscript to Grosset & Dunlap when I was ten, thinking that I was going to be the next Carolyn Keene but I got sidetracked along the way with my other passion which was acting. It wasn’t until I realized that as much as I love acting, I wasn’t making a living at it, that I moved on to my other passion which was writing. Still, it took ten years of struggle and many manuscripts before I finally stumbled on the idea of Scandalous Women. At first, I was just blogging about all these fascinating women that I was reading about and developing a readership, but it wasn’t until I was laid off from my job two years ago, that I actually sat down and wrote a book proposal. Nine months later, my agent sold Scandalous Women to Perigee.

Q. What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
A: I’m not a historian but more of a history geek. I hope that readers find these women just as fascinating as I do, and that it encourages them to not only read more but also to think about the role of women in history. I hope that when a reader picks up one of the book, she’ll think 'I never thought of say Cleopatra that way' while she’s reading. I hope she’ll revel in the stories of these amazing women, and think about just how far we’ve come over the centuries. If she has a daughter or a niece, I hope that she shares the book with them. I’ve said from the beginning that I think Scandalous Women is a wonderful introduction to women’s history for teenage girls.

Q. What’s next for you?
A. I have several projects that I'm working on at the moment. I have a few non-fiction ideas that are floating around in my head that I hope to see to fruition. I also have a contemporary romantic comedy that is set in England that I want to revisit as some point, as well as a historical young adult novel set during the late 19th century that I’ve been working on for the past few years.

Q. Where can readers find out more about you?
A. I’m on Twitter and Facebook, of course, and there is my blog Scandalous Women. Also, if you’re in a book club, Scandalous Women would be a great book for discussion. The profiles in the book are just long enough to whet the reader’s appetite for more.

- Mingmei Yip, http://www.mingmeiyip.com
Click here to read more of Mingmei's posts.

Starting Point

Talent is only the starting point. -- Songwriter Irving Berlin (1888-1989)  

This week I was involved with several clients. Each one is at a different stage in his or her development as an author. It's fascinating to me to see how -- after a humongous amount of hard, painful digging -- the client eventually unearths hidden treasures that are transformed into the heart and soul of a book.

It's fun for me to participate in the client's process of becoming an author, by batting ideas back and forth -- "How about this?" "Could I say it this way?"  "Is this character believable?" 

But I see my role with authors as more than a copyeditor/proofreader/promotional copywriter. I'm also a sounding board, a cheerleader, a confidante, and a reality check when their spirits are low and they're puzzled about what to do next.

I'm amazed at how diverse my clients' projects are! One is writing blog posts for her Web site about the intricate, often maddening process of bringing her Young Adult fantasy manuscript to life as a book.   Through her posts, she's teaching novice and would-be writers about the patience and self-trust involved in making all the necessary decisions -- everything from securing a trademark to creating a Facebook fan page.

Another client has asked me to go through his romance novel and make sure that all the song lyrics and magazine articles he's mentioned have the proper crediting. This is a tedious task, but absolutely essential if the author is to "stay legal."

With a third client, the challenge of the day was to come up with a zingy, memorable title and subtitle for her book. We ran through a lot of possibilities, and it seems she's zeroing in on the ones that "resonate" with her.

Each talented author is at a different starting point. I love working with them, starting wherever they are in the creative process, and then watching them glow as their books get out into the world.

Start where you are. Do what you can. Use what you have. -- Tennis pro, social activist Arthur Ashe (1943-1993)

Linda Jay Geldens, www.LindaJayGeldens.com
Click here for more of Linda's posts.

Song of the Silk Road

My new novel, Song of the Silk Road (Kensington Books, 2011) is a romantic adventure on China’s fabled route and the Go-In-But-Never-Come-Out Taklamakan Desert with the lure of a three million dollar reward.

In the beginning of the novel, Lily Lin’s life is going nowhere. An aspiring writer, she is stuck in a relationship with a married man and works as a waitress.

One day out of nowhere, she receives a letter from a lawyer telling her she is going to inherit three million dollars from her aunt – a relative she never even knew existed. Hoping to escape her strained relationship and to try her luck, Lily decides to go.

However, to receive the money she must set out on the Silk Road to retrace her aunt’s earlier journey there along the desert and onto the high Mountains of Heaven. She must meet the same people the aunt met, and repeat her adventures there, some quite dangerous and one very perverse – to seduce a monk and have sex with him in a certain beneficial tantric position. If she completes these tasks in this remote and harsh land Lily will get her fortune -- if she survives.

On this treacherous journey she meets an Uyghurs healer who loves and protects her. Upon learning his tragic story she discovers she can open her yin eye to see beings from the realm of the dead.

Early on, while bathing nude in a hidden garden pool, Lily is spotted by Alex Luce, a man eight years her junior. Attached to her married lover, Lily foolishly fails to realize that Alex is her true love and tries all sorts of stratagems to ditch him as he pursues her along her thousand mile journey. Only when Alex almost drowns in a lake trying to retrieve her necklace does Lily recognize the depth of his love for her. 

I got the entire idea of this novel from a dream. Later I remember the dream, but not when it came to me. The young woman was not me but she had a strong personality and adventurous spirit, and I knew she wanted me to give her a voice. The result is this adventure and love story, Song of the Silk Road.

Win an autographed copy of Mingmei’s Song of the Silk Road! Note: You need to leave a comment and your e-mail address to be eligible. 

- Mingmei Yip, http://www.mingmeiyip.com
Click here to read more of Mingmei's posts.

Black Swan and the Swan who Danced On Her Grave

In the film Black Swan, Natalie Portman portrays a ballerina who is driven into insanity by the cruel world of ballet – its cut-throat competition and inhumane training.

Although Portman’s role is purely fictional, it has similarities to the life of the ballerina Gelsey Kirkland who describes her own life as “dancing on my grave.” Kirkland is one of the greatest dancers of the twentieth century, having graced the covers of Life and Time magazines, rare honors for a dancer. 

The Chinese say, “The fragrance of the plum blossom comes from the bitterest cold;” If you sow a melon you harvest a melon; if you sow a bean, you harvest a bean.” Success always requires an immense effort; there are no exceptions.

As I read Kirkland’s autobiography Dancing on My Grave, I was struck by how she planted the seeds for her “harvest” through hard work and willingness to “taste bitterness,” but mostly I felt chilled by the price she paid for her success. She said, “You have to be able to hang in there and work through it, and that develops an ability to tolerate hardship. This element of suffering through is what gives a dancer that translucent quality onstage. It creates a sense of eternity.”

There is another famous Chinese saying “One minute on stage, ten years off stage.” This means that it’ll take ten years of practice to attain only one minute of what Kirkland calls “that translucent quality” on stage. She was famous for meticulously planning out every gesture and imbuing all her movements with meaning and wonder.

Besides talent and hard work, a dainty look and a delicate physique are of utmost importance for a ballerina. It was rumored that to boost her career, Kirkland had undergone - or at least considered - surgery to break her arches so that her bones could be realigned to enhance her pointe. She also trained herself to be a contortionist, to be able to perform the great feat of the black swan – the one-legged consecutive spins which can destroy a ballerina’s career through injury.

Sadly, Kirkland descended into anorexia, cocaine and amphetamine abuse, and like Natalie Portman’s character in the film, mental illness – she was committed to a mental institution. But this determined woman’s story did not end there. She managed to fight her way back to sanity and now is the director of Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet in New York City.

- Mingmei Yip, http://www.mingmeiyip.com
Click here to read more of Mingmei's posts.