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December 29th, 2011
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my blog updates. Thanks for visiting! Readers may wonder why I blog on travel and not just my writing. From the beginning I titled the blog “Travels and Travail,” relating to the authorship experience. While travel is hardly travail, it certainly augments and complements the writing and broadens the writer’s outlook (and body look). Blogging is writing, too, which is a good thing, since this is the most writing I’ve done in the past couple of weeks.
After our non-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving in Glasgow Ei and I flew to southern Spain. The 2+ hour flight that departed at 8 am from Glasgow was packed with Scottish vacationers, many sporting flip flops and shorts and drinking beer for breakfast. We flew Easy-Jet, a European no-frills carrier. Nice folks, no rowdiness, just a little noisy. With Glasgow’s climate, who could blame them for starting their holiday from the moment of take-off?
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Tags: "Three Days in May" play, Jewish travel, Maimonides, Spain
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December 8th, 2011
Your support is very important to me. However, through tech world mysteries and (my website guru tells me) some mergers and acquisitions, I cannot retrieve the list of who you are. I am working on a new list service to remedy this problem and keep you informed about speaking appearances and other book news, as well as blog posts. Soon there will be a new sign-up mechanism on my site, but you can assure your spot right away by contacting me directly.
THEREFORE, I WOULD REALLY APPRECIATE IT IF, WHEN YOU GET THE EMAIL MESSAGE ABOUT THIS POST, YOU WOULD EMAIL ME THAT YOU ARE A SUBSCRIBER. MY PREFERRED EMAIL ADDRESS: linda@lindafrankbooks.com
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November 12th, 2011
Yes, traveling (a Midwest swing bookended by a Little Rock meeting and book talk and a St. Louis wedding and book talk, with stops in Louisville and beautiful Lexington, KY; Indianapolis; alma mater town Ann Arbor; Milwaukee homeland; Lincoln’s Springfield). Hardly the dizzying foreign destinations of the Today Show host’s annual odyssey this week.
But, more significantly, I’ve been AWOL from writing.
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September 13th, 2011
“A 60 year old female protagonist is an automatic problem with most mainstream publishers who prefer much younger characters.”
This is part of the email response I got yesterday morning from a New York literary agent, who shall remain nameless. I read it on my IPhone, while my husband and I were driving back to San Francisco from a quick weekend trip to Los Angeles. The thumbs-on-phone approach wouldn’t work for my reply, and I wouldn’t have time to write back on my computer until later in the evening. But I had plenty of time to think about it the challenge it presented. Those “fighting words” were a clarion call to action!
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Tags: 60 year old women, a band of wives, agents, AJC Asia-Pacific Institute, Baby Boomer readers, Diane Keaton, Friends of the SF Commission on the Status of Women, Helen Mirren, HIPPY USA, Jennifer Seibel Newsom, Judi Dench, Meryl Streep, Miss Representation, NCJW, publishers, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
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August 20th, 2011
You’ve heard of the Tiger Mom? The Panda Dad? Well, meet the Jewish Popo!
Popo is the Chinese word that in Mandarin means the mother-in-law on the husband’s side. I’ve also seen it defined as old woman (ahem!) and grandmother (someday soon, I hope). When I’ve asked my son in Beijing, Jonathan, why there’s a special name for the mother-in-law or grandma from the husband’s side, he said it’s because of the traditional dominance of that side in Chinese marriage customs: the bride would go over to her husband’s family. I’ve also seen a chart of family relationship names, and it seems that all sides have specific words for them.
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August 4th, 2011
 Xiaoming, a new Chinese friend searching for her Jewish roots. It’s no secret to blog-readers and everyone I know that I have a family tie to China in my daughter-in-law Li Xuebai, aka Amy Li Ansfield. And readers of my first novel, AFTER THE AUCTION, might recall that Lily, my “main woman,” discovered a Chinese cousin, Ruth, in Israel, while searching for the Seder plate looted by the Nazis. And I’ve already hinted that Ruth and China figure prominently in the next novel. Working title: The Lost Torah of Shanghai.
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July 5th, 2011
A long trip such as ours (Eli says “40 days and 40 nights”–he counts the day we left and the day we came home, which, of course, makes a better story than 38 or 39 days!) includes some down time and a lot of flight time, perfect for reading. But flying on small 12- and 4-seater safari planes mandates that you don’t take weighty luggage. This is where the Kindle came in very handy!
What was loaded and read:
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June 21st, 2011
It’s Tuesday, June 21, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the shortest in the Southern Hemisphere, which we just left. And, given the length of this trip, this June 21 will be our longest June 21 ever. It’s been a fantastic journey, but we’re looking forward to getting back to San Francisco, where we will have some special guests from Beijing (guess who?) already in residence.
Here are some photos from our four days in gorgeous Cape Town.
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June 19th, 2011
If you’re interested, please recheck the blog for photos now up!
Cape Town blog to follow (maybe from the airport tomorrow night? SOOO much to do in this gorgeous city!).
And, by the way, in case you wondered, we DID end up seeing the BIG FIVE: finally caught up to a leopard or two in Botswana. But once it was at night and once well hidden in trees, so our photos weren’t good (you can’t really tell it’s a leopard) and we will get some from one of the better photographers.
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