Lynn Joseph's Dancing in the Rain,  third place winner Burt Award for Caribbean Literature, 2015: another book answering the question why write? Or the power of stories

I see that my previous post was in May. Astonishing! I was supposed to be getting organized at that time, posting regularly. Well clearly not. In what the Americans are now calling the big 'reveal', I will let you know that my husband has  dementia. I thought it would be that he'd just get quieter and quieter and that would be painful enough, 'the long goodbye', as my doctor said. Sometimes he is, but at other times it's quite different, and today is one of those;  hallucinating and very noisy, shouting at his imaginary people. It's emotionally draining.  Yes, he has taken his meds. I feel like the 'deer in the headlights'. What would be an appropriate simile for the Caribbean? Can't think! I wonder if this could be the making of a story. I'm not sure how many young adults have to interact with people suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's, so perhaps it wouldn't be meaningful to them. However, that is why, to my surprise, I have not organized myself.

Therefore perhaps this is a good time to re-post Lynn Joseph's Dancing in the Rain (Blouse and Skirt Books/Blue Banyan Books), a Burt Award winning book. It deals with realities that sometimes we wish our young people didn't have to go through, and yet, increasingly in this world, they have to face so many challenges, so many things for which we have no explanation or even understanding.

I had a post about books that bear evidence to the power of stories. Dancing in the Rain is one such  book.

Offline for three days, one felt  lost in space without  the ritual of opening emails.  I decided therefore that  I could use the time to consider at least one philosophical question. Would there be an answer if one opened one's mind? I needed to make sense of things. And the world was not making sense.  No doubt, there are others who  feel the same from time to time, and especially in today’s world.

In stepped Dancing in the Rain. I was pulled into the story by the lyrical writing. It's a joy to read; images abound, almost like being able to watch the  frames of a movie gently gliding by.  Joseph's characters are delightfully drawn;  you do indeed get to know them, want to know not only the outcome of the story, but the outcome of each of their own personal stories. The colours of the Caribbean depicted are vibrant and magical.    

Against this mystical, magical background, two horrendous occurrences make their appearance,  the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11, and the Holocaust. The main characters are suffering from the effects of  9/11.  It’s significant that a book for young adults should deal with a traumatic occurrence which falls within present memory. It is contemporary; it is topical in a world where so many things seem out of our control, so beyond our wildest imaginations, and not in a pleasant way. The Holocaust appears as   a story within the  story, its purpose to draw attention to the different ways people survive after a tragedy of immense  proportions. So, in a sense, it informs the present.

The young protagonists ask philosophical questions and seek answers to the things we adults ourselves often do not understand. Yet,  it seemed as if by interacting with the characters and their story, and the  really brilliant protagonists, we understand what we always knew, but sometimes forget, that the only one way to deal with disasters is with faith/ hope and courage;  Joseph more than once refers to the importance of hope.

Joseph also speaks about joy and love, 'you are my heart', 'you are my joy', both of which I firmly believe in, and which from time to time appear in my stories.

So  did I have a breakthrough as a result  of my  journey with Joseph's characters, their philosophy, their brand of magic? Well something happened. It occurred while reading Dancing in the Rain. I have never doubted the power of stories, the power of books.  I gave thanks for the power of this story.

Despatches: Coming together of authors

Writing and authors reading authors: Well the YA novel is not going to be finished now. My reader, whom I trust, said she couldn’t get very far with my first draft, between the alternative words/phrases separated by a slash and the notes to myself in red. Ah well. I don’t know why I think I can take a shortcut.  A first draft is a first draft, even if you wrote draft 4 on it because you increased the # each time you saved it as a new document. It is still a first draft. So I’m working on it slowly, or frantically, or passionately. Trying to deal with the chapters that needed to be collapsed into one, which was so embarrassing; finding out more about my characters and their motivations; finding out more about the story itself. What was I thinking? There is a lot of work left to be done on it. (I guess it was just the excitement of completing the first draft). It’s work I will enjoy, except that now I have some freelance work to do (to keep the proverbial wolf from the door) so those enjoyable almost wondrous moments of throwing myself into my story all day, every day are over. Ah well.

Authors’ get-together: I had the first of my author get-togethers on Saturday before last. I imagined it to be something like a salon in artistic circles. Aah!  All of us had put e-books onto Amazon or are in the process of doing so. Only one was a children’s’ book, The Mermaid Escape by Suzanne Francis Brown, (post of May 18). She explained the premise for the artwork on the cover of her book, which was very enlightening.  Modern! She had used an overseas illustrator and said she found his rates reasonable.

Now you will recall that my adult book of adult short stores, The Land in the Purple Evening, was supposedly done so as to see if there was any point in putting Caribbean material on Amazon. Will anyone see it? Will anyone buy them? Well none of us have enough to report on yet. Nonetheless, it was delightful camaraderie; suffering together or having great expectations together. I deliberately joined some of my social media links so as to be able to promote my books when the time arose. I’m barely doing that, my friends. Instead, I’m chatting away on the sites. I’ve been sucked into this social media machine. Why did I think I could escape? It’s fun; it’s just that it eats up writing time.

And a launch by Blue Moon Publishing: except that it’s under the imprint Blouse and Skirt Books, a delightfully whimsical name. It will be the adult book side of Tanya Batson-Savage’s Publishing House. The book is All Over Again by A-dZiko Simba. Although it is an adult book, the protagonist is a boy and the story is told in the second person. A-dZiko is a brilliant performer. She not only performed a dance to the drumming of M’Bala, but she performed her story. The story is made for performance reading and she magically pulled us into its spell. Wonderful!  Congratulations not only  to the author, but also to Tanya, whose publishing house is going from strength to strength. ( See posts June 21 and June 28). That is so encouraging and heartwarming, and everything. Young people who care as much as we did and do. You see, all is not lost.  Perhaps it never is, guys. Perhaps it never is. What a something!