Featured Author: Sahar Sabati

Sahar Sabati is here today with a guest post and an excerpt from her new book, Warp and Woof: Weaving Community Life.

About the book:

Man is a social creature; relationships are an inevitable part of his life. Formal ones, informal ones; constant ones, intermittent ones; those that make a heart race with joy, those that make it race with dread, and those that are just there because of the way society is structured. Relationships are essential to personal and collective spiritual and material development. One of the most mysterious relationships of all is that of marriage. It is a big commitment, often portrayed as the union of two individuals when in fact it is the union of two families, of two groups of friends, and, at times, of two communities, which means that a large number of relationships have to be adjusted. It is a fundamental building block of society, as married couples create homes in which two families are welcome, children are raised, and members of the community can find solace and love. It is therefore a powerful institution that exerts its influence on the two spouses as well as on those surrounding it. In this series of short stories, real life situations, conversations, and continuous study of Bahá’í Scripture come together in an attempt to understand what can go right and what can go wrong in relationships and how they can influence a community.

Guest post by Sahar Sabati

I was recently asked if I am happy with my latest book, Warp and Woof: Weaving Community Life. My friend was surprised when I was unable to answer the question, because when it came to my previous books – Spirit Within Club, Chills: A Short Story Collection, and Love: A Short Story Collection – the answer has always been clear.

The hesitation seems to be related to the fact that my latest book took me somewhere I had not gone before. The topic of community building is one that is dear to me, and I often blog about it. I could have written innumerable straightforward stories about it, but fiction is imagining what could be in the many facets of its glorious complexities. So I decided to push my thinking forward; I wanted to take a concept related to community building (relationships), pick one specific version of it (marriage), and write about community building in light of it.

I won’t lie: it was a very messy process! At first I thought to make all the stories in the collection directly related to marriage. But I very quickly understood that because marriage is about everyone that has a relationship with the spouses, friends, family, coworkers, the people we buy our coffee from, and even strangers all have an influence on and are affected by a marriage. In turn, each marriage has an effect on the community.

See why it was getting messy? I wanted to look at the prism of community building from a specific angle, only to realise that I did not have the capacity yet to isolate the prism like that. The result: a collection of stories that are not obviously related in the way the other two abovementioned short stories collections are. So much so that I sat on the book for a good two weeks before going ahead and publishing it because I realised that it should be shared to generate a constructive discussion that would feed into my next books on the same topic.

I have already been feeding my personal learnings about this process into my next novel, which is going to be about the influence a single person can have on the development of her community through the relationships that she nurtures. You read it here first! A Summer of Firsts, which will be written in large part during NaNoWriMo14, is slated for publication in early 2015. I have already had a few conversations with readers about their experience reading Warp and Woof that have helped refine the ideas behind A Summer of Firsts, and I hope that, by the time NaNoWriMo14 comes along, I will have had many more.

An excerpt from Warp and Woof: Weaving Community Life

The Ghost of My Former Self

She couldn’t get away fast enough. Unfortunately, the speed limit was low, as they were driving through a school zone. She longed to press the pedal down and feel the motor of the car kick in and pick up speed. It was a trusty little old thing that packed quite the punch, after all. Thankfully the highway wasn’t too far away.

Spying the white of her knuckles, she forced her hands to relax. No use mistreating herself the way she had just been mistreated at her latest family reunion. The minute she had walked in, every person directed a backhanded compliment to her about her trimmed physique.

“Not bad – let’s see if you can maintain it.”

“Look who is trying to be America’s next top model!”

“I guess you finally realised what you needed to do to keep a husband!”

That last one particularly hurt. The reason why her first marriage had not worked out did not have to do with her weight. Quite the contrary, actually. Her weight had had to do with her bad marriage. Ana was surprised that no one had clicked on that, since her family had a well-known history of emotional eating. Her marriage, which had begun as a fairy tale and ended as a psychological thriller, had triggered to the point of her gaining 100 pounds in a matter of three years. She had already been struggling to keep her weight at a healthy level; ever since she was born, she had a propensity for storing fat. No surprise it was downhill and “up-scale” once the emotional abuse started.

She hadn’t told many people about what had happened in her marriage, nor had she explained how it was her marriage that had driven her to overeating. They wouldn’t have understood, since overeating is, after all, a socially acceptable addiction. But more importantly, she didn’t want to waste precious energy explaining it to them. Rather, she chose to pour her energy into healing emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. 

For the fiasco of the last five years had taken her away from her one true love: teaching children. Once a dynamic teacher, both in the elementary school she had found a job at straight out of college, and in the neighborhoods where she volunteered in the evenings and during the week-end, she had fallen out of both. Where she had been a constant dynamo of energy, channeling the children’s thirst for knowledge and love into learning opportunities for them and service projects that contributed to bettering the community, she became a ghost, going through the motions, trying to survive one day at a time. She was lucky though. Not only had both been more than willing to welcome her back once she was feeling well enough, they had practiced the skills of serving others she had helped them develop into helping her.

“You serve without expecting anything in return,” she had tearfully told the school principal. “But sometimes, you are gifted beyond your wildest dreams. Thank you.”

The weight loss had been a secondary effect of her emotional healing. As she dealt with her demons, the crutch became increasingly obsolete. And as the weight melted off, mostly without her even noticing it, she also felt the urge to move more. She started with longer and longer walks, tried jogging, then splurged on a brand new elliptical machine. Her biweekly twenty minute workouts became too easy too fast, as did her triweekly half an hour long ones; even her current five times a week for an hour was becoming easy, but she chose to leave it at that; more time dedicated to exercise meant less time with the children.

The tightening body brought with is some interesting experiences, most of which she had never had before.

“Want to hear about something totally cliché that happened to me today?” she asked her then only friend Nathan over coffee.

“You know me,” he grinned. “I love me some cliché.”

“I was walking by a construction site and a couple of the guys said hi to me and one of them said that I looked fantastic.”

“How did it make you feel?”

“It kind of validated the fact that I feel fabulous,” she admitted with a soft giggle.

“I sense some guilt,” he said.

“Definitely. I didn’t set out to lose weight. It just happened. But I love the feeling, the energy, the vitality that is rushing through my body – it really makes me feel alive in a way I haven’t ever been. That I’m OK with, because it comes in handy when I am working. But I also kind of like the superficial benefits that come with this thing.”

“I think you need to be kinder to yourself. It’s OK to appreciate the attention, as long as you keep your feet firmly on the ground and don’t lose sight of the reasons behind your weight loss. However great you feel, you are not a better person because you lost the weight; you lost the weight because you dealt with the emotional trauma that was making you eat.”

“I guess I have to remember that the doors that are opening for me are mostly because of how I feel in here,” she tapped her heart. She hesitated, then added, “I feel ready to take on more now, things that I just wasn’t ready for a mere couple of months ago.”

Nathan had been asking her out for ages, but she kept turning him down because she felt that it would be unfair to him be saddled with a girlfriend with such big issues, both metaphorically and literally. She didn’t want a relationship to start in such a dark place, because she felt that their entire lives together would be defined by it. But she did like him, and had been hoping he would still be available when she was.

Nathan smiled; he immediately understood what she was implying.  “So is this just coffee, or are we on our first date?”

She giggled, blushed, then batted her eyelashes at him. “I paid for my own coffee, so this is not a date. You could try to ask me out though. I might say yes this time.”

So he asked her out, she said yes, and a year later, they were engaged.

About the author:

The author of Spirit Within Club, Chills: A Short Story Collection, and Warp and Woof: Weaving Community Life, and both editor and contributor for Love: A Short Story Collection, Sahar was born the first of three siblings and eight cousins.  Thrust in the role of head of the brood at a very early age, she honed her imagination by creating stories and plotlines the eight of them could play to all summer long.  But soon, her interest in the paranormal took its toll on said brood.  Worried on the long-term effects (as well as potential therapy costs) of this continual exposure to increasingly scary stories her oldest was (too) expertly weaving for their terrified ears, her mother gave her a typewriter – and a writer was born.  Many books, a couple of screenplays, countless short stories, numerous essays and two blogs later, Sahar also joined the ranks of Blogcritics, delving into the world of reviews.

Connect with Sahar:
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Spotlight on: Mary Marcus

About the book:

Harriet is floundering. She's in her early forties, her kids have gone to college, her marriage feels empty, her cable TV cooking show has lost its sense of inspiration, and she longs to leave the West Coast for New York. Then one day she meets Lydia, a gorgeous woman in her late twenties. Lydia reminds her so much of herself a decade or so past, and her husband, who hardly likes anything, likes Lydia as well. It slowly dawns on Harriet that Lydia could be the answer to everything that's ailing her. All she needs to do is turn Lydia into "the new me."

Reminiscent of the work of Susan Isaacs and Nora Ephron, The New Me is a witty, poignant, perceptive, and beautifully written novel about change and the price of becoming who you want to be.

Praise for Mary Marcus and The New Me:

“The New Me by Mary Marcus is a revelation. Like Joan Didion, she brings to life the nuance and emotion of a sometimes-dysfunctional family life in Southern California with a jaundiced view of Hollywood in her peripheral vision. Like Williams Carlos Williams, she knows that precise observation of details can illuminate great depth. Part baby-boom prose poem, part woman’s rebirth, The New Me is alternately hilarious and heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful. What a cool first novel!”
– Danny Goldberg, author of Bumping Into Geniuses


“The New Me is funny, poignant and deftly written. It is a relatable story that beats with a pulse of a modern marriage paradigm and provides cringe-worthy moments that simultaneously delight and distress. This book made me uncomfortable in all the best ways. I couldn’t put it down.”
– Moira Walley-Beckett, Writer/Co-Executive Producer of Breaking Bad

“So you think it’s all sun, surf and smiles. Mary Marcus shows you the dark side of the California dream. A sadly eloquent, painfully honest account of how a mystery woman intrudes on a marriage growing melancholy. Reader beware: you might find yourself in these pages.”
– Heywood Gould, author of Cocktail, Fort Apache The Bronx, Greenlight For Murder

“Mary Marcus expertly illuminates the world of a lived marriage in this inspired novel. With careful nuance and dark humor in her back pocket, she raises questions women might not dare ask themselves. The New Me will give the old you something to think about. A real treat.”
– Rachel Eddey, author of Running of the Bride

“Mary Marcus has created Healthy Harriet and her world with a sharp eye and robust humor. A great debut book parsing the complexities of love, married life, motherhood, and betrayal.”
– Alissa Torres, author of American Widow

“In The New Me, Mary Marcus tells a clever and engaging tale of the intertwined lives of transplanted modern city-dwellers, which not only illuminates surprising dimensions of our all-too-human strengths and frailties but how the path to self-discovery is seldom what we expect.”
– Bran Ferren, Founder, Chief Creative Officer, Applied Minds, LLC

“Have you ever worried you could be replaced by another woman? Have you ever secretly hoped that you might be? Is eighteen years of making dinner every night enough already? These questions haunt the irresistible chef/wife/mother Harriet Prince in Mary Marcus’s funny, heartbreaking and thriller-paced novel, The New Me. Marcus serves up the humor and sadness in a threatened empty-nest marriage and reminds us that for even the best cook, endings can be bittersweet.”
– Delphine Hirsh, author of The Girls’ Guide to Surviving a Breakup

Excerpt from The New Me:

It’s not surprising that I met Lydia at yoga. It was the only place I went regularly other than work and the farmer’s market. She put her mat down next to mine and we smiled at each other, the way yoga people do.

I took up practicing in the summer before the boys entered their senior year of high school. I heard it helped you sleep and if I hung around the house at the dinner hour cooking and serving, the boys and I would invariably start shrieking at each other. That year, Jules was working thirty miles away on some show shot on a horse ranch mostly at night. Wednesday night he was home and he generally spent it in bed with a tray and the remote control. Once in a while, he and the boys went out to this revolting Mexican restaurant they all love and I won’t go near. Otherwise, he was gone except on the weekends when he slept, being understandably exhausted from the night shoots. Three mornings a week before dawn, Jules and I would cross paths in the kitchen: me with my commuter’s mug of café au lait on my way to the cable studio for Healthy Harriet. Jules on his way to the kitchen for his Irish oatmeal before hitting the sack. (The oatmeal everybody loved was made the night before in the crockpot by Healthy Harriet.) Looking back it is remarkable how often Jules landed gigs that either sent him on location or put him in an entire other stratosphere schedule-wise from the rest of us.

Once I started yoga, I was hooked almost right away and began going into down dogs in the kitchen and soon handstands against the door that led to the laundry room. When I took the boys for their college tours, I remember Googling yoga studios in the towns we visited. Like cooking, it kept me sane. And gave me something to look forward to. And it wasn’t solitary like running. I liked the chanting. The bowing and the “Namaste”—I particularly loved the one chant we repeated three times: Loca Samasta Sukihino Bhvantu. May all beings everywhere be happy and free from suffering.

By that point I must have begun to realize subconsciously at least, that much as I loved him, I was much happier and the boys acted better when Jules wasn’t around. What a revelation! For years I had been in the habit of thinking the problem was that Jules was gone most of the time and we all missed him. Granted we did miss him, especially in those first few years in LA when they were young and I didn’t know a soul and I had to start all over again work-wise. Though I do remember sort of putting it together that the horrible pains that tightened my neck muscles and sent me to the chiropractor for adjustments only happened when Jules was at home. When he was around, I not only felt sort of queasy, I could literally feel the chords of my neck tightening like the reins of a workhorse. The Jules effect wasn’t a whole lot more salubrious on the boys. In fact Sam started having the same neck problems I did. Maybe it was his violin, maybe not. I’m not trying to say things were perfect between the boys and me. Especially Dan and me. Certainly we fought when I hung around serving them dinner and when I fussed like they were ten-year-olds. However, when I stopped doing that we were much better. I say all this because the combination – of just leaving them food and not fussing over them realizing I didn’t miss Jules, realizing they didn’t miss Jules, doing yoga and finally when they left home and the coast was clear, meeting Lydia – was like finding the essential fixings for a good stock, and the basis for what I cooked up. The spontaneous orgasm at yoga probably didn’t hurt either. A little giftie from the universe, a sort of hey, look, it can happen again, maybe not in the way you think but it can happen.

Dinnertime yoga in LA – and probably everywhere else too – is primarily practiced by single and/or divorced women. If I were a guy on the make, that’s the first place I’d go. Women who do a lot of yoga have great bodies and I even stopped shouting (except in the shower) when I got hooked. But the men at yoga are usually few and far between and often gay. That or AA. It didn’t take me long to discover not only was I one of the least limber in class, I was also the only woman there who actually lived with her husband and kids. Certainly my role at home was quite different than it had been before – the real change had come when they got their drivers licenses. However, I still considered myself a mom. And I did what moms do everywhere whether their day jobs are over or not. I planned the meals, did the shopping, cooked what they liked, ran the house, showed up at school functions and bought them things, tried to get them to talk to me . . . and now that they were older watched for signs of drugs, though I generally avoided signs of sex. A far cry from the old days when there was all this plus driving, plus organized sports, music lessons and the rest of it. Since I’m trying to tell it like it was, did I mind that I wasn’t so fucking central anymore? Not really. Sometimes I felt wistful for the early years, particularly when I looked at the lines around my face. But like a lot of women, I was dead-tired from too many years of doing too much cooking/managing/scheduling. Yoga gave me a place to go and something to get good at, though I’ll never be really good at it in the way I would have been had I started in my twenties.

Randy, who was teaching the night I met Lydia, was a mixed race hunk, twenty-four years old with blond dreadlocks, golden skin and shoulders that stretched from east to west.

“Supta Badda Konasana. Lie flat on your back. Put the soles of your feet together and let your knees relax and sink toward the floor. Good. Bring your awareness to your groin. And breathe. Breathe!”

I suspect Randy must have had that effect on others because unless you got there early and put your mat down, you couldn’t get a place. And too, after it happened to me, I figured it was probably happening at yoga centers all over the country, and was at least in part responsible for the huge surge in popularity.

It makes perfect sense, when you’re lying there, soles of the feet together, thighs spread, breathing into the sex organs that once in a while someone will get off.

OMMMMMMM!

When the class rang out with the chorus of OM, I’m almost sure I came forth with an AHHHM. Just for the record, the big O during the big OM has never happened since then, though I have gotten close a few times. And I still do yoga almost every day. And I’ll never know whether Lydia knew what was happening on the mat next to her.

“How often do you come?” she asked in her melodious English voice. Not of course what she meant, still strangely apposite for the first thing she said to me.

“Every day if I can. I’m hooked. How about you?”

“I’m a rank beginner.” I’m Lydia, by the way.

“I’m Harriet.”

We didn’t shake hands. We were schlepping our mats and navigating down the stairs and onto the street. When we hit the lit sidewalk she did a little start.

“Healthy Harriet!”

I smiled.

“You taught me to make brown rice with mung beans, carrots, ginger and ghee.”

“I’m so pleased!” I told her, and it was true. It wasn’t that she recognized my dubious status as a food network host. It’s the feeling that right away, this beautiful obviously highly intelligent creature with the gorgeous English accent seemed to approve of me and get me. And the feeling was mutual.

“Good old mung!” I replied. “I’ve got that cooking at home in the rice cooker.”

About the author:

Mary Marcus was born and raised in Louisiana but left for New York after graduating from Tulane. She worked for many years in the advertising and fashion industries for Neiman Marcus, Vogue, Lancôme, Faberge, and San Rio Toys where she worked on the Hello Kitty brand. Marcus’ short fiction has appeared in North Atlantic Review, Karamu, Fiction, Jewish Women’s Literary Journal and The New Delta Review among others. She lives in Los Angeles and the East End of Long Island.

Buy the book:
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Featured Author: Colleen McCarty

CLP Blog Tours brings Colleen McCarty here today with a guest post inspiration for writing and an excerpt from her book, Mounting the Whale.

About the book:

"Cartel got me, tell mom."



The siblings, drowning in their own problems, are forced to focus on the task at hand: a half-cocked rescue mission that involves a borrowed yacht, a favor from a notorious drug kingpin, and a shocking reunion none of them expected.



When the family decides to sneak into Mexico, mother Cybil is forced to deal with a rival CEO whom she's developed feelings for in secret. Her only son, Tom, is willing to risk bodily harm to save Janine while his other sisters, Carlyle and Valerie, suspect that the kidnapping is less than legitimate.



The long sea voyage tests the limits of the family's already frail bonds. Dark secrets of infertility, drugs, gambling and extreme taxidermy begin to float to the surface. But nothing compares to what they begin to learn about their missing sister. 



If they're going to make it out alive, they have to recognize they're fighting the same battles and facing life's greatest challenges: love, loneliness, and the struggle to find a place in the world.



Amidst all the chaos, the Pierce family is brought face-to-face with the ugliness of Janine's addictions, the truth about their mother's fortune and the most terrifying question of all: Can you really save someone who doesn't want to be saved?

Guest Post by Colleen McCarty

Did Someone Else Write This? On Muses and Ghosts

I can't tell you how many times I've sat down at the computer, ready to continue my hot streak, when something catches my eye. I scroll up and begin to read what I'd written mere hours--at most, a few days--before.

What is this? I think to myself. I read on. Pieces of it begin to sound familiar, and yet entire paragraphs are wholly unrecognizable. I know I'm the only one who's used this computer. I know no one else sat down here since the last time I was here. And yet--it's strange.

Sometimes the unrecognized passages are terrific. Sometimes not so much. And I have to wonder--did someone else write this? The answer is yes and no.

The phenomenon I am referring to is known by many names. Some writers call it "the muse." Others, "inspiration."  Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when inspiration struck. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.”

I call this mystery my subconscious, because that is, in fact, what it is. The subconscious is a weird, wild place. It's where your dreams, your creativity, your real motivations lie. Ever wake from a dream and think, "wow, I am one twisted weirdo!" Well, you're not alone and your subconscious is the culprit.

I believe we are all great artists. Great art exists in your subconscious. Carl Jung believed that humans have a shared consciousness--a collection of shared stories and memories that we are all inherently born with. When we tap into the subconscious, we are speaking to those memories. In turn, those memories can speak to our readers on a deeper level.

But we cannot live our lives in our subconscious. We we would be ruled by emotions--lust, rage, unending sorrow--we would be unable to escape them. We would have no inhibitions. It would be chaos. Thus, your conscious mind serves a very important role. But for many writers, your conscious mind can be your undoing. Our conscious minds are where doubt lives. Our internal editors, our critics, our self-hatred...all the things that speak to you when you're staring down the blank page. The things that keep you from tapping into your greatness.

Let's use an analogy. It's like drilling for oil (I'm from Oklahoma, so this is familiar territory. Bear with me...) -- in some places in the earth, you have to drill very deep--past the crust, the mud, the rocks, the air pockets-- before you reach the oil. In other places, you just have to drill a few feet before you strike the vein. People are like this too. Some of us have to drill through quite a bit of mud before we get to the oil. Others of us wear it quite close to the surface. It depends on your personality, your temperament, what you've been through, and how in touch with your emotions you are.

My hope is that when you sit down, and you read what you've written, you catch a glimpse of the ghost of yourself. If you don't, chances are you're not tapping your true potential as a writer. If you painstakingly choose every word so that it's burned into your memory, you're not doing it right. Some passages will be painstaking, but the majority of your writing should be fluid, transitional, easy.

We are all great writers, underneath all that mud.

Excerpt from Mounting the Whale

Carlyle felt the phone buzzing at her side, but her gaze was focused on the digital image inside the framed box on the back of the large panning camera. Even though Cybil was standing on the stage only fifteen feet away, Carlyle was more concerned with how her image was being displayed than with what was actually occurring in front of her.

“The most important thing to remember is that you’ve got to go all in,” Cybil was saying. “When I was sitting at the table at the World Series of Poker, I suddenly saw how all the parts of the game relate to business. If you’re on the fence about starting your own company, or you’re on the fence about hiring people, or even if you’re on the fence about falling in love, remember these three words: Go. All. In.” Good one, Mom, Carlyle thought. Her mother certainly knew just when to insert emphatic pauses so the audience hung on her every word.

Cybil was trim and professional and her voice was sure. She had been on stage for years promoting Naturebar, so she was a pro at public speaking. When she decided to launch her personal brand of entrepreneurial self-help, she used her platform as a successful female CEO to springboard herself into the market. Though there had been repeated national marketing efforts, her books really only took off in and around Omaha, where a healthy hometown hero complex made her feel as if her success was global.

The same old catchphrases were being thrown around—“You are your own shareholder” and “Don’t lose sight of the end goal—soulful sales!”—peppered with snippets from the new book: “If you don’t believe you have a winning hand, you’ve already lost” and “Your poker face is only as good as your bluff.”

The crowd erupted in applause as the host of the show, a bubbly woman with hair the texture of cotton candy, beamed a smile back at them.

The set gleamed with staged precision. The green screen read, “Good Morning, Omaha.”

“Isn’t she wonderful? We’re so lucky to have the CEO of Naturebar right here in our little nook of the world. We’re going to take a break now, but when we come back we’ll find out what wonderful surprises Cybil has in store for our studio audience!”

The cameraman counted down and the image on his screen revealed the now overly-ordinary looking couch in front of a green screen. Carlyle looked down at her phone for the first time. What felt like a balloon inflating in her stomach was what she vaguely recognized as hope. She had hoped that the gentle buzzing was Ethan, and said hope was blooming rapidly.

Her little hope-balloon popped violently when she saw the message.

Cartel got me. Tell Mom.

About the author:

Colleen McCarty is a graduate of the University of Tulsa and an entrepreneur. She and her husband own Tulsa restaurant Mod's Coffee and Crepes. She's been featured on Entrepreneur.com, and in the Wall Street Journal. This is her first novel. Though Colleen has ghostwritten books for CEOs and New York Times Bestsellers, this is her first foray into publishing her own work. Colleen lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma with her husband, daughter and two large dogs. Follow her writing at colleen-mccarty.com.


Connect with Colleen:
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Featured book: Sight Reading

About the book:

Lyrical and evocative, Sight Reading by Daphne Kalotay is an intense, literary love story.

When Hazel and Remy happen upon each other on a warm Boston spring day, their worlds immediately begin to spin. Remy, a gifted violinist, is married to composer Nicholas Elko, who was once the love of Hazel's life. Over the decades, each buried secrets, disappointments, and betrayals that now threaten to undermine their happiness.

We follow the notes of their complicated, intertwined lives from 1987 to 2007, from Europe to America, and from conservatory life to the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Sight Reading, from the author of the acclaimed debut novel Russian Winter, is an exploration of what makes a family, of the importance of art in daily life, and of the role of intuition in both the creative process and the evolution of the self.

Excerpt from Daphne Kalotay's Sight Reading

Chapter One

She arrived at rehearsal that winter evening to find behind the podium a young man in baggy slacks and a boxy tweed jacket.  This was Remy’s final semester at the conservatory; she was twenty-two years old and still one seat away from first chair.  The man said nothing as the other students trickled in, just nodded “hello” and waited for them to assemble themselves and their instruments.  The air was so dry, the clasps of Remy’s violin case shocked her fingertips.  She glanced at the man, whose face seemed to be trying to say that nothing unusual was happening, no, not at all.

     It was 1987, a Sunday.  A room full of students not quite recovered from the weekend’s parties and performances and one-night stands.  Their regular conductor, Mr. Bergman, was a short, lisping man with rolled-up pant cuffs; everyone looked at this new one in a tired, questioning way.  His skin was fair, and his dark hair flopped at a slant across his forehead.  There was something angular about his face, with its defined cheekbones and elegantly bony nose.  Remy tucked her violin up under her chin and tested the strings, enjoying the sensation of each one, with the slight turn of a peg, slipping into tune.

     Not until her stand partner, Lynn, hurried in to take the seat next to her did the man explain—not at all thoroughly—that Mr. Bergman wouldn’t be back.  “And so,” he announced in a British sort of accent that managed to sound both witty and bewildered, “I’ve been hired as his replacement.”

     He was too tall for the tweed jacket, or perhaps just too trim, too lad-ish: Remy decided he couldn’t be more than thirty.  “What did he say his name was?” whispered Lynn, who as concertmistress would surely end up on a first-name basis with him.  But no name had been mentioned.  The man had come from out of nowhere.  Remy pictured a small pile of luggage waiting just outside the practice hall.

     “Well, so, in that case, then,” the man was saying.  “I’m very excited about the selections we have.  Scheherazade is one of my favorites.”

     Mine, too, thought Remy, with slight bitterness.  Not a day went by that she didn’t wish she, and not Lynn, might be the one to portray Scheherazade’s seductive voice, with that first melodious proclamation and the passionate spirals that followed.  In private she practiced the solo bits as if they were hers.  Lynn, meanwhile, was briskly swiping rosin onto her bow, stirring up a low cloud of sticky dust, as if this man’s sudden appearance weren’t at all out of the ordinary and she might be called upon at any moment to play her cadenza.

     The man’s eyes were bright (though there were slight shadows beneath them) and his button-down shirt, open at the collar, was visibly rumpled underneath the tweed jacket.  His expression was one of bemusement.  Remy felt suddenly hopeful, though she couldn’t have quite said why.

     “Well, so,” the man announced in a cheery, English way. “Off we go.”

He had them start with the Sibelius. 

    “All right, so,” he said lightly, waving at them to stop.  Remy felt a surge of frustration.  She was just one of the many faces looking up at him; this late in the semester, what were the chances a new conductor might discover all she could do?

    “Starting at bar seventy-four, let the phrase play itself out.”  He hummed the phrase, as if from pleasure rather than in illustration.  “Let it come to rest, don’t rush into the next sequence.” He raised his baton. “Let’s start from there.”

    As they played, Remy could feel the conductor trying to hold them back, then allowing the music forward again.  Mr. Bergman hadn’t done it this way.

    “The thing to keep in mind,” the man said, tapping his baton at the podium for them to stop, “is that tempo is about more than just speed. It’s about the passage of time, really. In our lives—not just on the page. You know how sometimes everything seems to keep rushing forward, but then at other times things are peaceful and still?  How sometimes we feel stuck in time, or just plodding along day by day—and then suddenly it’s as if time’s passed us by, or we’re being hurried along, too quickly?  That’s what tempo is really about.  That’s what we’re expressing.  Not just how fast or how slowly the music moves.  It’s about how fast and slow life moves.”

    His eyes widened at the thought, and for a moment it seemed he might be about to make some personal confession.  But he just raised his baton and asked them to try the passage one more time.

About the author:

A citizen of both Canada and the U.S., Daphne Kalotay grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Vassar College before moving to Massachusetts to attend Boston University’s Creative Writing Program. There her stories went on to win the school’s Florence Engel Randall Fiction Prize and a Transatlantic Review Award from The Henfield Foundation. She remained at BU to complete a PhD in Modern and Contemporary Literature and, with Saul Bellow as her advisor, wrote her doctoral dissertation on the works of Mavis Gallant. (Her interviews with Mavis Gallant can be read in The Paris Review‘s Writers-At-Work series.) A MacDowell Fellow, Daphne has received fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, and Yaddo. Her fiction collection, Calamity and Other Stories (Doubleday), was short listed for the 2005 Story Prize, and her debut novel, Russian Winter (HarperCollins), won the 2011 Writers’ League of Texas Fiction Prize, made the long list for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and has been published in 21 foreign editions.  Her newest novel is Sight Reading (Harper, 2013). Currently co-president of the Boston chapter of the Women’s National Book Association, Daphne lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.   

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