“Look for BEFORE MY EYES, Caroline Bock’s new young adult novel to spark big, important discussions about teens and guns and mental illness. Written in three compelling voices, teens each struggling in their own way, Bock captures a moment before, after and during a terrible tragedy, and makes us viscerally feel and think about the question all of us involved in the fight for responsible gun laws ask ourselves, “Why?”  Moms—and their teens—will find this engrossing novel rich with characters and themes to explore. Read it. And get involved in Moms Demand Action in your state and community now.”--Jenifer Pauliukonis, MD Chapter Leader,

I am a proud member of MOMS DEMAND ACTION too.

I hope you will consider BEFORE MY EYES...read it this weekend and join the conversation.

Thank you for reading!!

Caroline

This is the time of year to look back, a writer’s dilemma. It seems like I am always mulling on memories, lingering over scenes half-remembered, reconstructed as fiction. But as 2013 ends, this is a happy look back at my literary highlights of the year, as I prepare to pop the champagne and get ready to sing “Auld Lange Synge" (does anyone on the planet know all the words to this song?!): 

 

Alice McDermott from That Night to Charming Billy and now on to Someone. I’ve read everyone of her novels and I think Someone is one of her best – it travels down some of the same streets as the one before – Brooklyn, Long Island’s South Shore, a young girl looking into her neighbor’s world and then into her own, an Irish-American girl trying to make sense of the ordinariness of life. I loved Someone.

 

I met my literary crush Alice McDermott here hand selling books on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I also attended readings by Edwidge Danticat and Elizabeth Wein 9also author of the best YOUNG ADULT novels that I read this year CODE NAME VERITY and its sequel: ROSE UNDER FIRE). Best of all, I found a new home to buy books, discuss books, breathe books.

 

I love being part of a book club! We read many good books this year – but I loved the Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaughand Wonder by RJ Palacioand The Fault in Our Stars by John Green -- yes, our book club of women of a certain age love to read young adult novels -- and these two stories made us cheer and cry.  

I took an amazing class with her: Grand Theft Poetry and realized that poetry can be found, stolen, nourished in many places.

 

Best Self-Published Book:

Tales of a Hungry Life: A Memoir with Recipesby Maria Schulz  -- rollicking tales of a large Italian-Puerto Rican family in Queens – and the recipes are delicious!

 

Recommended by the imitable workshop leader (at another best new find: Bethesda Writer's Center) Mark Cugini: Crapalachia by Scott McClanahan—“a biography of place” a very peculiar place in Appalachia and the people there, written in vivid short scenes.

 

 The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten – read for research, with naches for the language, which as a kid my father sprinkled around our dining room table. Oy!

CATCHING FIRE based on Suzanne Collins Hunger Games series, as if you didn't know. But best new addition to the cast: Phillip Seymour Hoffman. This December, the movie just crossed 700 million in box office world wide. May the odds be forever in their favor!

House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey and awesome Robin Wright - is based on the novel by same name by Michael Dobbs (interesting a British writer and politician). I am currently binge-watching for the holidays on Netflix!

 

So farewell to 2013, I am already looking ahead to 2014 – in February, look for the publication of my second novel: BEFORE MY EYES (St. Martin’s Press) on 2.11.14.  I will not forget old friends…

...For auld lang syne, my dear,

for auld lang syne,

we'll take a cup of kindness yet,

for auld lang syne...

Much more in 2014!! Caroline

I just finished a new book about writing, GOOD PROSE: The Art of Nonfiction by Tracy Kidder and his editor Richard Todd.  This is worth a read for new writers and more established ones. Some of its gems include a chapter on point of view in creative nonfiction as well as a chapter on “Being Edited and Editing.” The work ends with an insightful chapter on usage and grammar, which includes a warning against medical, political and digital age clichés including my own pet peeve—use of “mega” and “giga” and “nano” as prefixes.

 

The back and forth between the writer and the editor is what delighted this writer the most. We live inside our heads as writers and good editors help us take what’s inside out – freely, unwieldy at times, wildly at other times.  

 

Why does this matter on the 4 of July? In too many places around the world, people are denied basic freedoms of expression – they cannot assembly, speak or write freely.  In the United States of America, our Founding Fathers thought it critical to write down what we as Americans are guaranteed in exchange for our good citizenship, our allegiance.“We the People, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” We wrote our Constitution down and have been debating different aspects of it ever. And while we need to remain vigilant about our freedoms, especially in an age of easy surveillance, the Constitution of the United States still stands 237 years later. Today, on the 4th of July, we celebrate our freedom, and I write.

 

His “mythic, perfect story…was one big lie,”confessed Lance Armstrong, the world’s most famous cyclist, the winner or now loser of seven Tour de France races. But isn’t that what happens in myth? The gods take down the hero, usually through hubris or excessive pride? Isn’t Odysseus, blinded, sent on his travels when he refuses to accept his fate? We think we must be greater than our fellow man that we possess something special, that we deserve better, that we are fated to win and  fairness and justice and the small ordinariness of life is for another man.  

 

Some of the lines from my debut novel, LIE, what is said by Jimmy, the instigator of a a hate crime and the star of the football and baseball teams at his Long Island high school resonates now: there’s first place or no place… you’re either a winner or you’re nothing. LIE revolves around a murder but one the subthemes –about the winner-take-all attitude in the 21 century and how it sometimes faces a mythic and tragic fate for all involved.

 

What does Lance Armstrong hope to achieve by confessing now? Absolution? What about everyone that he involved and impacted by his hubris? His lies?

 

Ultimately in my novel, Jimmy is brought down—

though not by his own confession. At seventeen he isn’t ready to confess – but then neither was Lance Armstrong, he had to win first. He had to lie to us all and win. Was it worth it? As a writer that’s what I want to know.  Was it worth it?      

 

 

Caroline Bock

author of the debut novel -LIE -

called "Unusual and important"

in a starred Kirkus Review;

"gripping" in a starred Library Journal

review; "suspenseful and thought-provoking,"

in a starred Booklist review

and "smart ... painfully believable" in a

starred Publishers Weekly review --

is now available everywhere

books/ebooks are sold

from St. Martin's Press, a big six publisher.

Wind-strewn, tree branch buckled, black dawn—the first day of winter, the last day on the Mayan calendar and the world is still here, barely. Electricity out all night but back on –for now. Twenty-six church bells for the victims of the senseless mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Everyone asking ‘why’ and what happens if there is no answer to ‘why?’ I keep coming back to the serious mental illness of this shooter, of Tucson’s, Aurora’s as much as I do to the easy access to military assault weapons. 

Though on guns: Why does anyone outside of law enforcement need to own a semi-automatic anything? Why?

And why did no one try to help this sick young man – we now flag kids who need extra educational resources and support them; we now mainstream physically and developmentally challenged students; we have interventions for kids who abuse drugs. But we let young men in their late teens and early 20s and who are most likely showing signs of suffering from serious mental illness have target practice or buy guns? Is this how the world ends?

 

Or, (because I have to end on beauty not pain) as the great American poet Robert Frost asks does it end in fire or ice?   

 

 

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.


But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate


To know that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

     --

 

Thoughts and prayers to all the Newtown families -- 

 

-Because my library books are due that day. I couldn’t be so lucky as the world to end that day.

 

-Because my father said only two things are guaranteed death and taxes – and the latter are going off the fiscal cliff a week or so later or at least are not due to April 15. 

 

-Because every Jewish holiday comes down to this classic Alan Ladd quip: “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.” We are still hungry – the world can’t end until we are all fed.

 

-Because on my 30 birthday (a few years ago!) a psychic took my drunken palm and told me I’d live to be at least 86. I believe this Times Square psychic more than the Mayans.

 

-Lastly, the world will not end on 12.21.12 because I still need to dance at my son’s and daughter’s weddings and they are only 12 and 7, because I still need to write my adult novel, because I still need to see Rome and Jerusalem and the Grand Tetons.  And because I have miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.

 

Your thoughts on 12.21.12??

Truly,

author of LIE

and because LIE still needs to be

promoted, bought, read.

Two weeks without electrical power and finally, someone, said let there be light and there was light late on Sunday night here on Long Island – and heat and television and computers and all the modern conveniences that make our lives both easier and more complicated. I learned a lot of the last few days:

 

-I re-discovered Scrabble – and found at that 12-year-olds can be as competitive at Scrabble as they are at soccer! I also re-lived the joy of snow through his joy at the Nor'easter of November on Long Island.

 

-I read poetry to the kids at night – they liked My Cat Jeoffry the spiritual poem on cats by Christopher Smart the best and so did I. Our cat, Shelton, liked it too.  As Smart ends his poem about his cat, we petted our cat. "For he is of the tribe of Tiger... For every house is incompleat without him &/ a blessing is lacking in the spirit."

 

-I found the joy of early bedtimes, for the kids, and myself at 7:30 pm and for waking with the sunrise.

-Historical novels are better settings than contemporary ones when you are living in a cold,  dark surreal setting, I found contemporary settings where people argued over money and politics hard to focus on. For example, I started Richard Ford’s Canada (plan to finish it), J.K. Rowling’s Casual Vacancy (don’t plan to finish in the near future) but I did finish Hilary Mantel’s  Bring Up The Bodies-- about the last weeks of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII set in the brutal fall and winter of 1535. (If you don't recall Anne was the one beheaded and pushed aside for wife number three: Jane Seymour).

And, I worried a lot – about my family in the cold – though we were better off than many others – and remembered to be thankful for what we had: an intact house and car and, most importantly, one another. We celebrated by lighting candles on Friday night and saying prayers, even though we had no choice but to light candles, the prayers had a special meaning flickering the darkness with grace and calm. 

 

We live in strange times – between the future that we fear and the past, which we can’t return to. I just hope we won’t be living in the dark and cold until we figure out how to truly move forward.

  

Truly,

This wonderful writing friend made this comment on my last post... for National Bullying Prevention Month...and I feel compelled to share it widely because, honestly, I wish I had made it!  But this is a reason for insightful readers and editors like Debbie Vilardi, they see into your writing as much as your soul: 

"The hats you wear today have so much more power than the one you lost. If only the child you were could have known."

Thank you, Debbie! 

Truly,

author of LIE

I hate bullies -- even though, if you ask my brothers or sister they may describe me as one on occasion. Still, in the spirit of National Bullying Prevention Month I was asked by the wonderful Lady Reader's Book Stuff to write a short piece on bullying... what I wrote about was long-buried in my memory and even so many years later painful to recall.  

Now, if you go to Lady Reader's blog-- she is doing a giveaway of a signed edition of LIE, my debut young adult novel, which is also appropriate for this month.  Inspired by real events, LIE is the story of a brutal hate crime and extreme bullying. If you haven't read it yet, enter the giveaway!

Truly,

 

But I also like end of the world, we-are-all-at-risk, flesh-eating zombie stories.  I think it makes me less afraid of the day–to-day fears (today, my 7-year-old daughter didn’t get off the bus today, was she kidnapped? Is she hurt? Is she crying out for mommy – no, they didn’t announce her bus and she’s waiting in the main office with a half a dozen other kids who didn’t hear their bus being called.  I can go calmly pick her up. I can do this.). 

 

I didn’t once think: did zombies attack her? It would almost have been a relief to focus on zombies because everything else could have been an option.  In the celluloid/digital world we watch in horror as the innocents go into the dark doublewide trailer or into the bucolic woods – and you know-- and everyone but that person knows – THAT’S WHERE THE ZOMBIES ARE.   When there are flesh-eating zombies on the screen, somehow my world, with my day-to-day fears seem somewhat manageable.  The zeitgeist of zombies is that they are unpredictable, driven by base passion and not by reason. Zombies are the Zen of our time. I can put all my irrational fear into them – and be calm -- except when my daughter isn't on her school bus and she should be.   

 

Of course, this love of zombies makes me a fan ofAMC’s The Walking Dead – and on an upbeat thing to share: I just noticed that they are right now running a sweepstakes-- a trip for two to the Walking Dead Set – co-sponsored in a weird bit of promotion by the Red Cross (Use Your Brains, Give Blood is the tagline - go to www.amctv.com).

 

 

Truly,

 

Critically-acclaimed YA for adults

…and teens.