Sweet Dreams

This week I was invited to speak at another book club. It is always a little exciting to think that anyone wants to listen to me hold court on writing. The woman who invited me talked to me briefly about my book. There is a considerable amount of sex in The Sinner's Guide to Confession, especially since one of the characters, Barbara, is an erotica writer. In fact, a reviewer on Good Reads, suggested the book was like Sex and the City for middle-aged women. I checked the "reviewer's" profile because I knew she considered that a criticism, and I was curious about her age. Of course, she turned out to be thirty-something! I, however, thought it was splendid review. Does she imagine that just because women are menopausal and not as likely to turn heads the way they used to, that they stop thinking about or wanting sex? My neighbor told me that her mother, who was in her seventies, assured her that sex just gets better and better. I was inspired by that!
I gave all this even more thought yesterday on Halloween. As countless children clamored for candy while I admired their costumes and engaged them in some dialogue, I had pangs of longing for the days when I was in my thirties, and my son was little, and I escorted him in his hippie gear one year, a pirate another, the Phantom of the Opera, a Rastafarian, and countless other incarnations. Then, I could still turn heads when I wasn't in my mother role, and I never imagined i would be fifty-something and condemned for creating women characters of the same age who still want sex and love.

Day One!

When I graduated from high school, my parents bought me a typewriter with a cartridge that could be inserted when I wanted to white-out a mistake. The typewriter seemed extraordinary. No more erasable paper for me! Today, with the help of Nikki Leigh, I created a blog. I decided to call my blog Pentimento, with a nod to Lillian Hellman and her wonderful novel of the same name. I think it is a fitting title for my blog, as well as a meaningful introduction to The Sinner's Guide to Confession. In some ways, all of our lives are shaped by layers of experience ane secrets these experiences generate. Pentimento, the process by which painters often use the same canvas for drafts is an analagous concept. The original painting is exposed when the top layer becomes translucent with age. Perhaps we all become more "translucent" with age, our secrets push to the surface, demanding to be heard, needing to be understood. It makes sense, then, that we choose our confessors even before we are ready to confess.