Big thanks to Bridgitte Jackson-Buckley for including I am home. on this list.
I am home. on the Ultimate Fall Reading List 2023.
I am home. in the library.
Sweet news via Chez Soi Press. I love knowing I am home. will be on the shelf in the Iowa City Public Library, one of the many places where I worked on it.
I moved to Iowa City from Chicago with a first draft completed (started in Dubuque and written throughout the Midwest, Iceland, France, and Spain then completed in Chicago on a fine day in May, hours before I did a reading and presentation of Lucy, go see. at the wonderful 3rd Coast Café).
When I left Iowa City nine months later to move to Los Angeles, the fifth, or was it the sixth, or maybe the seventh? draft went with me. Anyway, there were more drafts to come until I finished it there on the Pacific with the Angels. And here I am with the fox in Barcelona. We made it this far home.
Available wherever books are sold.
P.S. – If you have wondered what Chez Soi means, it is French for At home. And it is pronounced shay-swa.
I am home. in Marco Island, Florida.
“I am well into the book now. It is so brilliant! I feel so many different emotions reading it and I love the bits of irony and humor you bring to the stories, along with the questions you raise.
Now that I know how important water was to the story, I am pleased that I made it my first book to read by this new pool we are going to after we work out.
I appreciate the way you have moved between the dramatic passages and the lighter, witty, thought-provoking chapters of the story….changing, variously, the time frame, the tone and the location. It gives the narrative an interesting momentum and energy that for me is very engaging.
I am savoring each chapter and each story like I don’t want it to end. I love the style of writing,
I ordered Lucy, go see. and it should arrive just in time so I can roll from one to the other. Congratulations on publishing this amazing book!”
I am home. in freedom.
“It’s really a book about freedom, about what it takes to live as a free-spirit in this world,” this reader wrote from Chicago.
Available wherever books are sold.
I am home. in the Pyrenees.
You, too?
This one, too, is on KK’s list of Scintillating Sentences. I love it when I learn that someone loves a sentence I considered taking out and finally left in.
Available wherever books are sold.
Some people think I’m rich…
Another from KK’s Scintillating Sentences List.
Available wherever books are sold.
A question from home.
From KK’s list of Scintillating Sentences.
And here is one from my list of favorite songs by Robbie Robertson.
I am home. in great hands.
Montse “…loved the storyline, the way it was written and presented. Very easy to read, and you are hooked from the very first page!
Marianne’s writing is simply yummy, and extremely entertaining.
I thoroughly enjoyed every page of it and would highly recommend it to everyone.
I am home. is a must-read.”
Scintillating Sentences
“Scintillating Sentences” is what one reader calls the three-page list of sentences she underlined as she read, and then sent to me. Rather than posting them all at once, I think I will share them one at a time when the feeling hits. The one I have chosen for today makes me feel good and reminds me it can be a prayer. I remember the wonder of hearing myself say it out loud. And later, the realization that came after writing it, looking at it on the page, and knowing that was the first time in my life I felt that. I love revision. Re-vision. That great gift writing gives us to look at what we have to say again and to see it in new ways. This simple 14-word sentence is a prism through which to consider love, divinity, body, woman, and human. The scene in which it is uttered evokes the gratitude the narrator feels for what her body does for her, what it tells her, how it helps her. The body is active, the body is divine, the body is a messenger.
“Beyond brava!!! So so moving in myriad meandering meaning-filled ways,” the reader wrote at the top of the list.
Where the Atlantic Ocean merges with the Caribbean Sea, I am home. with Lucy, go see.
Another reader in Florida sent this image from Miami Beach. She read I am home. first and that made her want to read Lucy, go see. and tell her friends to read them both, too. “Your writing is superb. Your metaphors are really unique and lovely. I had a great time. Honestly didn’t want the books to end. I think they should be movies.”
