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Archive for the ‘general interest’ Category
Thursday, December 29th, 2011
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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Thursday, December 8th, 2011
 Lamp Shade Tower at Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art
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Tags: Charles Rennie McIntosh, Glasgow, Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow School of Art, Helen Mirren, Holocaust victims from Poland, Riverside Museum, UK Chief Rabbi
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Saturday, 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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Tuesday, 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
Posted in general interest, Legal Issues, publishing | No Comments »
Thursday, 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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Tuesday, 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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Thursday, March 24th, 2011
Goodness, this is my first blog post of 2011!
Not that I haven’t thought about blogging. I’ve even felt guilty about not blogging. But I’ve posted on Facebook (even developed a new Facebook page–please LIKE me!) and tweeted on (FOLLOW me, please). Does that count? Even if I haven’t blogged since 2010? Writing the next book? Not so much.
Yes, I know that social networking is the marketing mode of choice. I know I have to do it. I’m doing it. I see results, actually, as when I tweet several times a day I gain a new follower or two. Facebook, well, I saw a small bounce in my book sales when I mentioned a “promotion” during National Read an Ebook Week, which was also on International Women’s Day (is there a National Week for Self-Published Authors? Or Baby Boomers on Facebook/Twitter?).
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Posted in default, general interest, publishing, Tweets | No Comments »
Sunday, November 14th, 2010
I think you can still buy Levy’s Rye Bread in New York. Years ago in the subways that company advertised with a series of posters of apparently non-Jewish types (Buster Keaton, a native American, a NYPD cop, a choir boy, African- and Asian-Americans) happily chomping on its product. Very politically incorrect and ethnically inaccurate in today’s world, but in the sixties the ad campaign made its point and helped propel its creator, legendary adman Bill Bernbach, into the Advertising Hall of Fame. (To keep things contemporary, I must note that Bernbach–a founder of Doyle, Dane & Bernbach–is considered an inspiration for today’s “Mad Men” television series.)
A non-Jewish San Francisco friend, whose book club has invited me to speak early in 2011, commented, after reading the book herself, that it would be helpful to have some terms explained. So, I’ve developed a glossary, which is actually included in the ebook version of After the Auction.
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Tags: "Mad Men", Bill Bernbach, book club, glossary of terms, Hebrew language, Israel, Jews, Judaism, Levy's Rye Bread, Non-Jewish readers, Passover, Passover Seder
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Friday, September 3rd, 2010
It’s been a weird summer.
 Architectural boat tour of Chicago, August 7, 2010 For family reasons, we spent a huge amount of time in our old hometown, Milwaukee, and environs. The highlights were a week at beautiful Lake Geneva, WI, with kids in shifts, followed by a fabulous weekend in Chicago with my brother’s family and our kids from Beijing. Thankfully, it was a remarkably sunny and warm summer in the Midwest. Ok–except for the night of the flash flood, during which Nicolet High School (my alma mater and our kids’) was so badly damaged that school is opening two weeks late. We were fine and definitely better off than the unfortunate driver who, in his Cadillac
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Tags: Barbara Vey, Beyond Her Book, Chicago, Lake Geneva, Lake Geneva Wisconsin, Lake Michigan, Mark Twain, New York City, Nicolet High School, San Francisco, Thomas Wolfe
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Saturday, July 31st, 2010
This author thing is a new experience for me, of course, and people are naturally curious as to how it’s going. I’m not on the best seller list, but my status on Amazon varies from 100,000s to the 400,000s in rankings of books sold. That doesn’t count what I’m selling myself via the web site or in person. And I’m flattered by those who’ve posted favorable reviews on my Amazon page.
But, important as sales are, that’s not my sole criterion in assessing how After the Auction is “going.” I am intrigued by the reactions of readers and SHOCKED that many I’ve heard from like/love it. Why am I shocked? Let’s face it–this is a new venture for me–writing fiction. From the trials and tribulations I’ve had–for instance, not hooking up with any of the myriad of agents I queried–let’s say that I had considerable self-doubt.
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Tags: Beijing, Jonathan Ansfield, Judaism, London, New York Times, Religion and Spirituality, Secular Jewish culture, Tom Freudenheim, Wall Street Journal
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