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The Advance Reader Copies of THE LAST GRAND TOUR arrived over the weekend, giving me a chance to hold the fruits of my labor in my hands for the first time.
What an immense joy.
You can pre-order it on Amazon now. It should be available on other sites soon!
The inaugural Cascadia Writers-in-Conversation evening took place last night, with the delightful and eminently charming Sharma Shields as our first featured author. In a beautiful museum setting, with Z. Vanessa Helder’s magnificent watercolors of Eastern Washington on the walls, 60+ people had the great fortune to listen to a terrifically talented writer talk in depth about her life and her work.
Among the topics Sharma discussed were: how she became a writer, how fairy tales can help us find a different path to a deeper reality, the source of her ability to write funny, a writer’s relationship to the serious issues of our times, and the importance in her life of the stories of Hans Christian Anderson (the subject of her next novel).
Sharma listens and smiles with Z. Vanessa Helder’s watercolors behind her.
She also talked at length about the development and “weirdness” of her three books–Favorite Monster, The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac, and The Cassandra. One of the evening’s many treats was Sharma’s reading of three short stories about witches that showcased her humor and love for tales as well as the unique blend of edginess and tenderness that characterizes much of her work.
The audience waits for the conversation to begin, surrounded by Helder’s watercolors.
Writers-in-Conversation events take place at 6 p.m. on the second Thursday of each month at the Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds, WA, and are sponsored by the Edmonds Bookshop and the Holman Company.
Kicking things off with thank yous and the story of how the Writers-in-Conversation series came to be.
Photos by Gene Openshaw and Rod Ralston.
Note: I’m an affiliate of Bookshop.org, where your purchases support local bookstores. If you buy a book through a click on this website, I’ll earn a small commission that helps defray the costs of maintainingthis website.
This fledgling eagle turned up at the top of our bank last Sunday. It gave out a pitiful cry every few seconds and we worried that it was injured. When it moved, it seemed to have a hurt foot, and it didn’t fly.
For the first three days, it stayed mostly in the same place, but a couple of times it hopped up onto the woodpile just 20 feet from where I was writing. Its cry was usually intermittent, but sometimes it became continuous. We worried it would starve to death.
It took a couple of days for a wildlife rescue person to come out. When she did, she told us adult eagles might be feeding the fledgling when we weren’t looking. In any case, she couldn’t capture it (using a sheet and gloves) as long as it was so close to the edge. So we waited, that sad cry becoming the backdrop to our lives.
Two days ago, while I was watching it through the window, it flew several feet down the bank. Then it relocated to a stump at the top of a steep cliff above the water. While it was there, I saw an adult eagle perch nearby and lean down, seeming to talk to it. Other eagles flew by the next morning.
This morning (Thursday), I can still hear its cry, but it’s far down the bank, out of sight. When I walked over to see if I could locate it, I found it in “conversation” with this adult eagle perched high in a tree above it.
It is beyond our ability to monitor it now. And I feel fairly sure it will be okay. All that’s left of where it was near our place is this bit of down and this feather. But I think I’ll remember that sad cry for a long time.
Update: After two days of not seeing (but still hearing) the fledgling eagle, we located it 40 feet up this tree. So a) it can fly, at least a bit, and b) it can perch. Adult eagles have come by regularly. It’s going to be fine.
On a foggy morning with geese drifting by, a seagull flying overhead, and otters playing just offshore, I’m pleased to announce that my novel, THE LAST GRAND TOUR, will be published on JANUARY 28, 2025.
Here’s a description of the book:
American tour guide Joe Newhouse wants nothing more than to reach Venice. Since moving to Munich after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he’s watched his business fail, his wife leave him, and his love for Europe diminish. Now he faces one last ten-day tour with a surly group that doesn’t want to be there. As he leads them through the mythic lands of Europe’s Romantic past, he finds himself disturbed by their stories of earlier lives, puzzled by their desire to be with a man who doesn’t arrive, and entangled in an illicit affair that promises to either save him or plunge his tour—and his life—into madness.
Soaked in the Romantic atmosphere and dark deeds of old Europe—as well as the freedoms and hopes of a new era—The Last Grand Tour takes us on a perilous journey through Hitler’s Berchtesgaden, Mozart’s Salzburg, and Mad King Ludwig’s Bavarian fantasyland before reaching its stunning climax in the murky waters of Venice. Along the way, it explores the often-shifting lines between fidelity and freedom, illusion and reality, regret and desire.
Looking back through slides of my early travels in Europe, I came across this one from my first time in Venice. I’ve been thinking about Venice a lot lately because it’s the final destination for the group in my upcoming novel, The Last Grand Tour.
We’re working on the cover for the novel now. I’ll post a picture of it when it’s ready for release.
The publication date hasn’t been finalized yet but it will probably be early November. I’ll announce it on this site as soon as it’s set.
I’m excited to announce that starting this August, I’ll be partnering with the Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds, Washington (just north of Seattle), to host a new monthly series called Writers in Conversation.
On the second Thursday of each month, we’ll bring one Northwest writer in front of an enthusiastic audience for a brief reading, a lengthy discussion of his or her work, and a question-and-answer session with engaged literature lovers.
The main idea of the new series is to showcase the wealth of writing talent in the Pacific Northwest. To that end, we’ll feature writers from different genres at different stages of their careers who may have been overlooked rather than those readers already know.
Writers who appear in the series will also be featured, along with their work, on an updated and expanded version of the website WritingtheNorthwest.com.
This will be a unique chance to hear talented writers speak in-depth about what it means to be an author in the Northwest and why and how they create their works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The conversations will all take place in one of Cascadia’s beautiful galleries, with Northwest art lining the walls.
Cascadia Art Museum is the only museum dedicated to artists and their works from the Pacific Northwest. Focused on visual art and design from 1860 to 1970, it is committed to the belief that recognizing previously neglected artists who made significant contributions to the region’s cultural identity gives us a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of Northwest art history. The Writers in Conversation series signals the museum’s desire to highlight underappreciated NW artists in literature as well.
The first conversation starts at 6 p.m. on Thursday, August 8. Check back later this summer for more details and to learn who our first featured writer will be.
Here’s a peek at the space we’ll fill with good conversation and an enthusiastic audience just a few months from now:
I just sent out the Spring 2024 issue of The Robert Lax Newsletter, a free quarterly publication with news about Lax-related events, articles, quotes, and images. This issue of the newsletter includes a feature article about Lax in winter, news about my forthcoming book on solitude, a YouTube video featuring author Steve Georgiou talking about his friendship with Lax, numerous images of Lax poems and publications, a hilarious Reddit string about a Lax poem, and many other delights.
Here’s a brief excerpt from the feature article on Lax in winter:
Two months have passed since I returned from my two weeks in Lax’s old house on Patmos, and I’m still thinking about what it was like for him living there in winter and then spring. In many ways, winter is the most beautiful time of the year on Patmos, especially when the sun is out. The fields are green, the wind whips the waves into beautiful patterns, and the island is quiet, with none of the hecticness that comes with the summer tourists.
But the wind is ever-present too, and it can be fierce. Lax’s house, like most on Patmos, is mostly concrete and holds the moisture as well as the cold. When I visited him in winter, he was usually wearing long underwear and a knit cap, and he spent much of his time on his bed, often with blankets over him. His only contact with the world beyond the grocery store, the post office, and a neighbor or two, was the half-hour each night he listened to news from the BBC...
Thousands of readers have already viewed the Spring 2024 issue of a newsletter that has been published since 2015. To be one of them, sign up here.
Work on the books I’ll be publishing in the coming months forced me to put my Writing the Northwest site on pause last year. But I just relaunched it with a review of my friend Mark Pomeroy’s excellent second novel, The Tigers of Lents.
As I write in my review, Mark’s novel is a “full and compelling picture of a struggling family in crisis”and “a deeply satisfying read.”
You can read the whole review here. And you can purchase the book here.
